How Therapy Went

Friday 20th March 2009 12.53pm

Hi Mr Smiley,

I'm afraid your message didn't quite manage to get to me before I left this morning. I had to leave a little earlier than normal so that I could pop into the shop to put some more credit on my Oyster card. I wasn't quite sure how much there was left on it so I wanted to make sure it was topped up.

Although I didn't get very much sleep last night I wasn't too anxious about today's session. Somewhat surprisingly we didn't talk too much about the termination of therapy today; I actually thought that would be what we talked about. It started of with the usual silence, and then 'D' spoke to me about a question that I threw at him last week as we were leaving the room. I don't know if I told you about it, but the question was "Why does a doctor decide to be a psychiatrist?" It's something that has occurred to me over the last few months having read numerous blogs by people who have mental health problems, by doctors (including a few psychiatrists), and medical students. Very few medical students seem to enjoy their psych placement (in fact they nearly all say that they hate it and wouldn't want to specialize in that area). Many of the mental health bloggers are very disparaging about the psychiatrists that they see, although I have to be honest and say that the ones that I have seen have been very nice and helpful too. I suppose that the problem is that dealing with mental illness is a lot more difficult than physical illnesses because it is much more difficult to find out what is causing the problem and treating it can seem like a lot of witchcraft.

We talked about this for a while, although 'D' never did answer the question. Am I surprised? Not really, I suppose that I knew that I wasn't likely to get a straight answer, but I will ask him again when we have our last session.

The rest of the session was about how I feel. The anger, the hurt, the loneliness; all those sorts of things. We talked about whether I tried to do all the things that I do instead of trying to deal with how I feel. I also talked about not having had the chance to say goodbye to the people that meant most to me, how I was at a remove from all of them at their last moments, and how I wasn't able to tell them how much I loved them. I also talked about trying not to think about birthdays and anniversaries because that always sets me on a spiral downwards and how I have managed to forget 'G's' birthday for the last couple of years, but that this year it reared its head again. I think that the reason is that next Monday, 'G' would have been 60, and it has made me realize how long I have been without him.

So all in all it was a pretty traumatic session. Since I have been home I have had a quick phone call from There and Back thanking me for the email and the ecard this morning. Lots of the nurses wished her 'happy birthday' this morning and they gave her a birthday cake which they all ate before her Mum arrived to pick her up to take her home for the afternoon and evening. She had just arrived home when she rang me and had found lots of cards and presents there. She is really intrigued to find out what my present is, but she won't be opening it for a while because she is going to go into town to do some shopping with her Mum. She's going to email me when she has opened it so that I can send her the email which explains what I had thought she could do with the present.

Well, I think that's it for now. It's been difficult to write this because everything is still rather raw, but I've stopped crying now and I am going to get myself something to eat, then I shall put my feet up and relax.

Speak to you later.

Love Madsadgirl xx