The Psych Appointment

A psych appointment is a job interview, mixed with a first date, sprinkled with a performance review. I already need the Xanax I'm here to ask for.

Somehow you need to convince a total stranger that something is wrong. Not too wrong. Specifically wrong. Not vaguely wrong. But not so convincing that you end up on a grippy sock vacation, courtesy of the local psych hospital. This is a tightrope. Too little and you get dismissed. Too much and you get escorted.

You also feel a deep, unspoken responsibility to make them like you, or at least like working with you, because you don't want them getting any ideas. You didn't come in for a full creative reinterpretation of your medication regimen. Your system works, mostly. Unless they have a genuinely good idea, in which case, fine, surprise me, I contain multitudes. But you want to be the supervisor here. Like telling the hairdresser you want a trim, and watching her hover the scissors like she's got a vision. I said trim. I want the dead ends gone, not a whole new personality.

The hardest part is not knowing too much. You need them to know you communicate effectively, without letting them think you worship at the altar of Dr. TikTok. Hey, sometimes TikTok is helpful. There should be a word for the perfect patient, equal parts amateur and professional. A "pro-mateur." An "ame-pro." Somewhere between "I did the reading" and "I diagnosed myself in a group chat."

So you thread it. You smile. You quietly track where you landed and where you should have dialed back the tears, the way you'd check a period tracking app before a date, not to see if you're fertile, just to see if you're allowed to cry today. You ask yourself afterward, "Was I too much?" But you didn't get the socks, so you just might have gotten the job.

Here's the thing though, and I'm saying this as someone who has sat on both sides of that desk. If it isn't going well, it's not you. You are not too much. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise, and don't accept a bad psychiatrist just because you passed the interview. You wouldn't keep going back to a hairdresser who didn't listen the first time either. Your mental health deserves the same standard as your bangs. Non-negotiable, and worth walking out on if they reach for the scissors without asking.