Posts tagged counselling

I am procrastinating.  I have another counsellor’s appointment tomorrow and I am meant to be making a doll for it.  That’s a thing I do with my counsellor…I have a collection now of little dolls and drawings that represent parts of myself, my inner voices and I am meant to be making a doll of myself as a teenager to add to that.  It won’t take a long time, just an hour or so on the sewing machine, but I’m skulking about being a coward about it.

I guess because this is where shit gets real for me.

I’ve been trying to remember what I was like as a teenager.  I think I probably had several rather typical and somewhat unpleasant teenage traits - melodramatic tendencies, self-absorbtion, incredibly poor decision making etc.  

I changed a lot as a teen…My early teen years were spent being spotty and ragingly insecure, I always felt out of place and awkward, so I suppose later on I sort of tried to morph it into deliberately sticking out.  Reminds me of a song lyric

…back in my rebel phase I stood out in all the normal ways…

Not sure I was very good at being rebellious either, just lead to some very poor choices in hair colour (never try and dye your hair blue).

All in all, it’s proving to be a very difficult and unpleasant experience.  I find it hard not to blame myself for bad decisions I made back then that have lead me to where I am now.  It’s also making me feel insanely old and rather depressed about how little I have to show for my life so far.  

Better stick the kettle on and get to work though eh?

Today is a bad day.  I had to go and cry in my bathroom, and that is never a good sign. 

Even though I think of myself as a “recovering depressive” most of the time, things still get tough.  It feels like classing myself as “recovering” is being a bit too optimistic right now.  I try hard not to let my day-to-day life suffer too much from what’s going on under the surface, but it’s still a pretty big mess under there.  I wrote about identity before - we all have a persona we present to the world - I try to be a character I’ve created for myself, but that can be exhausting.

You might think that I should just “be myself”, but unfortunately myself might not be all that likeable, and having so few friends in the world means I would prefer not to drive them away.

I don’t have a real theme or topic for my post today, no advice or helpful observations, just my feelings, which aren’t things I share all that readily or honestly, because they are unpleasant.  Counselling has tried to teach me to cope with these onslaughts - because that is what they feel like - by “unpacking” my feelings.  Sitting calmly, maybe writing things out or drawing them, getting down into the root of what is upsetting my balance.  I can’t do that today.  I don’t know where it’s coming from because I’m too busy being knocked about by the feelings.  

There’s a sort of tension to it, and all that I can do is release some pressure valve inside myself and let go of everything.  I sob into a tissue and let it all wash over me - the depression, the anger, the resentment and the frustration, and eventually it’s all emptied out and ready for the next cycle to begin.

My consolation in all of this is that I recognise it will ease off again, and that for a while at least, balance will be restored, and that every time it happens is another chance to conquer whatever demon is lurking behind it all.

Hello.  My name is Lesley.  I’m 26, single, non-smoker, Capricorn, deist. I like knitting and kung-fu movies.  If I was really drunk, and you were really, really drunk and neither of us were wearing our glasses, I’d try and convince you I look like Jessica Rabbit dressed as a librarian.

All of that is true (the Jessica Rabbit part slightly less so), but how much of it is ME?

We all go through a struggle to identify who we really are, it’s a big philosophical question, and in my own personal opinion, the less you wonder about it the more yourself you’re likely to be.  We construct a persona, an outside layer to present to the world at large, and beneath that our true self lies, some of us are acutely aware of who that person may be, and some completely ignorant.

I’m depressed and anxious, which is something I try and keep largely hidden, no one really gives a rat’s arse about it, but is it part of my identity or just an illness?  You wouldn’t define yourself by a broken leg or a bout of flu, but would you feel like your diabetes was part of you?

I do feel like “Being Depressed” is a big chunk of who I am.  It’s been with me my whole adult life, shaping my choices and my personality just as much as anything else has.  So it feels doubly hard sometimes to face up to the idea of “getting better”.  I don’t want to take pills to stop me liking computer games, or go to therapy for my Depeche Mode obsession (even though some people probably think I need it), and sometimes I don’t want to go through a huge struggle to redefine myself.

My counsellor leant me a book once, where someone was talking about how their depression had interrupted their life, how they wanted to get back to where they were before it happened, and I got angry as hell about it.  There was no “before” for me, nowhere to go back to, and I felt quite bitter about it at the time.  I can only go forward and take things as they come.

I don’t really know how often or how long I’ll be writing about things like this, but the more I think about these things the more I find I want to say.  It’s all just based in personal experience and observation, but I hope that it finds a few people out there who can relate to it.

Anyway, today I want to talk about “Therapy”.  Something people have all kinds of preconceived notions about, and a lot of them false.  Often people who have never been to therapy or counselling or whatever term you want to apply to it assume that you will lie on a couch and talk about your mother.  I’ve never done that.  The closest I came is lying in a recliner while a hypnotherapist talked about beaches and played new age music at me.  I did not find that very helpful.

I’ve been to see several people in the years I’ve had depression, some more helpful than others.  A couple of psychologists, who I found to be rather dry and clinical and didn’t stick with for very long, and some very nice counsellors, all of whom helped me at various stages and one who continues to do so now.

But what do you actually do, if you are not talking about that dream you had last night and how angry you are about your distant father?  You talk, and it’s the hardest thing to do.  To be completely honest with another person - no sugar-coating any of your less desirable traits, no down-playing your problems, no pretending that irrational little niggle isn’t slowly killing you from the inside out - that is very, very difficult indeed.  

I’ve known people who think therapy is easy, a cop-out for not fixing your problems yourself.  Biggest load of rubbish ever.  That person sitting in the chair opposite you does not have a magic wand or access to the mystical knowledge that will put your brain back into gear, all they have is eyes, ears and objectivity.  That objectivity is very valuable indeed.  They are not your friend who will go, “There, there never mind, it’s not you, it’s the rest of the world”.  The problem is probably you.  They will tell you that, and then they will ask you how you are going to fix it.  And you will go, “Buhhhhh?”.  At least that’s what I did.

I’ve done some things in therapy that probably look very weird to the outside world - I have made dolls that look like my inner child and my inner critic, I’ve thrown shoes, hit walls with cushions and drawn, “what my depression looks like”.  I’ve also done a lot of CBT (that stands for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, but if you instantly parsed it as “Cock and Ball Torture”, then congrats on sharing one of my problems!)  I am going to write a separate posts about those things another time, because they deserve more time and space than I can give them here.

I’d advise everyone to go to therapy or counselling or whatever it may be at least once in their lives, and if you are thinking about it right now, do it.  My other advice would be:

1. Don’t stick with the first person you get an appointment with if you feel like you don’t get on with them
2. Be honest
3. Prepare to feel like an idiot sometimes
4. Be aware that if you are doing it right you will say something and then realise it has caused an uncontrollable urge to cry
5. Have tissues
6. Be prepared to come out of it feeling completely exhausted.  It is tiring stuff.
7. Expect to work hard.  They are not there to answer the questions, they are there to make you find the answers.