#it boiled down to trying to force myself into some chipper neurotypical extrovert mold

[jezunya]

I had a really, really good first meeting with my therapist on Thursday. She started off asking what name I go by, where at a VA place I would fully expect them to just read off my legal name. She was easy to talk to, didn't make me feel judged or like my input was unwanted – which is huge for me – and was very happy to listen to my thoughts, questions, theories, etc. She also said a lot of stuff that managed to address specific anxieties I hadn't even expressed to her yet, everything from 'you don't have to be literally suicidal in the moment in order to call the Veterans' Crisis Hotline' to 'Oh god, I'm a cat person too, I know how awful that is to lose a pet so suddenly.'

She was telling me about how, while regular appointments tend to be booked out several weeks at least (and she encouraged me to call in periodically to check if anyone has cancelled, if I want to move my appointment up sooner), they take walk-ins & they always reserve a few timeslots each day for when patients have urgent/distressing things that pop up. And then (maybe already picking up on my tendency to feel like I don't have a right to actually use the resources available to me) she said that, had I already been an established patient there beforehand, Madea getting sick & passing away would have been the kind of thing for which they would want me to call in & take one of those urgent slots. And here I was feeling like if I wasn't in the throes of a full-blown PTSD flashback, I didn't have a right to ask for help from the VA.

She also seems to take a sort of holistic view of things like depression & anxiety, and we talked a bit about how they all have mental, physical, and behavioral aspects, and how those all influence each other for good or for ill. She emphasised that no one thing would fix everything, like my anxiety won't magically disappear if I eat better or exercise, but those, along with talk therapy, CBT, medication, etc etc etc whatever works, can all help contribute in small ways towards alleviating symptoms. I just really like that she's not pushing any one approach, but seems to want to take into account a while bunch of treatments & symptoms, which, again, addressed some of my fears that I hadn't even brought up yet: that I felt like I was going in there with a big scattered shotgun blast of problems & symptoms & theories, and that I don't feel like there's *one* big thing to be fixed but a whole host of problems that all impact & exacerbate each other, and I feel like people sometimes get impatient or frustrated with me because it's like there's always one more thing, it can never just be simple.

She was also completely open to hearing about family history & things that I suspect and/or want to explore. We're going to go through a "full history" in our next appointment, but just the fact that she was open to hearing about bipolar, thyroid disease, autism, adhd, social anxiety, etc. was again a huuuuge thing I was stressing about. I feel like I've heard horror stories about psychologists (and I've actually met laypeople like this, but it's always worse coming from a professional) who expect you to have zero self awareness, and anything you suspect or propose must be wrong, because they are the professional, so they're the only one who gets to develop hypotheses & theories. In contrast, she outright told me, 'I know psychology, but I can never know you as well as you know yourself' and then something to the effect that in the best case scenario, we would be able to work as a team to try to figure out what's bothering me & how to address it.

She also said very directly that if at any time for any reason I feel like we aren't working or clicking or whatever, tell her, or tell someone in reception, or something, and they would all work to find me someone I feel more comfortable with. That her job is to get me the best help possible, and that her feelings won't be hurt if we don't click. And then when I told her I appreciated her saying that because I know you're supposed to shop around until you find a therapist who works for you but since I don't have any healthcare/insurance outside of the VA, I didn't feel like I had that "luxury" – she immediately went, 'You do actually have that luxury' and then explained that, first, there are two other psychologists in our local clinic alone; second, if none of them work for me, they can get me set up to go see literally any VA therapist anywhere in Indiana, including at the big hospital in Indy; and third, that the VA has started a sort of 'telemedicine' program wherein you can speak to a therapist over like Skype or something. So basically, I have a huge pool of choices before me, even if I do just stick to VAcare.

I came home feeling kind of raw after meeting with her, emotional but in a good way. A healthier feeling way, like bandages had been changed & wounds inspected, rather than like a bad reopening of wounds. I'm really looking forward to working with her more, which itself says a lot compared to how worried I was about this appointment in the days leading up to it.