More Difficult Than I Thought

I have been a little slack in posting over the last couple of weeks. In part this is because my writing has been aimed at a slightly different venture. And it's proving to be more difficult and emotive than I thought it would be.

What is it that is proving so difficult?

I am trying to write a lecture that I will be delivering next week to some postgraduate students on the 'user's experience of therapy'.

I have been giving presentations on a computer system that allows patients to have access to their GP medical records for some months now in conjunction with 'B' who was my GP until his retirement last year. I consider this to be quite an important project and although I am always anxious before a presentation I find that I enjoy the experience once it is over.

Giving presentations to international audiences was an integral part of my job while I was working and it allowed me to make numerous visits to the US, Canada and Australia over the years. I never gave the same presentation twice, which meant that a lot of time was spent drafting the presentation and creating the visual aids to go with it. But drafting this lecture is proving to be much more difficult and the reason is that it is about me and how therapy has impacted on my life.

My first experience was not a success. This was about a year after I was diagnosed with depression and I found the therapist abrasive and unsympathetic. I was very nervous about the experience of baring my innermost thoughts to a complete stranger and when that stranger left me feeling worse when I left each therapy session than I was when I walked in I started to have suicidal thoughts, something that had not happened before. Fifty to 60 minutes each week for about six weeks constantly going over the circumstances of my husband's death was not conducive to my mental health and my GP decided that the therapy should be stopped before my suicidal thoughts were translated into a reality.

For a number of years after this I had a very informal form of therapy. This was regular chats about anything and everything with a very dear friend. He helped to make my life bearable and it was he who broke the news of my mother's death to me and helped me again when my Dad died. He still provides support by providing a friendly ear to this day.

Last May I began my second round of formal therapy and this time I have a much more sympathetic therapist. The result has been than I have discovered a lot about myself and the reasons for my being the way that I am. I still have periods of depression, but I am better able to cope with them, and while the therapy itself can still be traumatic at times, I have never felt the way that I did during and after those sessions with the first therapist.

My lecture will be about all of this, and having now drafted the section about my early experiences of therapy, I am about to draft the rest of it about all that has followed. Not only will the lecture cover the talking therapy that I have had, it will also include the difference that I have found through writing this blog, and the kindness that there has been in the many comments from other bloggers. Sometimes a talking therapy does not only include the spoken word. I have found that the written word can make a huge difference too. So for all of you out there who read my blog and take the time to drop me a comment once in a while, I am sending a heartfelt thank you. You are all helping me to find life bearable again.

Now I suppose that I had better get back to drafting the lecture and finishing off the PowerPoint slides.

Things Didn't Go According To Plan This Morning

Even though I was exceedingly anxious this morning when I set out for the hospital for my regular psychotherapy session I was determined to have another good session.  I was going to try and start talking as soon as we were seated.  I knew what I wanted to tell my psychotherapist about.  I was going to start with my meeting with There and Back last weekend, and move on to something that I am going to be doing next Wednesday evening which is a totally new experience for me (well new in as much as I haven't done it for a very long time).

I walked to the bus stop and didn't have long to wait before the bus I wanted arrived at the stop and I boarded it.  As has been the case for many months now, there are huge stretches of road being dug up for the water mains replacement programme, so buses are on a diversion at the moment.  But that is not all, because the road onto which they are diverted also has one lane out of action for these road works, the bus has to stop at traffic lights that are controlling the single alternate lane working, the lights are at the bottom of a very steep hill and the bus can barely make it up the hill.

Anyway, I was sitting comfortably on the bus indulging in my usual habit of looking out of the window to see what was happening on the route, when I suddenly became aware that my mobile was ringing in my handbag.  You will understand how unusual this is when I say that there are ony a handful of people who know the number so I don't usually expect it to ring: the phone is really for emergencies.  I scrabbled around in my handbag and managed to grab the phone and open it before the caller had rung off.  It was somebody from the hospital phoning to tell me that my psychotherapy session had to be cancelled because my psychotherapist wouldn't be in because he had an emergency at home.  They had hoped to catch me before I left home, but I left a little earlier this morning because I knew that there were likely to be delays because of the buses being on diversion.

So I got off the bus, crossed the road and walked to the bus stop to get a bus back home again.  Having coped with pterodactyl-sized butterflies in my stomach this morning, to suddenly find that I was not going to have the psychotherapy session that I had prepared myself for left me feeling very low and fighting away the tears.  This seemed such a strange reaction but I suppose that because I am now truly engaging in the therapy, to suddenly find that I was not going to have that opportunity to talk things through as I had planned left me feeling a little bereft.

I had started to write this post when a comment on this morning's post came in for moderation.  It was from 'alhi' from Random Musings from a Wannabe who felt that I had changed since she had been reading my blog and that she was considering seeking referral to a psychologist again.  There have been a number of comments over the last couple of weeks from people who say that they can see a difference in my posts; and I, too, have said that psychotherapy was definitely beginning to make a difference to me.

Psychotherapy is not easy.  It requires a great deal of commitment on the part of the patient and depending on the type of psychotherapy that is offered, can require a significant amount of work outside of the therapy sessions.  Treatment such as the type that I am receiving (psychodynamic psychotherapy) is not readily available on the NHS.  For many people the only thing that they will be offered is a short period of CBT (cognitive-behaviour therapy), but it was felt that this would be of no use to me as it would not get to the source of my problems.  

Evidence shows that the so-called 'talking treatments' can make a significant difference to those with mental health problems.  For some, such treatment is sufficient in itself to help them over their problems.  They are, however, the minority.  For many others it is a combination of drugs and psychotherapy that makes the difference, and I am one of those.  After taking various different antidepressants for 10 years, I have finally found a regime that is actually helping to make a difference to how I feel.  The problem is that the psychotherapy is likely to be time-limited.  Okay, so I wasn't only offered a meagre eight weeks of therapy, which is often the norm, but I know that I am likely to find that my psychotherapy comes to an end in a few months time and that this will happen whether or not I have reached a suitable place for cessation of therapy.  It will happen because the resources (that is suitably qualified psychotherapists) are not available for the number of patients that require the treatment.  What worries me is having my therapy stopped before I am ready to cope with all that the world will throw at me.