As you know I don't look forward to Friday's very much. Friday is psychotherapy day and psychotherapy is hard. I can only speak about the type of psychotherapy that I receive, psychodynamic psychotherapy, and I can assure you that it can be very traumatic at times when looking into your long gone past.
However, I am aware that I am very lucky to be able to receive this sort of psychotherapy, and not on a short-term basis, because it is not that common on the NHS. Even though there have been times when I have needed a whole box of tissues to cope with the tears that have been shed in some of the sessions, I have learnt an incredible amount about myself and why I am the way that I am. I think the the worst of the digging into my past has been done, therefore psychotherapy sessions are a lot less emotional now, although there are still things that are discussed that are likely to lead to tears.
Yesterday's session required just one tissue; the tears were few, but I believe that a lot was achieved. I always have great difficulty in talking at the start of a session. I could probably count on one finger the number of times that I have actually been the first to talk at a session, but I usually manage quite well once I get started. Yesterday was no different to normal and my psychotherapist eventually got things going by commenting that I looked quite sad when he came to collect me from the reception area and wondered why this might be.
I wasn't aware that I looked sad, and I didn't feel particularly sad, for on Thursday I had an email that may well change my life. Well, it may give me the opportunity of doing something that will enable me to change my life. As a result of writing this blog, I have been approached to give a lecture and take part in a seminar entitled "The User's Experience of Therapy" as part of a postgraduate degree in Mental Health and Wellbeing at one of the London universities.
This blog really has changed my life. I have found a means of expressing my thoughts which avoids me having to have a conversation with myself; I have through a casual mention of the blog to my GP become involved in promoting patients' access to their medical records; and now the blog has been responsible for this new opportunity.
I am very nervous about doing this, and I have plenty of time to work myself into a real state of anxiety before it happens at the end of February, but I am also rather looking forward to it, because I believe it is very important that people understand what it is like to receive therapy and how it can do much to help, but how it can also, in the hands of an unsympathetic therapist, cause much damage.
Plenty of food for thought over the next couple of weeks.
2 comments:
Ooooh! Yay! Well done! You must be really proud of the fact that you are doing so many things which end up helping others. It's great that although you have your own problems you still take time to do things to improve other's lives.
I think it is the reason why I started blog years ago, a place to offload what was going around and around in my head... I only wish I hadn’t deleted blogs from 2007 backwards because I would like to look back over them again!
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