Psychiatrist appointments are so stressful, because I have less than ten minutes to tell the doctor everything about how I’m doing and what med changes I might need. It’s more like putting on a presentation than like being cared for. And every time I have to tell her “whatever we’re doing isn’t working, I still feel awful,” it’s more like I’m disappointing her than like she’s disappointing me.
(I don’t have a bad doctor, by the way. She’s all right, she just has too many patients and not enough tools for treating them. Which I can empathize with.)
And I’m very verbal and relatively good at self-expression. I can’t even imagine how people who aren’t get through this.
Okay, so how I deal with medical stuff is I write down a list of all the things they need to know, and put it in order, and then I hand it to them, and while they read I get a minute or two just to breathe and calm myself before they say very much. It’s really helpful because you don’t have to remember anything on the spot.
I’ll try this! Sounds a lot better than trying to remember and consolidate everything on the spot.