Category Psychotherapy

Nov 28 2012

Group Therapy vs Mother’s Birthday Showdown

Just a quick post. I have got myself into a right disaster here. My mother was 70 in September, and not having a clue what to get her, I bought her a couple of days in Edinburgh for said city’s Christmas markets. My usual terror of the phone prevented me from having the bloody sense to ring one of her friends and ask if they would be available to attend. So, with a reluctance I shouldn’t be allowed to feel, I booked myself on the flights with her.

No problem. Not my idea of an exciting few days, but whatever. If my mother enjoyed it, that was the main thing.

Moving on. Having discussed the potential group therapy with my therapist, it was agreed that I would go ahead with it. At our last individual session last week, I said to him, in relation to same, “well, I’ll see you in a fortnight then.” The fortnight in question is up on Tuesday coming when the group assembles for the first time.

I was sitting about picking my arse yesterday when I realised with horror that the Edinburgh trip is from Monday to Wednesday coming. It clashes with the first group therapy session.

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Oct 31 2012

Group Therapy?

So many ideas, so little motivation. My drafts folder is overloaded with stuff. I think of an idea, whip out my iPhone and note the idea plus some basic points about it down, then get back home and stare at the closed laptop in contempt, and go and do something else (until yesterday, that was mainly playing Dish0nored, although I’ve completed one ending of it now. Gamer? Go and buy it if you haven’t already done so!). Or, more frequently, nothing else.

I go through periods like this quite frequently, so if you’ve heard nothing from me on Twitter, on your own blogs, via email or in response to comments left here, it’s because I’m hiding from the world. It’s not that I’ve lost interest in any of I'll Be Backyou – never that. It’s just that my social awkwardness often extends into the online world, particularly when I’m feeling low. I wouldn’t describe myself as depressed as such, but I recognise that the symptoms of an episode are wider ranging that just mood. Not that I would describe said mood as sublime, having said that. Does that ever happen outside a manic episode? I don’t know what I believe about that any more – a subject of one of these billion unwritten posts, indeed. Anyway, sorry. To coin a cliche, it’s not you, lovely people; it’s me. The whole SAD thing doesn’t exactly help matters.

Anyway, I’ll be back!

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Sep 25 2012

Psychosis vs Dissociation

I have 13 draft posts sitting in my WordPress dashboard (including, from 1st June, one entitled ‘Everyday Feminism’. A response to a wave of posts on feminism on other mental health blogs, this article was conceived and drafted well before I learned of the excellent ‘Everyday Sexism‘ project, which highlights exactly the same things as I’d set out to write about. Given the huge success of that site, I clearly missed a trick there 😉 Oh well; it’s entirely my own fault.) So, rather than try and complete one of those, I am of course embarking on an entirely new post. Obviously.

My therapist and I irritated each other today – indeed, he commented at the end of the session that it was “almost like we were arguing.” I responded by quipping, “you should have seen me arguing with my last therapist then.” It was intended as a compliment as it happens; my last therapist had a propensity for being an arsehole, and my current one generally doesn’t. I used to scream at, laugh at, sneer at, insult and on one occasion even threw something (my glasses) at my ex-therapist. I have never felt thus inclined with the current one.

However, as I was walking down the stairs out of the building, I realised that if anything I’d insulted him by reminding him of how volatile I could be with my ex-therapist (and not him). If that sounds perverse, then hear me out. My ex-therapist had (eventually) access to all of me; the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly. My current one often comments that he only occasionally sees any anger in me, yet he knows it’s very fundamentally there. He never sees psychosis, dramatic outbursts, personal attacks, blah de blah, and he wonders why.

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Jul 25 2012

Phantasy

I had a weird session with my therapist yesterday. Whilst I don’t want to get into specifics, there was a point in the discussion that I thought was really interesting, and kind of reminded me why this man is so perceptive. Sometimes he makes me roll my eyes – everything has to have a deep and meaningful reason to him, which sometimes irritates me slightly – but overall he’s definitely the right therapist for me.

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Jun 6 2012

Guided Imagery in Therapy – Part Two

This is the second post in a series I am writing exploring the use of guided affective imagery as a psychotherapeutic device. Each post is/will be, broadly speaking, a free-writing exercise based on my experiences of this technique in my own therapy sessions. The first post in the series can be found here.

The door is open, and I can now see inside the house. There is a corridor – well, a hall I suppose, but it feels more like a corridor, as it’s not particularly homely – stretching out in front of me. It’s a musty brown in colour, though it feels as if I am looking at it through a lens of grey. It doesn’t feel frightening as such, but there is something about it that urges caution in me.

What leads off from it? the voice enquires.

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