Reaching out for help during traumas is...traumatizing.

There are so many people who go through mental, emotional or spiritual crisis alone.

We praise these people for their strength in enduring suffering. This strength is often times the outward face of unspeakable pain and confusion. 

There are times when an even greater show of strength can be to seek help. This implies a willingness to acknowledge and address our issues head on and share them, often times with a complete stranger who has to judge you in order to offer their assistance.

It can be completely disheartening when at your moment of vulnerable strength reaching for help that you feel even more traumatized.

This is exactly my experience in seeking mental health care that I'm going to share with you. 

I've been homeless for almost two months now. 

My physical condition is the fruit of what has been over two year's worth of mental and spiritual experiences that I am still grappling with to process and understand. 

Things have become so bad that at present I actually prefer to be detached and disconnected as much as possible to protect myself from more of the spiritual conflicts that I perceive from being around others. 

Some days I feel encouraged and optimistic and make plans that will reintegrate me back into the world and on others I spend most of it crying and wondering what the point of any of this life is anyway.

The impact of the perceptions I've come to during my time fighting demons has impacted my family and social life, the ability and desire to hold on to relationships, working a job. Everything. 

It's made life much harder to navigate at the hands of self-protection and preservation. I handle these daily struggles with a nine-year-old daughter in tote who is directly impacted by my newfound paranoias and the stealthy way I've adapted to maneuvering in life. 

Recognizing my need for help with so many things, on so many levels and wanting my daughter to witness a healthier and more stabilized me, I concluded that I needed to trust someone enough to talk through what I'm going through and get help with moving back into some of the aspects of myself that I actually liked & valued.

After traveling across the country, I was fortunate to be given a place to rest and recuperate with a friend of my mothers in Arizona. I instantly applied for and was approved for Banner Family Health Insurance. 

I sought out a general doctor (I was told that bloodwork could sometimes detect things like depression) & a mental health professional. 

The first place I called was the actual hospital system for the insurance I'd received. I looked online and found psychiatrists in their network. I called to schedule an appointment and without much reason as to why, was instead referred to Haven of Phoenix Behavioral Health Therapies- I stated that I wanted to schedule an assessment & was asked by the less than pleasant woman who answered if I was seeking outpatient care. I was. She let me know that this was inpatient care and gave me another referral. 

This next referral was Connections Care of Phoenix. Calling them, I went through three sets of pre-recorded messages to get continuous ringing and no option to leave a message under each of the options that I chose.

By this time I'd gotten completely discouraged in my decision to get help. The process was stressing me out even more. 

How was it that I'd come to this point starting off with the system of providers that administers the insurance? 

We often speak about mental health awareness and getting help and have dedicated the entire month of May and the color green to it, but ultimately,
we have failed as a society when seeking help creates further distress with so many "politics" and disjointed services that they lose those seeking the help in just the processes.  

Thanks for reading. Blessings cover your holiday season!

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