Updating My Lecture

As regular readers will know, I have been asked again to give my lecture on 'A Patient's Perspective of Psychotherapy' at one of the London universities. I was originally due to give this lecture last week, but owing to having to go into hospital again I asked 'S' if it could be postponed. As it turned out, I was home again before the lecture was to be given but it would have been difficult for me to get it updated and I'm not sure that I was well enough to cope with the experience anyway.

This morning I have contacted 'S' and said that I would be happy to do it on 25th March if that date is still suitable and available ('S' had given me three dates and that one suited me best). He's going to get back to me later to confirm, but no matter when I give it, the lecture does need some work done on it. So I have spent the last hour trawling through my blog looking at the posts that deal with psychotherapy.

I should explain here that the lecture is based on a series of emails that I wrote to Mr Smiley and posts from this blog. I have written a great deal about what has been discussed at my therapy sessions and how I have felt before, during, and after them here, and as such it provides an invaluable source of material for the lecture.

Since I gave the lecture last year, my first period of psychotherapy has come to an end, I have been admitted to a psychiatric hospital (twice) and I have started a new phase of psychotherapy. In addition, I have been referred back to the psychotherapy service where I had my year-long period of psychotherapy for further assessment with a view to me receiving group psychotherapy.

Fortunately my lecture was on my computer so it has simply meant me copying and pasting material from the blog into the lecture and now all I have to do is to edit the additional material, taking out the extra stuff that is not actually about the therapy, and massaging it into a flowing speech.

The course that I give this lecture on is a Master's course on Mental Health, and a significant part of the course covers various aspects of the talking therapies, so the students receive lots of lectures about the different types of therapies that there are, but all from a theoretical point of view. My lecture is the only one given by someone who gives a patient's perspective of what it is like to live with a mental health problem and the value, or otherwise, of talking therapies. I have also been asked by 'S' to include something in the lecture about what I think are the qualities that make a good therapist. Having had four different therapists over the years (one of them informally) I have had the very good, the inexperienced but good, and one who was absolutely appalling so I think that I can give a pretty good answer to that one.

This afternoon I have returned to working on the doll, but tomorrow morning I will get up and go to work editing the lecture and adding the part that 'S' has asked for. It will seem strange revisiting the words that I have written on this subject but I know that the lecture was very well received last year and received an excellent evaluation from the students, so although I know that I will be anxious about doing it all over again, it is important that the patient's perspective is given and I am grateful for the opportunity to do this.

Revisiting My Lecture

This time last year I was struggling to write a lecture on a patient's perspective of psychotherapy to be delivered on a Master's course at one of London's universities. It took me quite a long time to put the lecture together and was based on posts from this blog and emails between myself and Mr Smiley. The lecture went down very well and I can remember the thrill of receiving a spontaneous round of applause from the audience. Like so much of what has happened in my life during the last 18 months or so, I wrote about the experience on this blog.

I have been asked to deliver the lecture again this year and because of what has happened in the intervening period I feel that it needs updating. In order to do this I had to find out where the lecture script was stored. I have to admit that I had a nasty feeling that I might have to type it all up again, but as luck would have it I have found the relevant file and it has now been transferred onto my new laptop so that I can spend some time working on updating it.

I have quite a bit to add. I have to talk about the termination of my psychotherapy and the terrible effect that it had on me. It is important that these students understand that the way that therapy is terminated is as important as the therapy itself. I will have to mention that I have spent some time in a mental hospital and how, as a result of that hospitalization, I am in therapy again albeit only short-term this time and to deal with slightly different problems.

I have a couple of weeks to do this updating but I know that I am going to find it quite difficult so I will have to start in the next day or two. Trying to do this when I'm really having difficulty doing the simplest things is not the way that I would want to do things, but I know that if I do what I can, when I can, it will get done.

And S has said that he will take me out to lunch afterwards, so I have that to look forward to.

