Insanity Descent

"It's Protocol"

Bro, fuck your protocol. It's only hurting kids you claim you're trying to protect.

Here's a great example of protocol I absolutely despise:

When a kid is feeling like they may hurt themselves or commit suicide, their parents are called and notified {assuming they told a mandated reporter, such as a teacher, therapist, etc}. I've never heard of a single case where this saved a child's life or even helped the child in any way.

The parents just get pissed at the child for saying they're feeling depressed to the point of self harm/suicide and they punish them, which in turn makes the child feel even more isolated and makes their suffering even worse because their pain is being invalidated and they're also being told they're not allowed to feel this way.

The children that the protocol is "protecting" really just hurts them in the long run. I outright refuse to tell mandated reporters when I feel like I might hurt or kill myself now because I know they're just gonna tell my dad and I'll get in trouble, and I'd rather run the risk of killing myself than getting in trouble with my dad and live in even greater pain.

Ironically, ever since I stopped telling mandated reporters whenever I feel this way, my dad never catches wind of it so he doesn't get mad at me, and it usually resolves itself MUCH faster than it used to. In the past it would usually take 4+ months before I'd stop feeling suicidal, but now it maybe takes a few weeks {a month and a half is the longest it's lasted after I stopped talking}. That right there pretty much shows that my dad is at least contributing to a LARGE portion of my suffering.

Granted, I also have several skills I've learned over the years to help me deal with those kinds of situations that I did not have when I first started feeling suicidal, which has also helped gradually reduce the length of time I might feel suicidal {it used to actually last almost a year}.

Okay, so there's that protocol I absolutely hate, but there's more. It's a specific isolated case and not one I've seen in myself over the years as well as others, though.

Yesterday I was telling one of the counselors at my school that even though the previous week my dad had claimed he'd let me see either a therapist, priest, or psychic to try to help me get rid of my extreme hallucinations {she was there last week when this original conversation took place}, he now refused to let me see anybody. I had wanted to see a therapist but my dad argued with me for hours until I decided it'd be easier to just go with a priest instead, but then after he even argued with me about that I said I'd see a psychic but he refused that too.

I also brought up that I thought the fact I'm sleeping 12+ hours a day and I'm still tired might be in part because of all the shit that's currently going on. It's just outright unnatural and points to at least some kind of problem somewhere no matter what angle you look at it from.

What did the school counselor say about all of this?

If my dad kept doing this she'd call CPS.

Okay, that sounds like a pretty obvious knee jerk reaction from a school counselor. I was hoping it wasn't a protocol and was just her personal opinion, so I tried to talk her out of it but it turns out if my dad keeps doing what he's doing and she hears about it, she's legally bound to call CPS. In fact, she wanted to call them yesterday but I managed to buy myself maybe a weekend of time. I'm gonna be in SO much fucking trouble...

CPS has been called on my dad so many times over the years that I lost track of how many times he's had them called on him. Every single time they get called they notify him that they've been called on him, so he'll just cover his tracks and act like the best dad ever. Then the second they're out the door he starts screaming at me and grounds me for literal months- last time it was like 4 months until he let me get on the internet again, and it took probably another year until he let me use it for more than a few hours a day. Sorry, but if the consequences are gonna last up to a year, I'm not letting somebody call CPS again. They don't do anything except tell my dad to stop doing whatever he's doing and then they close the investigation like that's gonna magically make him stop.

The school counselor point blank asked me if she called CPS if I'd be honest with them, so I point blank told her I wouldn't because I see it as self preservation to not tell them anything. It's basically putting myself in danger to speak up to authorities, and especially because I'm not getting physically beat or anything, the authorities don't really do anything about it except tell my dad to knock it off. Why would I knowingly put myself in danger with consequences that are gonna last up to a year when I know I'm not gonna benefit from it whatsoever? All it does it put a paper trail of reports {that go nowhere!} against my dad and piss him off.

If my school counselor keeps saying she's gonna call CPS, I will literally have to stop speaking to her altogether about my dad because I literally can't let her make that call. Plus, even if CPS actually does something, am I really gonna gain anything from it? No, unless they magically make my dad stop being an asshole, which isn't possible.

The only thing I think they could really do is relocate me to another house and place me under the care of some unknown guardian, and that outcome is worse to me than staying with my dad. I dunno, MAYBE they could court order my dad to let me see SOMEBODY about my problems, but even if they did that he'd still ground me and get super fucking pissed {as well as find every way possible to find loopholes in the court order}. All that trouble to see somebody about my problems isn't worth it.

And THIS is why I hate protocols from mandated reporters. It ties both our hands and I can't be honest about any of my problems or else somebody's gonna get called and I just end up suffering for having problems, which in turn just makes the problems worse. Plus, now that I can't share the full details of my problems, I can't expect whatever response I get to encompass the full problem, which makes it less effective. At this point I sometimes wonder why I still even reach out for help because all these stupid protocols keep getting in my way so much to the point I can't even get complete care for the problems I seek help for.