THERE IS NO PROFESSIONAL HELP.

we live our lives in the sunlight of
assumptions about the future and those assumptions may be bright or they may be dim but passing overhead always are the shadows of those assumptions we had about our past that we still have to question where we wonder if those assumptions in our past might have been false if everything today might have been different if we take in some other road option or strategy that's why I think it's so important to question and assail this assumption about professional health it's not just that people will kind of insult you and harass you with this assertion like oh you can get professional help get professional help whatever the problem is you can get professional help in examining your own personal history your past what you did right and what you did wrong in your own experience there's this horrible haunting effect of looking back and imagining or assuming that you could have gotten professional help and professional help I mean obviously most people assume you mean psychiatry or psychotherapy I would say it even extends to things like applying for welfare you know applying for some kind of government assistance you can live your life thinking oh everything would have been different if when I finished college I'd filled out that form and gotten that assistance and then ten years later you find out you know that's not the way it works if you'd filled out the form you would have been refused there was no option you know the first time I went to university I never asked for any help from any of the job counselors career counselors or the the office that gives you special opportunities the office that gives you scholarships and this kind of thing bursaries and then the second time I went to university I was okay I'm not making that mistake again this time I'm gonna go I'm gonna knock on every door I'm gonna ask for professional help from whoever can possibly give me professional help up this campus and you know what I found out behind those doors there was no professional help in one case in two cases they literally didn't even offer the help that was written on the doll [Laughter] Hannya on Sunday I called the outpatient clinic which is part of that hospital but I called them and I was just like hi um so I talked to the emergency room like on Thursday and they said to call you and I feel like I need help please like what can I do and then I talked to the manager of that ward like the outpatient ward oh I don't remember anything more discouraging than that honestly she was like first of all we can't help you because you need to be sober and you need to be sober for three months and as we can see you have an addiction so um that's a no from us but then I was just like really like I was getting really pissed off I was just like I mean you're taking something away from me but you're not giving anything back and like there's like no way that I can cope this like cope with this on my own and like why are you doing this why aren't you helping me why this why that like do I really need to come there and just [ __ ] try and kill myself in front of you or like what like I always feel like I fall in between the chairs um cuz like I'm not suicidal enough to be hospitalized but I'm I'm too crazy to just be in an outpatient clinic yeah my core belief is that I do not believe I can get help because I am [ __ ] up to the point that there is no help so yeah I was really vocal about it on my Instagram and everyone said go get help go get help Enya you deserve it and blah blah blah I was just like you know what [ __ ] this I [ __ ] deserve help you know I mean yeah see they make you leave me I went to a mental hospital to the emergency room which I knew they cannot do anything to help me like nothing whatsoever and I knew that I still went I went with my friend Adam you stayed with me for four and a half hours just waiting for someone to me it was so frustrating because I just hate the way the psychiatric system like the public system just looks at people I talked to the psychiatrist she was actually really nice and she said at the beginning of the thing she said there's nothing we can do to help you there's nothing we can do we can like the max we can do is give you a pill or like whatever like a xanax or something they also said like we cannot hospitalized you because you're not suicidal enough because you don't have like a concrete idea of how you're gonna do it and all that stuff so we can hospitalize you not that I wanted to be hospitalized I just wanted to maybe get like some more intensive help not just like one session just you know maybe like an outpatient treatment or something like that so um yeah they said they cannot do that they can only give me a pill and I said no thank you and they talked to me for a bit and they said you seem I mean it's so funny it's like every time I go to these places and I talk to professionals it's like everyone looks at me and they're like shocked that I have a degree and that I'm like I act normal and I talk normal and I'm smart and you know I make great eye contact and I'm great with like social skills and all that stuff and they're just like they are confused too as to why am i there I think there's a really important message buried in this much longer video of any uh rambling about her personal life nothing wrong with that it's good come on YouTube ramble about your personal life but it's a long long video and I've picked out just three minutes here it still feels like a long time that was just three minutes of Enya letting you know that when she finally broke down and sought professional help asked for professional help her experience was guess what there is no professional level I think a lot of us grow up with the delusion that if we just dial the numbers 900 on our telephone if you just phone the police that there's some kind of infinite source of expertise that's going to come to your doorstep and the reality is if you call 9-1-1 if you call the police all they can do is send a man with a gun if you submit yourself to the authority of a psychiatrist or a psychotherapist again especially for me now at age 40 I may be asking for help from someone who knows less than I do under many different headings that are salient to the situation of course they're going to know less about my life oh they're gonna expect me to sit down explain all the stuff to them they may not know how to help me and of course the the most negative effect this this assumption the assumption that all you need to do is call the authorities and they'll send help is that the other people in your life who could help the other people who know you who know what your problems are know which situations those people who could make that effort help they won't help because they'll take a step back and say oh let's it let's let the professionals help you should start with the assumption which is more often than not true that there is no professional help and then beyond that the type of help we're talking about here it's more like a home-cooked meal there's no reason to assume that if you telephone a pizza company that they can bake bread back you can the type of help that the people who know you can provide may be much better than whatever help you can get from those authorities if there's someone in your life who ends up committing suicide don't be the person who says oh if only they had gotten professional help don't recriminate thing oh if only I had phoned the authorities and got in the professional oh no the regret you're gonna have for the rest of your life if your friend commits suicide is that you didn't roll up your sleeves and try to help them yourself there is no professional help we have to help one another we have to care for one another we have to love one another the invention of the bureaucracy of government and the professionalization of psychotherapy does not take that burden off of you and you and you and me - okay it doesn't take the burden off of us and I think that's the most insidious element of this cultural assumption that somewhere just out of sight the police and the ambulance company have a crew of psychotherapists who can solve everyone's problems all right we amongst ourselves have to pool whatever talents we've got whatever compassion we've got whatever sympathy we've got whatever powers of analysis we've got we have to try to understand our own problems we have to try to help one another you can buy factory-made socks or you can knit your own socks you can order in pizza delivered to your door by a corporation or you can roll your own dough bake your own bread make your own pizza they're not the same thing but that inequality the difference between the mass-produced sock and the hand knitted sock with this kind of help that we're talking about that inequality is much more extreme all right maybe you imagine that in a perfect world there's somebody called the psychiatrist or a psychotherapist or a career counsellor or a social worker who can help you in ways that your parents can't your friends can't your casual acquaintances on the internet can't all right but this is a very imperfect world and what you're gonna find when you I mean go out try go out do what I did at my university knock on every door ask for help do it with an open mind and a clear analytical mindset but when you do what you're gonna find is as you open those doors one after another there is no professional help the onus is on us to help one another and to help ourselves