The new psychiatrist

I’ve mentioned my new psychiatrist, the orthomolecular one. While I’m quite optimistic with what orthomolecular can do, having had email correspondence with many people who have used it successfully and I too having pulled together a plan on my own that has helped matters a lot, I’m still skeptical about the doctor I’ve found. Finding psychiatrists or other practitioners that understand natural medicine is like finding a needle in a haystack. Someone in my alternative mental health email group turned me on to this doctor.

Her office is four hours from my house. It’s a schlep. But I’ve been very happy that I could get some unusual blood work done and I do hope that what I discovered in my blood work will help take care of the PMS (PMDD?) as she promised.

I’ve made reference to it before, but I think it bares repeating. Every hospitalization I’ve ever had was in conjunction with my pre-menstrual phase. It seems I was diagnosed bipolar for having taken hallucinogenics while premenstrual. All my symptoms are at a minimum now and I’m withdrawing from meds slowly and steadily with no ill-effect, but I’m still not happy with how I feel pre-menstrually. It gets damn rocky there for a couple of weeks.

So I was happy to find a doctor in proximity to me. I still see my local doctor for prescriptions.

The catch here is that I’ve discovered that my natural, holistic doctor is still a bitch ala MHPPD. She shows little empathy and displayed an ugly moment when she snapped at me when I made a mere suggestion that I might not be able to follow one of her advisements to the letter. She is dogmatic about her belief system and leaves me feeling if I don’t follow every one of her recommendations she will be disapproving. I’m scared of her as I have that people-pleasing problem with people in authority–something that served me very badly in the use of psychiatry historically. She is no different from a typical traditional psychiatrist in the way she displays arrogance and certainty in her methods. I guess I wasn’t totally surprised, but I was disappointed.

She snapped at me on the phone, not in her office, (as I do phone appointments with her because of the distance) and it stung so bad that I regressed back to the times I spent in the hospital 20 years ago. I was trusting her with something that made me feel vulnerable. You may laugh and please do, but I went directly to thememoryartist’s post on MHPPD–she really has the types of MHP’s down to a letter and so in typical DSM fashion I was quickly able to diagnose my doctor. (narcissistic)

I still need her expertise and can’t shop around for someone better, as I need someone to order continuing blood work –someone who knows how to interpret the results. So now I have to simply be careful in what I say. Show no emotion or vulnerability and simply use her for her expertise. The tricky part is how do I pick and choose what I want to try and not piss her off for not doing everything she suggests? I have done research and I simply don’t feel inclined to follow every suggestion she has made. And I also can’t afford everything either.

If I don’t get results in the next couple of months, I’ll move on. I’ve muddled my way through the nutritional challenges quite nicely on my own with the help of the internet and people on it. Of course if she proves helpful, I’ll be grateful, but never for her personality.