Lecturing Again

I've had an email this morning asking if I would be willing to give my lecture 'A Patient's Perspective Of Psychotherapy' at one of the London universities again. I replied straight away and now all I have to do is agree a date with 'S'.

It's nearly a year since I gave it the first time and I remember the nerves and anxiety that I suffered beforehand. I know that I will suffer the same feelings again, but the lecture was well received last time, and I have no doubt that it will go down well again.

Over the next few days I must make some time to sit down with the script for the lecture and update it. I still had a few months of psychotherapy after giving the lecture in February, so I can add the feelings that I had when the psychotherapy came to an end, and talk a little about the therapy that I am undergoing at the moment.

The lecture is based on posts that I wrote at the time that I was receiving therapy and the emails about it that I wrote to Mr Smiley. Updating it shouldn't be much of a problem so a few hours should see it done. Having the confidence to do things like giving this lecture and the presentations about patients having online access to their medical records is very much down to Mr Smiley. It was he who constantly reminded me that they were things that were well within my capability and that I had been doing for years.

It is moments like this that make me realise how much I will miss Mr Smiley's gentle encouragement and his faith in my abilities.

A Bit Of An Apology ... And More

I seem to be spending all my time apologizing at the moment. I didn't write a post yesterday and I had said that I would endeavour to write every day. In my defence I did write two on Wednesday, but I really did mean to write about what I got up to yesterday; however, I was so tired I just couldn't summon up the energy to write about it. And I was having a little bit of trouble with my Internet connection, but that is now sorted and here I am.

I travelled north London yesterday morning to listen to a lecture being given by 'S'. When I gave my lecture a few weeks back he said that if there were any that I particularly felt like attending then I should feel free to come along. So I did. I found it very interesting and gave me a perspective on various different psychodynamic theories; ones that I had not really looked into before. It has interested me enough to look at the work of Klein and Winnicott in more detail so that I can see where they were coming from.

My journey to the university was horrendous and at one stage the bus that I was travelling on took more than half an hour to travel a distance of about a mile. I sent 'S' a text message saying that I was still south of the river and that I hoped that I would arrive in time; he sent a reply indicating that I should not worry if I was a little late. As luck would have it when I eventually arrived at Victoria and made a dash for the Underground I did not have too much of a problem getting through the ticket barrier and down to the platform and a train arrived almost immediately. On arrival at my destination station I set off for the university building as fast as my legs would carry me. I do walk a fair bit, but while I generally use an average walking pace, yesterday I needed to get my legs working rather hard to get to the building in time for the 10am start. After booking in at the reception desk, I made my way upstairs and found the lecture room without too much difficulty and walked in just as 'S' was finishing his brief introduction on the subject of the lecture.

After the lecture 'S' and I had a discussion about how well my lecture had been received and that the students had talked about it for a few weeks afterwards. We also discussed the short course that it is hoped that the university will be running in the summer and what the dates for that would be. I have been asked to lecture again, so I will need to think about updating my lecture a little in readiness for this.

I had decided that I would do a bit of wandering round Oxford Street after the lecture, so I headed for the Underground to make my way to Oxford Circus. Just as I came out of the station the police were closing off a large section of Oxford Street, in the direction that I wanted to go, because of a major gas leak. I could not believe that this had happened to me on top of the problems that I had already suffered on my earlier journey. So I had to turn round and walk in the opposite direction to that which I wanted to go in order to get on the Underground again. I walked to Bond Street station and got on a train to Tottenham Court Road and then turned into Charing Cross Road and started walking down towards Trafalgar Square. I love looking in bookshops and Charing Cross Road is just the place to do this, but it is nowhere near as much fun as it used to be. So many of the specialist bookshops have now gone although Foyles is still there and I had a most enjoyable hour wandering round Blackwells.

By the time that I got home my legs and feet were aching and I needed to sit down and put my feet up for a while. So that is my excuse for not writing a post yesterday, and I am sticking to it.