(no subject)

[girlofprey]

Just had a weird-ass doctor's appointment. After a lot of umm-ing and ahh-ing over how exactly to MAKE an appointment at my GPs surgery (on their end, not mine), I finally arranged an appointment for today. And I assumed it would be pretty straightforward, I just want a referral for CBT, they normally love doing that, and I figured it would just be a matter of me telling them and them putting in a request or whatever. But I saw a guy I'd never seen before, and all he did was give me a slip of paper with the number and address of my local mental health services - apparently doctor's don't even refer you anymore, you have to self-refer - and then he started asking me about my OCD. I was thinking about asking about mild forms of anxiety medication, for maybe in the future, but he started asking about medication and then said "oh, I suppose that wouldn't help with OCD though". Then he asked me how my OCD affected me, what kind of rituals I had, and stuff. I said I had rituals from getting out of bed to going to bed, and I don't know, I feel better about my OCD now and maybe I'm quite relaxed talking about it, but he sort of laughed, and said "how do you get obsessive about getting out of bed?". I mentioned that I'm on ESA and trying to get back to work, and he said "well, a lot of us doctors have OCD you know". Like, 'well we can we work with it, so why can't you". It made me really uncomfortable, and I must have looked uncomfortable, but he didn't let up, he just kept staring at me until I answered the questions. He wasn't awful with it, and it wasn't harrowing or anything, but it was...uncomfortable. And weird. He asked me why my OCD stopped me from getting to work on time, and - after a while of thinking how to put it into words - I said "well, I got anxious about it" and he was like "Ohhh!", like that was a huge revelation for him, that anxiety affects and/or causes OCD.

He was quite young, so I'm forced to assume he hasn't done much work on his bedside manner yet. And he doesn't know much about mental illness or OCD, so wanted some answers about it from a good source. I mean, he was nice enough, but it was weird. He said at the end "sorry for asking so many questions", but like, he wasn't sorry enough to stop when was asking them. Mostly it's made me glad I don't have to see a doctor to get a sick note anymore. Even if that means I'm not necessarily being monitored by a doctor regularly and I can't get testimony from them about how my illness affects me, I'd hate to have to go through that every 8 weeks, to get the money I need to live on. Jesus.