Self Help & Dirty Feet

'Self help' What is that all about?

Well it is definitely better than being locked in a room with the best the NHS can supply!

I finally get an appointment for 'Psychotherapy', 6 years after the main crisis loomed!

I feel positive, mentally agile and ready to put the final seal on my recovery with some good strategies for maintaining mental well-being...

...then I step into my first 'session' with The Counsellor', she has dirty feet and straggly hair and clothes in shades of brown. She takes up a position that is slanted away from me, poor body language- in an interview she would be shown the door before a question was answered!!

She gives me reams of paperwork to fill in and asks the occasional question with a long drawn out ...'yes' to follow, I feel like saying rhubarb in response and seeing if she still answers in the affirmative.

She asks me what I want to achieve out of this 'treatment'.

I say honestly, 'strategies and concrete responses that will help me build my confidence and maintain well being'....

More sighing and limp questions, then she asks me again, I say, more firmly now, 'I want actions and responses not just talking' ....

..she mentions Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, my heart quickens, but she speaks, with the slowness of a Pope,

"I feel that there is more to explore, more discussion to come."

'Oh please no!' We are now running over an hour and my will to survive is melting.

..... "I state again- more stridently, even daring to mention 'CBT' obviously- a no-no in 'counsel speak' let them divine what you want- usually the opposite of what you are saying!

"I think my colleagues in CBT could probably do something good with you but....there is just some thing intriguing, I feel we need to talk more, you are un-resolved"

...( 'yes as to whether to throttle you?')

She asks me to do a checklist of how I am feeling right now, it comes out dangerously high on the Harm/self harm side, she does not realise that it's her I might want to harm...

...she mentions past desires to do harm to one-self

" But it wasn't serious? I mean you never actually did it"!

DUH!! And you became a counsellor how?

Finally she protractedly explains that although she has normally made a decision at the end of this 'interview' she feels she needs to see me again...

...absolutely not I think!

I go home and order the complete Paul Coelho works and 'CBT for Dummies' from Amazon,

SELF HELP!

like my voice, delayed in the ephemeral post!

I wrote this at Easter but never got round to posting it...
It’s perhaps unusual that I should find my blog voice again on the cold coasts of Holland. Then again the bracing arctic winds are great for sinuses and clearing out anxieties!
I have been struggling for words over the past year. Not vocabulary, for I have lots of words waiting to be used, but for the air to speak them with. This pausing and stumbling manifested itself in a minor way during stressful times of my life but now, when I am out of a toxic stressed environment and feel well, it has come back full force, gripping my larynx in a tight grasp that can only have a physical cause, or so I thought!...
But apparently it is a ‘common’ manifestation in people who have suffered from depression and anxiety. It seems so unfair that as I enter the stage of my recovery where all the work-related ‘nastiness’ seems a dim distant memory (on someone else’s page) that this has appeared.
I have been having speech therapy and for most of it have fought all the way that it is mind related. It is such a physical sensation for me. However as I get to grips with the problem, how best to manage it and how not to let it put me off speaking I feel I am on the right path again.
As with anyone suffering a ‘speech dysfluency’ or in my case a stammer, the person begins to dread certain words and letter sounds.
‘K’ was a bad one and when I was supply teaching in a particular class with a Kayleigh followed by a Kaine it was a daily struggle to tackle each name equally, one child always came off worst!!
You feel like the person you are speaking to thinks you are dissembling as you, stumble over words,blush and your eyes begin to slide away, as you try to calm your larynx- all classic lying 'tells'!!
.....now to present day and August!
How did I cope with this?
I decided I had to keep talking whatever may! I kept teaching until I was made redundant this July and now have a 'party-plan' business selling Jamie Oliver home wares in peoples houses- using my raconteur skills for a living!!I will not give in!
After all a little breathiness went a long way for Marilyn didn't it?
"Boop boop de Boop!!"
Blonde and a bit blonde!!
"I am involved in a freedom ride protesting the loss of the minority rights belonging to the few remaining earthbound stars. All we demanded was our right to twinkle. "
Marilyn Monroe