I did try to end it. I emailed M and told her I gave up trying - that I accepted she felt she was trying to help, that I didn't feel supported and didn't know how to make her understand or accept that and so I was giving up.
I had an email back in which she said, "some of your emails, I felt, have been very personal about me and quite derogatory in manner and I was mealy trying to put my point across" and "I have been upset myself at some of the things you wrote about me" then finished by saying "Let's try and put all this behind us and try and start again please." As my husband said, she's saying it is my fault but she wants us to start again. Like, that's going to happen. But clearly, in her eyes it is all my fault and I am a nasty vindictive person. All I can say in my defence is that I was asking for support and explaining that I do not feel supported (ie that I have felt no empathy, had a refusal - now backtracked on - to send out a copy of my care plan, had direct appeals for help ignored and heard lots of declarations that there is nobody available to support me). But it's all OK - she is clearly willing to forgive me and start over again. Fortunately I am not. All of this (and many previous) encounter with CMHT has been totally negative. My CPN (who is lovely) is off work for another 4 weeks. By that time I may well have discharged myself from this damaging service.
Do tell me if I am completely misinterpreting this. I'm willing to share what I have emailed to M - at times i have been assertive about expressing how the situation feels to me, but I have never, as far as I can tell, been derogatory or rude.
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6 comments:
Do you think this is the new way of rationing services, by making them so inaccessible and unpleasant that the clients decide they are better off without them? Perhaps our mental health services have been taking notes from the Victorians with their workhouses where the same principles were used.
I hope that you can just let it go. If you can you'll be being a lot more professional about it than M!
Thanks Marcella for a response which made me smile! It's an interesting idea of rationing, but, come to think of it, one of M's claims has been that they just do not have anyone to support me...
I'm trying to let it go. I'm also toying with making a final formal complaint alongside discharging myself from the service...
i think she needs the help that you're not getting! I think you'd be very much justified in submitting a formal complaint, both about the factual, global lack of support and about her correspondance. If she is not sufficiently professional to either distance herslef from a persoanl reading of your criticism of the lack of support, or to pass the matter to another staff emmber (her manager) to take over, or arrange a face to face rather than email meeting to discuss it if she did feel under attack, then in my view she should be challenged.
But you are right, fighting and complaining uses up precisou reserves of energy and it could take a while...it might well be better to just let go, but only you can know that.
or i could come up and trash her office... ;)
Oh, do come! I'd love to trash her office right now.
Seriously, I have drafted a formal complaint. I may even send it. I'm sufficiently unsettled / disturbed / upset. However, along with the complaint would go a total withdrawal from contact with CMHT, with the exception of Sue (and Derek, if that were possible). So I am weighing it up. It's a point of no return, I feel. However, what have I to lose? Only (as you indicate) the unsettled feeling while I wait for a response - and since I am already unsettled, there's not much in it really.
I probably should wait and reread the letter in the "cold light of day". I'd also like her to endure a little bit of silence from me after her latest email, maybe to dwell on how her behaviour may have affected me. On the other hand, I'd guess she doesn't do much dwelling on stuff...
I wish my GP were available so I could discuss this with him. Thing is, even if another CPN does miraculously appear (and that may well happen, given the fuss I have already made) I have no confidence that she/he will not already have been informed of the difficulties of working with me, my negative and combatative approach, etc etc. So where's the point?
there is a huge danger in drawing parallels between circumstnaces and even more so between different people's situations, but I'm going to...
first, you say that your current CPN was warned off you - but your experience says that actually your current CPN (apart from being off sick) didn't go with that warning, din't turn against you, and had developed a good working relation ship with you. There is no reason why that couldn't happen again with another person, is there??
secondly...i had a HUGE falling out with the CMHT manager (over one specific appalling incident but also her about her attidue to me in general), when i complained and refused to have anything more to do with her that was eventually accepted. completely. an alternative contact person was identified, my own CPNS routes of supervision for working with me were rearranged and no further decisions about my future care had anything to do with her.
don't assume that they will all take sides against you... :)
huge hug. you are entitled to a view as to how you have been treated and you are entitled to have that view heard by someone other than her.
hug
C
Thank you, Caroline - good (and appreciated) reminders all.
Complaint has been sent and is now somewhere in the ether of the nhs emails system.
Now I just have to let it all go.
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