(vent) Unimelb psychologists are kinda ass?

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TLDR psychologist fully tanked my mental 2 days before my exam

I began seeking therapy halfway into the summer sem for my social anxiety and potential autism - Nothing affecting studies nor my mental wellbeing outside of social situations, just sucked that I had no social life whatsoever. After 2 CAPS sessions (which were great, I had a very positive experience with them) and a GP recommendation, just this week I had my first session with one of Unimelb's long-term psychologists.

The psychologist jumped to way too many conclusions, talked over me the entire time, gave me no room to correct them or add my own input, and now I'm getting tested for PTSD next session because hell if I fucking know. I say that my parents fight once in a while and they reword that into "You live in a brutal, unsafe household where you feel caged", I bring up my slightly-less-than-ideal lifestyle and I get patronized to hell like I'm some fuckass 'broken soul' or something, I bring up my HS counsellor and his methods who the psychologist proceeds to slander, out of actually nowhere I'm asked if I was sexually violated as a child ?????? Their line of questioning reeked like they thought they had me all figured out, making crazy assumptions just to force me to fit into some cookie-cutter abused-student mold I guess?? (The gall of a psychologist to presume that those with mental health issues can fit in a 'mold' too, ugh.)

My CAPS psychologist was so much more patient with me. Heard out my entire story, never made assumptions and gave me room to tell my story, made it a point that I should interrupt them if they do assume anything. They were someone who I felt genuinely understood the nuances of my situation, even in the 2 short sessions we had. By the end of the second session I felt so confident about myself, even if it was short-lived.

My summer sem exam is tomorrow. I've been following lectures and tutes diligently till now, just the week before I was revising like I knew what I was doing. I spent yesterday completely drowned in brainfog. What the hell is a partial derivative. How do you draw a market demand graph. I spent a solid 2 hours on one four-mark question. I thought I was for some reason sleep-deprived (got 8 hours btw), so I decided to continue studying the next day (got 8 hours btw), but barely anything has changed!! My body feels heavier than usual, my brain feels so heavy that my neck is cramping in response, and my active recall is, uh, completely inactive!! Where I felt confident in scoring H1 just 4 days ago, now I'm genuinely fearing I won't clear the hurdle.

I don't know if it's because of the blatant assumptions made about me, or if it's a helplessness in letting the psychologist run away with those assumptions, or if it was the disrespect towarda those suffering PTSD that someone like me is being considered for a PTSD diagnosis, as if I'm suffering nearly as much as its victims do, or if it's the feeling of being patronized, I don't know and I shouldn't be expending energy to figure that out. All I know is that my mental took a nosedive after the conselling session, and I'm way dumber than I was 100 hours ago, and I'm way more irritable than I ever have been, and I'm about to fail my summer semester because I dared to seek out a psychologist for something completely unrelated to studies. Uuugh. I should've been the one getting paid for a service like this.

And I was getting counselling for such a menial thing too. Imagine those suffering from suicidal tendencies. Rape victims. Fuck're they supposed to do?

Posted Feb 17, 2026, 3:27 AM UTC

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