A Journey Through Psychological Evaluations and Personal Struggles
- Mar 13
- 5 min read
Written by Justin H. Briggs, Writer
Justin H. Briggs is the author of "Insanity Comes To Mind: A Memoir on Mental Health," which was published on May 1st, 2020. He is a good writer working at being great.
“Psychology is bullshit!” I told myself this for 25-odd years. Psychology was originally just a European philosophical practice, but boy, oh, boy, can you make some money off of the thing! Trauma, abandonment issues, diagnoses, it can never end, the psychological rabbit hole.
Upon my first psychological session, I met a bearded, balding, bespectacled counselor who told me little and let me talk too much, like they do. Someone more important than me was in the car, and I did not want to be telling this man a god damned thing.
I would rather have spent the session with the person in my car. She had her own problems at the time, and I can still recall how she just wanted to “tag along” to my appointment as an excuse to get away from her own life for a minute.
In the session I attempted to cover 26 years of life in under an hour not a good approach, but the bespectacled therapist, or counselor, or whatever he may have been was clearly inundated with patients concerns other than mine, out of touch with the reality of mental illness as a lived experience, and at least overwhelmed by my presence if not my dialogue.
I was just diagnosed weeks before as having bipolar disorder, and was arguing with this man that marijuana seems safer than alcohol or pills. But my pills are necessary, he said, and alcohol is both legal and socially acceptable, so cut it with the weed bullshit. We were both confounded.
He delved into the booze: why quit drinking, he asked. It is a depressant, I replied, and I think I come from a long line of alcoholics, and I started drinking with my grandfather at the age of five. I thought this line of dialogue was a personal “breakthrough”, in the psychological sense, and that if I just quit drinking, maybe I could manage better. He said it was a nice thought.
The session ended, we scheduled out, and he told me to take my “big ideas” to my car and my supposed girlfriend. Maybe she would help. I was anxious to get away from this person and back to my car.
When I got back to the car and told my new girlfriend what my first therapy session was like, we both agreed that he seemed inadequate for the role. She and I moved on from each other in life, but in that time of mine, she was my North Star, and her compass will guide me forever, but that is trauma, right? I clung to her as a drowning man grips the rope on the side of a life raft. After a few months of my abuse of my medications, narcotics, alcohol, and ourselves emotionally, we drifted apart after I let go.
Alcohol then continued to play a recurring role in my life, with my next “counselor” telling me after a few evaluations that I was not an alcoholic, that I alone was not responsible for the damage done to our relationship by my drinking, and I seemed to be “surrounded by bad people”. That is bullshit in hindsight. I was afraid of myself, and so was everyone else. And so, I left my girlfriend, our life, and all hope for myself behind.
Pharmaceuticals, alcohol, and self-medicating trials and errors, after errors, after several further errors later, a declaration to my parents that “I feel like I need to kill myself and everyone else!”, and I then awoke in my first stay in a mental institution. Counseling “on the inside” mostly consisted of group therapy, literally coloring inside the lines with crayons like a child, and karaoke.
I was released within days on a technicality and left back to whatever psychiatry I could find and my own devices in terms of managing what was then diagnosed as mere bipolar disorder. A few institutions later, the loss of my 2nd amendment, and every relationship I have ever had, and I am now considered schizo-affective, bipolar-type. This means that, even with medications, I see things, hear things, and go through mood swings.
Judges have legally ordered me to take pills and talk to paid people about my problems. And I have been broke, financially, the whole time. I had not even been charged with a crime.
My next therapist, a bespectacled woman, claimed I had “incredible survival skills”. I asked her how I could thrive. We made daily, weekly, and further, bigger goals for me. I met them all on my deadline. But I am still alive and crazier than ever. But we were convinced then, or she was at least that, due to my traumatic birth, youth, and family life, that, for me, “money is love” and “I am attracted to chaos, or I create it out of habit.” Great frame of mind to put a human being into.
We continued our sessions for years, weekly or more frequently, via telehealth and across state lines. In our work together, I learned much about myself, the practice of psychology, and much more about the world at large. But the framework stuck.
I chased money with love and created chaos in every situation, no thought of seeking peace within. I abused myself as much as anyone thinks of any number of people. This counselling relationship ended like every other relationship I have had, yet poorly.
Moving on in counseling from the border-crossed, telehealth chaos to an in-person, fresh-faced therapist made a fresh start feel necessary. I was beginning another relationship, with a girlfriend, I mean, and my new partner helped me find services and paid for them herself. She literally saved my life with regard to a potential brain tumor, which, after three months, turned out to be a glandular problem.
My “third eye”, or penial gland, which regulates testosterone in men and allows humans to imagine, conceive ideas, visualize thoughts, and dream, was run through worse than any dive bar bathroom I have yet had the luxury to frequent. I was dying fast, and my girlfriend saved my life. Just took half a million of her dollars, or so, over six months of our time together, or so.
But my new therapist was young, enthusiastic, and seemed generally interested in my problems, which, act or not, was a new tone to therapy for me. They seemed as dedicated as I was, at least, to “fix the problem”.
I recently cut ties with this therapist as well, however, for legal reasons at least. The things these people get paid to convince us to believe about ourselves, with or without their sympathy, have benefits and drawbacks, like anything else. Try to focus on the positive if that is possible.
Read more from Justin H. Briggs
Justin H. Briggs, Writer
Justin H. Briggs is a writer located in Manhattan, Kansas, USA. He is more than his diagnosis and less than his potential for success, in his opinion, but he is working on that. His diagnosis of schizoaffective bipolar disorder manifests symptoms of depression, mania, delusions, paranoia, and hallucinations. He is in no way medically certified beyond the occasional CPR certification, but he has been there and done that, so to speak.
