Advice from a mental health specialist re women's roles

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I visit a mental health specialist to help me keep things in check, usually addressing the every day things in life getting me down and finding new ways of perceiving them/planning for things.
Last time I saw her I explained my frustration at the role of women in the home. I'd been ill and found that when I slowed down, so did my DH, rather than taking on the things I couldn't do.
I've recently been to see her again and we discussed solutions, in an email, she confirmed the stance I ought to take. Acceptance.
she said that many women are the driving force of the home and when we slow down, it's natural that everyone else does. Therefore I need to accept this to be at peace with it.
I very much struggle to accept this. Why are women expected to be the driving force of the home when men are capable of filling their shoes when women are too ill to function? I don't get it.
Am I being unreasonable to refuse to accept this when I next meet with her?

She sounds like a shit therapist to be honest.

fatty Your response is reassuring but unfortunately it's not that simple. You will be aware that due to extreme funding issues care is delegated to family/friends beyond a reasonable level - it's extremely easy for an abusive partner to play into that.

Additionally, there's problems around PD diagnosis in particular; if the service user is viewed as exaggerating/overreacting (in my own case this kind of judgement was used to diagnose; despite the official scales indicating no PD). There's a lot of crossover here with young women being viewed as temptresses rather than vulnerable, and stuff like that.

As a service user, one doesn't necessarily feel able to complain when one is used to being misunderstood and shut down (especially if previous attempts to complain were dismissed or used against you). Being a service user is a terrifyingly powerless place to be.

In the case I mention, I was advised by two male psych nurses (crisis team) to get back together with abusive partner I'd just left. The whole thing was treated as a relationship tiff (as if I was an immature teen) rather than a person who needed help and thus had got into an abusive relationship by mistake.

BabsCabs I'm really sorry you had that experience. I agree there is a stigma around a diagnosis of PD, in particular EUPD, which is a diagnosis that is almost exclusively given to women who have had traumatic experiences, and is often misdiagnosed post traumatic stress disorder.

It costs the NHS absolutely nothing to make a referral to the family justice centre, MARAC, women and girls network or whatever other local domestic violence services are in your area so if funding is being used as an excuse they are bullshitting.

If you feel scared of making a complaint get PALS or a MIND advocate on board.

I'm not minimising how scary it is to have these experiences from a service you rely on for support. But it is very, very wrong and should not have happened to you.

Fatty Apologies, I perhaps wasn't clear. Re. funding, I meant if the service user needs support or someone keeping an eye on them for mental health reasons, it's generally delegated to friends and family. An abusers dream tbh, as they have "proof" the person is "mental" so can't trust their own mind....

(It's 5 years ago now, too late to complain in my case, and without the strength to tbh. PALS are onside with the professionals anyway. They'd probably think I was making up the abuse. It's ok, I'm safe now.)

Qumquat : fantastic article! It was like being given the key to a door when reading this.... permission to feel how I feel after going through therapy with several therapists and been urged to model acceptance long before being told to directly.
so true about women needing to come together more as a community to support each other rather than individualising our issues. I feel a lot better after reading this. Thankyou.

Qumquat, I agree: that link is fantastic.

I hear ya, OP. 38 weeks pregnant, had a couple of intense weeks with all the school/PTA Xmas stuff plus handing over my workload to a temp (lots of late nights of overtime)... And then I got struck down with a cold that I'd normally struggle on through but had me on the sofa in tears at one point. DH was watching the football and I could barely breathe through snot yet was standing in the kitchen making sandwiches for everyone's lunch.

On top of this, I'd recently had a chat with DH about the mental load, had shown him the comic strip (will find link), waited for the defensiveness that would follow - actually he took it on board and recognised the truth in it.

I asked him if taking the dry laundry off the line and folding it into the 4 neat little baskets I have for each person could become his job. Yes, I am particular about how it gets hung on the clothes horses, but not about how it is folded or how it makes its way to each persons bedroom. I mentioned this would mean he'd have to notice when it's dry, and do it promptly, as otherwise I wouldn't be able to get the next load on (washing machine goes on at the very least every other day).

It didn't happen. 3 weeks went by and then I finally snapped about something else and bought this up. He said he's been busy, he's doing his best, he comes home from work and gets straight stuck in with the kids. All true. But no different to what I'd been doing and I pointed that out. Laundry always needs to be done, there is never the perfect time to do it, it can't wait until the weekend, it has to fit in with whatever other thing I do when I get home from work etc etc.

We both ended up in tears and angry at one another.

He has since folded away a couple of loads without prompting. But as a pp said, it feels so tenuous because deep down you know it will all fall back down to you if he 'drops the ball'.

What a fucking game.

And the standard disclaimer is of course that I love my husband very much, he is a great Dad and does every single 6am morning with the kids, he wouldn't dream of waking me, he also does most bed times. For a while I let this balance he mental load but working FT whilst pregnant and juggling everything else made me rethink that trade-off a little. I do on the whole think I've got it better than a lot of women... But that doesn't mean I should settle!