Hi Aonaran,

Sometimes the accessing of mental health services is like getting a loan from the bank.  To get the loan you have to prove you don't need it.

Or like milking a cow, there's a skill to it.  Part of it is skill, and part of it is the cow deciding to cooperate.

Then you have to milk a cow who doesn't know you.  Or a goat.  Or a camel.

In another thread about why GPs treat people with MI like naughty children, I've suggested the strategy of putting on a 'sane face' so that the doc might treat one like an adult.

Its not fair.  Its lying to get what you want.  But.

The book 'I'm OK, You're OK' was preceded by 'Games People Play' by Eric Berne.  The books use 'Transactional Analysis'.  'Games...' was quite popular in the 60s as a kind of pop psychology book.  'I'm OK...' addressed the question of what to do once you find yourself in a game.  And how to at least stop yourself playing or being played.

I get really tired with the Games.  Catching myself playing, being played.  Setting out to try to get around a game that someone has set up where I have to try to stop the both of us playing.

How much can a koala bear? (Austen Tayshus).  Then its time for pearls.  I take the grit that's gotten into my shell and cover it with nacre, over and over until its big and smooth enough to spit out.  I have to spit them out or it'd get too crowded in here.