A few things and personal experience for those who love schooling people about therapy.

1. Clearly, it's very, very elitist. A single session costs a FUCKING LOT.

2. People who are financially dependent on guardians who don't understand mental health always suffer. 1/n

3. Good quality of therapy isn't accessible everywhere. Compromising does more harm than good.

4. Mental illnesses are many. Most therapists can't handle many of these. Most will dismiss or say no to treating those with a personality disorder. 2/n

5. While one is totally capable of developing a mental health condition with no exterior influence, the effect of societal structures and one's place in it can't be neglected. Most therapists don't know shit about patriarchy, queerness, caste, etc. 3/n

6. It's scary. The worse your condition, the scarier it is. Therapists and psychiatrists can be horrible. They misdiagnose, put you on meds that aren't meant for you, dismiss your experiences. It gets difficult to seek help again after one bad experience. 4/n

My personal experience: After suffering for a long time, I had to fight my dad to finally seek help. I went to a psychiatrist. I used to have trauma-related nightmares, anxiety attacks, episodes of paranoia, and OCD symptoms. Clearly, it was PTSD (more like C-PTSD) and OCD. 5/n

Despite all the symptoms being there, I was diagnosed with depression and OCD. Put on meds that weren't meant for me. I was asked to go for therapy as well. It was difficult for someone with financial issues such as I. But I did, somehow. 6/n

And there, too, I was misdiagnosed with chronic depression, anxiety disorder, and OCD. Went on with therapy for months and wasted all that money. On some days I used to cry because we literally couldn't afford it. And it was one of the cheap ones in my city. 7/n

By the end of the therapy, the psychiatrist had put me on 4 meds despite saying that I might have BPD (meds don't really work with this) and the therapist had been constantly dismissing my doubts and refused to change his diagnosis. I had turned into a zombie. 8/n

I was self-harming. I would have panic attacks 10 times a day (literally) for no reason at all. I finally went to see another psychiatrist who told me that I had OCD and BPD (C-PTSD, but since it wasn't an official diagnosis and its symptoms overlapped with BPD, so that). 9/n

I finally stopped my meds in a few days and continued only with a mood stabilizer. At least the side-effects stopped. Therapy for BPD isn't available at most places in India. There's no therapy available specifically for C-PTSD. 10/n

What do you think I went through when I realized how I had wasted all that money for nothing? What do you think I feel when I know that I'm trans and finding the right therapist would be more difficult now? Any idea how scary the thought of being dismissed again is? 11/n

You could afford therapy and found a good therapist who worked with you and it really helped you get better? Great. Stop policing us. It only alienates us and makes things worse for us. It takes nothing to be considerate and stop being an as$hole.

End Rant.