CAMHS!! Angry as hell

[lisad123]

Dd1 is 9 and has HFA. She has always been a worried child but over the last year she has got a lot worse :(
She refuses to leave the house, binge eats, doesn't sleep and hurts herself. It's taken nearly a year to see CAMHS after being bounced from different services. We finally saw psychotherapist and thought we might be getting somewhere. BUT she feels what we need is strategies to help us manage her anxious behaviours!! What the hell does she think I do every bloody waking moment of my day! I explained I wanted art therapy or CBT as I feel she needs to find a way of managing her anxiousness as she is very negative and assumes the worst :( I know how to deal with her and help her cope but I'm not there every waking moment.
I feel like I have spent a year fighting only to fall at the last moment :(

I felt like it was more about me today than dd, and she wanted to spend time working on me than talking to dd. she brought up dh illness and how hard that is, as if that's all to blame too.

Blee.
Sounds like they are working up to explaining to you how its all your fault (dh illness, your poor strategies for coping with her anxiety etc).

So sorry to hear of this v v v poor response to your Dd's anxiety.

on your behalf Lisa. Why do they always try to put the emphasis on something other than what you want to hear! I complained to SEN caseworker this week about ds being kept on half-time school hours for 6 months and how dh with a brain tumour amongst other things cannot be expected to continue to cope with this. She said that it all must be very difficult and did we have support. Get the fing support for ds sorted then we might be less stressed you stupid **. Sorry, rant over.

You don't Need to learn how to manage her, you need HER to learn coping strategies which you will fully support!

Haha she doesn't know what my job is yet!!
She seemed to want me to cry, asked why I wasn't concerned about dd2 behaviours and because I can make her leave the house it can't be that bad

I am very very for you.

Words fail me.

All cahms ever did for DS was put the blockers on any referrals that might have led to help for DS and patronise me by making all sorts of erroneous assumptions about my family while telling me my parenting was at fault.

I'm not gonna say everything that went on, but incompetent and corrupt doesn't begin to cover it.

In summary the 3 years that my son was on Cahms caseload did him no good at all, & came close to wrecking my family. It's been totally worth the official black mark against my name to refuse to have anything to do with them ever again.

On the other hand, my sister recieved help from a different PCT as a child that almost certainly saved her life. Cahms is the biggest post code lottery there is, I've concluded.

Have a look at what's out there locally in the Charitable sector if you really feel your local cahms can't get out of the "blame the Mum" groove. Twas what I resorted to in the end.

It's ok to tell a psychotherapist you're feeling their approach is unhelpful. They're trained to like honesty about emotional reactions .

You could ask if the therapist was aware that it had been a such a long struggle to be taken seriously. Then ask if she knew you felt that the therapist wanted you to parent 'better'. Was this just based on your nasty unsupportive encounters elsewhere, or was it actually her thoughts.

And then you need to tell her clearly that 1. dd's lack of anxiety-processing skills is one of the main roots of the wider family stress. 2. you need to concentrate on interventions that have a good chance of working, because yes, the recent cancer etc mean you can't waste time chasing rainbows. 3. You would love if the anxiety could really be controlled with mummy-strategies, they do help a lot but it's not healthy to be welded to dd 24/7.

Brilliant advice Maria

Having been a psychotherapist and trained / worked amongst many others I can confirm that they ARE trained to 'like honesty about emotional reactions'. They just 'can't handle it' and are usually defensive then aggressive when you are 'honest' in a way they dont' like, sadly.

I trained on a Uni Post Grad course and they activity discouraged the therapists to do any 'personal work' to understand their limitations and barriers to emotional honesty in their clients.