The End Of Psychotherapy

This morning I had my last psychotherapy session with JR. I arrived early, as usual, but this gave me time to sit in the hospital's garden and contemplate what was going to happen with a cold drink and a cigarette. Considering how I usually feel when I have a psychotherapy session, today I was calm and composed. The ending of therapy had been a bad experience for me previously but I was sure that would not be the case this time.

Today's session was more like a chat between two old friends and it wasn't until about half way through the session that I had even a hint of anxiety, and even that passed quickly. I would be lying if I said that it was not an emotional experience, and it would also indicate that I had not been partaking of it seriously. We touched on the good sessions and the not so good ones. We talked about how I had spent most of my life turning my anger in on myself and how that had damaged me and how we had managed to take the first steps towards me being able to stop this destructive pattern of behaviour and hopefully towards me being less self-critical. We talked about my feelings of isolation and how I had made an effort to improve this by joining the knitting group.

We talked a little about the therapy that is to come. While it is impossible for me to continue receiving one-to-one therapy with the NHS at present, I know that I will soon be undergoing group psychotherapy. This will be something new for me and we talked about the difficulties that I am likely to encounter in a group situation. Now it is just a case of waiting for a start date and a meeting with the therapist in charge of the group.

The minutes passed by very quickly and it was soon time for me to leave. One of the things that mark the passage of my week is no longer a regular item in my calendar. For the eight months that I have been attending psychotherapy with JR, I have only missed one possible appointment and that was when I had day surgery two weeks ago. Difficult as I have sometimes found therapy, I have never thought that I would give it a miss. I have many problems that we have only had the time to scratch the surface of, but having made that initial scratch I am now much more aware of these problems and have a few strategies for helping me overcome them. I will probably never be a completely normal person, but then what is normal, and why would I want to be like that anyway?