Man, last time I saw my social worker, she told me I was going to get my hours with her reduced. She either forgot or is unaware of previous similar events in my life, where the thing that's supposed to help me is being taken away from me due to things out of my control (unable to properly receive the help 99% of the cases, which I guess is actually in my control and is a skill issue, but I digress).
Oh, dear God, trying to get help can be a complete and total clusterfuck. I live in a rural part of the United States, so it can be difficult for some of my friends who just have common, relatively well-understood ("relatively" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, I know) mental illnesses like OCD or MDD to find a genuinely competent professional. With anything rarer or more severe, the already very shallow pool of options starts drying up real fast, and having Axis II comorbidities makes negotiating with insurance a complete mess once you do find someone who's both willing and able to provide treatment.
Being a guy with a condition almost exclusively associated with young women doesn't exactly help things, either, but that's actually a pretty weird can of worms. I didn't have much trouble finding help specifically because of my gender, although I am aware that some people do. It was more that basically every professional I've ever worked with (including coworkers, because I used to work in mental healthcare) has been trained with the default assumption that BPD patients, especially those who tend to internalize anger rather than lashing out, are going to be women. I honestly don't know that I've ever worked with anyone who totally understood what I was dealing with, which really fucking sucks.
I started crying, because I always start crying when I have difficulty properly conveying an emotion or what's going through my head to someone else, and she says she would like to give me a hug. Bitch, no, I don't need or want a hug. I HATE physical affection. "But you have to understand that it is an empathetic soothing mechanism in humans, and if my child was upset I would hug her," yeah, and I'm a) an adult, b) not your child and c) I do understand that, but it's not my need to get a hug.
If I had a nickel for every time I've heard about someone who's supposed to be a mental health professional inexplicably trying to hug someone with a severe mental illness caused by trauma, I'd have two nickels at this point. I mean, that's not a lot, but it's still really fucking weird that it's happened twice.
When it comes to physical affection, my policy is pretty simple. If you're close enough to me for me to be okay with a hug, then you're close enough to me to know already when it is and isn't okay. If you have to ask, the answer is no.
