Scared Of Healing

Psych Eval

Ellie has now been here for a month and she is almost stable enough to come home. She has been able to keep her stats above 93% in room air which is very encouraging. We have discussed all the possible complications of Ellie going through with her pregnancy and she is adamant that she will keep the child. I have managed to hold the police off for a while but they are really wanting a statement from Ellie. Crystal and I have been granted custody so we now have consent rights for her. We want to give her the responsibility to make her own decisions because we feel like she has earned the right to her choices.

It is a requirement that Ellie be evaluated by a psychiatrist before she can come home with us and she is not happy about it. She has had psychologists and psychiatrists in the past and has had really good experiences with a lot of them, but she has had some really bad experiences with others. Louis is the best psychiatrist I know, and I have a feeling that he could actually be really good for Ellie if she lets him help. I am bringing him in this afternoon, getting her to just meet him again before he does an official evaluation. I hope their previous time together will make Ellie more willing to cooperate.

We both walk into the room and Ellie sends me a soft glare. "Come on Elle, we just wanna help" I say moving to sit on my stool as Louis moves to sit on the couch in the room. "I know" she mumbles. I carefully move to sit on the edge of her bed, "can you tell Louis and I what was so bad about some of your other psychs?" I ask carefully. She takes a deep inhale, "I mean, some of them were just mean and judgy and with other ones, whenever I would tell them something like I was scared of how much blood I was coughing up - which happens a lot - they would tell me to put it on a cloud and let it float away, but my thoughts are too heavy to just let float away so it just made me feel stupid" she says, looking at her hands. "I'm sorry you felt that way Ellie" Louis says sadly but she just shakes her head, "it's fine, I can get over that, it's just when they make me feel like I'm so broken that there's just no hope" she says quietly. Louis cocks his head, "how did they do that?" he asks carefully, genuinely confused at how a psych could manage that. Ellie looks up and takes another deep breath...

"When I was 11, the DASS indicated that I had anxiety so they made me see a psychologist. I went into her room with my mum and she sat us down and basically confirmed that I had anxiety. I kinda knew I had it and it wasn't a surprise but I really needed her to help me with how to cope with it because it really was getting in the way of me just walking out of the house. What she did, was she showed me her notepad and said, 'this is your anxiety' then she dropped the book on the ground and jumped over it and said, 'that is what you have to do'" Ellie says. I'm shocked and I can tell that Louis is too, "so she basically told you to get over it?" he asks. Ellie nods, "yeah, and the worst part was that I was only 11 so when she did that it was like, well, this professional is telling me to do that but I can't so there must be something seriously wrong and not even professionals can help. So I just shut down and stopped telling people how I felt because I thought it was weird and people would hate me" she says. I immediately pull her into a hug and she just lets it happen, burying her head into the crook of my neck.

Louis is making me leave now, he said one of the boys could come in but since I'm the one going for custody, I can't stay. Ellie doesn't want one of the boys though so I leave her alone with Louis. It's good that she feels comfortable enough with him that she doesn't need one of the boys to be with her.