Originally Posted by
KenL 
Perhaps you thought you were being counseled when in fact your doctor was just being congenial by listening to you. Did you ever feel like you were getting anything out of your discussions with her?
No, as a matter of fact, I did not. I often felt like she was just waiting for me to shut up and leave. I suppose that my situation was supposed to be like you described - she was there to monitor and manage medication only - but she should have TOLD ME THAT on my first visit. She let me spend 9 months believing that I was there to be counseled by her, albeit every 6 weeks instead of every week or two, and then she made that comment about how she was only there to write the scripts. It just caught me extremely off guard, and I felt like I had just wasted 9 months.
My kids also saw a psychologist in addition to the doctor I just mentioned. His responsibility was to counsel and help them work out their problems. They went to this guy regularly (every week or two) whereas they only saw the psychiatrist every 6 to 8 weeks.
Before I saw this psychiatrist, I saw a psychologist. She was in fact there to counsel me, but what wound up happening was she tended to spend my 50 minutes griping about what happened in traffic that morning when she dropped her kids off at school, or something that the neighbors did that struck a nerve with her. It was like MY hour was HER vent time. Um, no. AND I had to go see a GP to get my prescriptions, so I was seeing two doctors and getting NO actual TREATMENT. Yes, the Zoloft helped, but I needed SOMEONE TO TALK TO. I needed someone to TEACH me how to cope and deal with anxiety, and I never got it.
Therefore I still need it, but now I'm jaded about the profession and feel like any effort to find a new doctor will just be wasted.