Question

[kuponutmalt.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly new here, but not to the multiple community. I was on DP for a while before the flaming got a bit too hot for my tastes. Er, I suppose I'll give a small introduction:

I'm nineteen--almost twenty--and female. Currently I'm the main front for my system of five, and I've been the only front for a couple years now (minus a couple of switches here and there). Now that I'm out of my parents' house for the majority of the year while I attend school, I've decided to seek a professional mental-health opinion and I'm considering the possibility of pursuing treatment for various social and anxiety related problems. The thing is, I'm going to school in Canada, so I've been entered into the endless bureaucracy of the socialist health care system, and given a lot of time to think while I'm waiting for my referral (from a counselor to a GP) to a psychiatrist.

At any rate, I'm not quite sure how to "break-in" my psychiatrist, if and when I actually get an appointment. There are a lot of things I could talk about: multiplicity, eating disorders, general social anxiety... But what exactly do you say to a mental health professional to help bring him or her up to speed with what you've known for years? While the counselor and GP I saw asked very specific and easy-to-answer questions, I had a brief appointment with a psychiatrist last winter who basically asked, "What can I do for you? What do you want to get better?" I mean, how am I supposed to answer something like that, when I'm not even sure why I'm seeking help in the first place?

I was just hoping, since many of you have therapists, that you may have some advice for someone starting into the intricate web of the mental health care system.