Getting shrunk

As seen in this weblog: A woman describes how unhelpful a male psychiatrist was in helping her sort out her problems with her heavily abusive husband.

A few years ago I had gone to see a psychiatrist. I had been getting into arguments more than usual and was paying for it by using tattoo make-up almost daily to cover bruises on my neck and face. the full hand print around the neck was especially difficult and painful to cover daily. some days I just would not be able to outside at all. So I had run the problems over and over in my mind and figured the only way to deal with this situation was to numb myself and just go about my days as a zombie and just hope that god would be kind enough to have my husband die first while I still had some years of active living left in me.

If this arguing went on much more it was a pretty good bet I would make it to the pearly gates fairly soon and would have not the smallest of chances at ever having the experience of “living”. Living was something I tasted briefly during his years on drilling rigs and building refineries in North Africa. Ouch, it hurt to smile. He hit me pretty hard last night.

The shrink was an expensively suited fop with expensive tastes in office furniture. He sat a good six feet away, the distance held by a heavy mahogany desk. His bald head at the other side of the great desk gave him the appearance of a turtle. He listened to me explain that I was tired all the time and edgy. My husband joined in saying I was easily angry and tense and we were no longer having sex as we used to. He left out that he used me for a punching bag. I had hoped in the reaches of my mind that this would actually have been a really sharp doctor who could pick up that I was being used as a punching bag and in need of saving from my daily horrors. How he would be able to save me I did not know, but I had hear of safe houses but no idea how to get into one.

Of course he was not very sharp picking up on my cues and instead sided with hubby that I was being unreasonably tense and wrote me out a large prescription of pills which would make me docile as a lamb, and my husband could have sex with me again. He did not ask if I would like that. I had hoped he would give me a little private time so I could drop some hints to my situation, but that never happened. so many times there were chances for people to come to my aid but never being without my jailer all I could do was drop careful hints and hope their training would have them clue in to the horror I was going home to. No one saved me, no one even tried.