I know I banned myself from the forum a while back, but I have to share what happened to me today. I also posted this on oFear in the "Rants about Doctors" section.
Here goes:
Long post!
Cow cow cow.
My psychologist. Well, not “mine”. THE psychologist.
I started seeing her about two months ago; this was my second appointment.
Last time I told her about emetophobia and took along some info from http://www.emetophobia.org that my mum encouraged me to print out.
So this time she says, “Last time we talked about some of your checking behaviours...” (Blank stares from both of us for about two minutes straight; she has this thing where she makes a comment and expects me to say something else, when really she’s stating the obvious or jogging my memory.)
Me [eventually]: In terms of....? Checking dates on food and things like that?
Her [after about an hour!]: Yes. And you brought something in for me.
Me: Yes.
Her [reading through the emetophobia thing again]: Did you write this yourself?
Me [confused]: No.... I know there are some spelling mistakes in there, but it’s from a website.
Her [reading more, arrogant]: I don’t think “emetophobia” is even a word. Do you? Do you think it’s a word?
Me [growing instantly...completely...f*cking...furious and hurt]: I...don’t know, there’s certainly a lot of information –
Her: On this website.
Me: And on the Internet in general. And there are lots of people –
Her: Hmm.
Me: And I’m on several forums for people with emetophobia, so I don’t think –
Her: What kinds of forums?
Me: For people with emetophobia (!!), and some for just anxiety problems in general.
Her: Hmm.
[I talked about oFear and the IES forum, among others, and she maintained her condescending and snobby tone. Then she gave me my “homework”, which was to do with self-esteem issues.]
Her: So it’s okay for you to sit there and say you’ve done some research and you don’t think you have OCD and you “know” about anxiety and this problem you think you have, but now I want you to do this. Are you going to bother to do your homework?
Cow.
She also asked me at one point whether one of my hobbies was sitting at the computer looking up illnesses (mental/physical) I think I might have, implying that I log on to dodgy websites that are scams or hoaxes. Probably thinks I have an attitude problem and don’t want to be diagnosed with OCD or anorexia, so I made up emet to get attention. I think her problem is also that she’s so arrogant, she thinks that just because she hasn’t heard of something, means it must not exist.
The rest of the appointment just kept going downhill because I was so angry that whenever she asked me a question I couldn’t focus to answer properly, and then when she told me to think about it, I just replayed the phrase “I don’t think emetophobia is even a word” and got more angry and hurt to the point of tears. Then she thought I was upset over the questions she was asking.
I rather stupidly told her that I didn’t mind making another appointment, so I did, but there’s no way in hell I’m going back. I give up. Maybe there is no such f*cking thing. And if there is, I’m certainly not going to get any treatment for it in this country.
I understand that she may not have heard of it and that the page I printed may have looked a bit...fake...the way I formatted the text and with the few small spelling and punctuation mistakes. But....COW!