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- Author : chibam
- Support : 5
- Topic : Advocating for change
Hi @Former-Member , @hanami !🙂 Great topic!
I'm well versed in these dillemmas, but I'm afraid I can't offer much helpful insight. I was stuck for years with a therapist who simply didn't want to listen to me and/or help me achieve my goals. No matter how much I kept telling her what I wanted and didn't want, she refused to listen.
I ended up learning, all too late, that there was never any point to going in to therapy in the first place, as therapists don't provide actual real-life help for patients' problems, which was what I needed. (At least, technically they are not supposed to provide real help, although a select few apparently flout the rules of their profession and actually do).
So now I can only advocate for changes to the system, to help reduce/prevent the sort of ordeals I went through in therapy, and to push for the creation of a system that actually does give people the help they need.
This has become increasingly difficult due to the hazy jargon that is often thrown about these days such as "person-centered treatment", "missing middle" and "psychosocial support", which confuse me as to whether or not the sort of support I've been pushing for actually has being created; is in the process of being rolled out; or is still not on anybody's radar. And even if I am covered by one of the above, where do I go for that sort of treatment? I can't find any local "psychosocial support" or "person-centered treatment" clinics in the yellow pages.
I'm at a loss to understand where we are today, which makes it increasingly difficult to voice any meaningful opinion about what needs to be done for the future.
Other difficulties I've come across in advocacy have been the frequent hints I've gotten that nobody actually reads what I have to say, or that they don't want my grievances & views to be voiced at all. This has taken many forms, from final inquiry reports that seem to completely ignore the issues I tried to raise; to the concealment of a submission for an unreasonable length of time (while other submissions dated much later then my own got processed much earlier); to having my submissions, or significant parts thereof misplaced, and on one occasion, mis-assigned to a completely unrelated inquiry.
Generally speaking, the establishment wants me to quietly disappear. There's been too much repeated neglect and mishandling of my input to reasonably come to any other conclusion.
That can be a real sucker punch at the end of the day, especially when you go to so much trouble and personal grief, to bare your soul in hopes of actually provoking some meaningful change; only to see nothing whatsoever come of it.
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