the psychology of being judged.

I still can't escape what happened during hospitalizations.  They are permenantly etched in my mind.  No wonder so many never get out of the mental health care system--being monitored and over analyzed to such extremes sticks with a person.  For life.

What began as an introspective journey of myself turned into a self-loathing torture of all of the ways in which I am not perfect.  I am haunted by the mental health 'professionals' who judged and spit in my face because, somehow, they determined that I was not 'Good.'

Don't get me wrong, for every bad encounter I had with righteous professionals, there was always someone uplifting who helped me along the way.  I remember after two weeks in a terrible hospital situation, not knowing when my dingbat psychiatrist would let me out, a very kind-natured woman walked past and uttered in that 'les murs sont des oreilles' kind of place:

"It's just a bad dream."

The problem with mental health treatments is the quickness to medicate.  Do These People Know What These Medications Do To One's Soul?  All of those times under analysis when I felt like I had to Perform Well to get out of there, those docs had NO IDEA how challenging it is to be 'normal' when one is so blocked and stifled by loads of mind medications.  They cloud, confuse, depress, sedate, stifle, zombify, and cause extended, further pain.  The docs don't get that.  Have they ever tried these drugs?  Hell no they haven't.

I know I need one pill to calm my mind when it reaches OVERWHELMED status.  My mania disrupts my ability to perform regular functions in life.  

But the EXCESS analysis, the judgment passed by others, the scolding....how does one expect someone to get 'better' with such harshness?  Gentility seems like a wiser approach to me.  Isn't gentility a more spiritual practice?  

I thank my lucky stars I now have a Safe Place to talk in a therapeutic setting. No judgment, no fucked up psychology prodding self-serving bullshit games, just a place to INTROSPECT once again.

Hopefully I can regain at least an ounce of CONFIDENCE one day.