That’s the conundrum with getting professional help is that it’s a massive pain in the ass. You are like hello I would like treatment. I would like treatment for the disease that makes you procrastinate and ghost psychiatrists and be scared of phone calls
and then they are like okay we are prescribing you three to five phone calls where you must explain your trauma to strangers and sending you multiple choice quizzes you have to do before each call
And the quizzes have questions like “how often do you think about suicide every week?” and it goes from like “never” to “always” but there are no options between “once” and “several times” (no clarity on what “several” means) so if it’s like three times you’re gonna have to pick one. Also of course it’s impossible to honestly answer “never,” because just reading and understanding that question requires you to have a thought about suicide. But you’re aware that kind of literal thinking is not what they’re looking for, but you don’t know what they ARE looking for. (honest answer for me would range between a few options that i personally consider mid-level, at my best times it’s been “I picture myself in hypothetical situations all the time where I ask myself whether I’d consider suicide, but that’s mainly because I’m a fucking fiction writer and that’s how I brainstorm what-if scenarios, I also do the same with other actions that range from ‘smoking crack’ to 'destroying the whole planet earth,’ of course I don’t actually do them, they don’t even all end up getting written in any of my fiction, it’s just how writer brains work.” at my worst times it’s been “i have thoughts every day about how I can’t live like this anymore, but my brain still refuses to consider suicide as a real life option for me, so when I consider the options and get to the point of deciding that suicide is currently the only alternative to living like this, my brain just resets and goes on living like this anyway.”) And none of that fits in any of the multiple choice options. And you’re aware that if their no-context interpretation of your answer flags as “suicide risk” then you’re gonna get cops called on you, shot to death at best, and at worst locked up, lose your job, dumped back on the streets with no income and huge medical debt as soon as they don’t consider you an immediate risk, and then die slowly. And it’s beginning to occur to you that this therapist visit could be considered the most painful form of assisted suicide possible, and you don’t even want to kill yourself and why the hell are you doing this, so you just pick “never” even though it’s the aforementioned one option that’s impossible to ever give honestly, because it’s the only one that probably won’t get you literally killed.
And then the virtual visit actually begins, and the moment the therapist gets any hint that your honest answer might not be “never” there’s an instant panic that you’re being dishonest, and you try to deescalate this by explaining that the quiz was not clear about what it wanted, while the therapist repeatedly refuses to accept there’s any possible way to interpret the questions other than what she bizarrely considers “the obvious” interpretation.
Also, this is happening at an outdoor table at a cafe on an extremely busy public street during your lunch break, because that is the only available time when you can take a phone call with any type of professional, whose work hours of course coincide exactly with yours, and there are absolutely zero private places anywhere near your workplace, so on top of it all you’re now the Bad Person Talking About Personal Stuff On A Cellphone In Public.
.. yeah.