Posted by g_g_g_unit on October 22, 2010, at 1:54:34
In reply to Re: intellegence vs. motivation » g_g_g_unit, posted by Jay_Clockwork_Angels on October 21, 2010, at 17:38:57
I think it's an interesting and somewhat controversial point you bring up, and I agree with both you and linkadge.
I've found that a lot of psychiatric treatment revolves around semantics, and it's necessary for the patient to edit and/or emphasize certain symptoms/experiences over others in order to gain the most appropriate treatment at times. Like Jay says, it's a matter of survival, and confronting a psychiatrist is always in some ways a 'performance'.
Sometimes psychiatrists have stated that I present too well given the amount of distress I've described. Sometimes, I can't open up to a psychiatrist due to their awful bedside manner and they don't receive a complete picture of my symptoms. Sometimes they'll blindly challenge me on whether I'm actually suffering from symptoms I describe. Sometimes I didn't know that certain things (impulse issues, etc.) were actually psychiatric symptoms, which led to my ADHD going completely unrecognized for so long.
If I walked into a psychiatrist's office and just spewed out what an anxious mess I was, I'd be placed on something like an AP everytime, no questions asked. As I get a clearer picture of my problems, I've learned to pare my story down to the bare essentials and construct a clear narrative of my life.
I'm still learning of course - one recent slight I made was telling my psychologist that when I first became depressed, it felt like negative schizophrenia, which led to this whole recent schizo debacle. As I say, it's very much an issue of semantics because amotivation and cognitive problems could apply to a range of things.
> > Yeah, I never told her they increased my intelligence. I said they correct my difficulties processing information + my own thoughts, which I guess allows me to capitalize on my intelligence.
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> Well, I think it would be much, much better if you simply said that the med helps with the slow cognition (or 'dullness' or 'cloudiness') of whatever mental illness you are suffering with. With me, I've finely tuned the art of re-scripting words and language to make it tie into my *pain* as much as possible. EVEN if you don't have pain, put on the show, because it does and will persuade doctors. I know this doesn't sound very authentic, but I have become a very good actor to know what/and/or/how I have to do/say to get whatever (well, within reason) I need. It has taken me almost 20 years to do so. If it means bringing in 30 pages of medical literature supporting my use of something, or just simply mumbling in a tense voice that I am having a very bad dysphoric manic spell, it is mostly preconstructed and carefully thought out. This is the only way I have survived, and have gotten healthier.
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> Jay
poster:g_g_g_unit
thread:966455
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20101020/msgs/966548.html