Heyyy
I began writing in a depressive state/panic attack yesterday, and I read it back this morning and was horrified. But what I wanted to say was important, I act on here as if I’m cured or in a somewhat better place and though I am feeling much better than ever before I am nowhere near cured. My rough days are worse than ever, I’ve just learnt to cope with them more. I’m a very emotional person, I cry at almost everything but when I’m in a low mood I struggle to convey even the slightest of emotions. I lack everything and that only makes me feel worse.
I’ve been in therapy in and out since I was nine years old. This is the post I’ve wanted to write since the beginning but didn’t have the strength to do so, but here it is.
When I began therapy at the age of nine, I didn’t think I had a problem, I thought I was fat so hearing the words ‘anorexic’ and ‘eating disorder’ was pointless. I refused to speak for the first few months, I truly don’t know how she put up with me. But she did. She used to speak, tell me about herself and I’d sit and not even react. When I first spoke, she cried, I was so overwhelmed that I burst into tears and I finally felt safe. After that day, as I got older and my trauma exceeded, I never felt as if I was alone again. I was secretly speaking to a therapist, and I was getting help. That’s all that mattered.
I used to tell her everything, our one hour sessions began my routine and I got so into a pattern with speaking that when I had to cancel due to being scared someone would notice or change days as something had come up I lost that part of me which was organised. I felt lost without it. I’ve never taken medication but those I know who have always struggled with the concept of getting off them, accepting that you’ll survive without them. For me, back then I didn’t believe I’d ever survive without therapy. Not that I expected to survive with it also but that’s getting into a different point.
Then came GCSE years and I began scheduling the calls less, I missed calls or just turned my phone off. I couldn’t talk, I didn’t want to be alive. Around the same time, I started seeing a second counsellor, I don’t want to go too into this because what happened shouldn’t have happened but when I told her I was going to kill myself she told people who laughed. At the time I thought it was a jaunt, them saying ‘she’s not strong enough to actually do it’, ‘she’s nothing anyway’ but now I think it’s just they were terrible people who would’ve happily watched me die.
After GCSE results day I turned a new leaf, I began going again but I had a wall up. I didn’t tell her everything and I had no reason to doubt her but the mistakes of another of her kind. But those mistakes cost me a lot of help looking back on it, I was begging for a reason to stay but due to my own trust issues I couldn’t ask for it from the only person who truly knew what was going on.
I kept going with therapy there onwards, through my diagnosis with bipolar disorder and all the way through to my re-diagnosis with depression. That’s where I drew the line and after ten years, ten incredible years I stopped. I hit my limit and I couldn’t continue with therapy, I needed to work it out and fight it alone. I truly believed that I was at a point where therapy was no longer working for me, I was always ending up in the same place crying as my diagnosis is updated.
Things got rough in 2019, the roughest year of my life. After a horrific night I made the decision I was no longer doing this alone, but I also needed something different. I signed up for the university counsellors and god bless her she was so cute. She’d listen to me talk and describe my strength, but it felt like nothing was getting through to her. She wasn’t seeing what I wanted her to see, she wasn’t helping me but instead making me help myself. Then she did the thing I regret the most, she told me I was good enough without her. I didn’t need her anymore, I believed her and stopped scheduling appointments. Next time I saw her I’d cut off all my hair, lost my friends and dropped out of the masters I was going to do.
So, where does this bring me now? I just signed up for my next stretch of therapy and for once I’m genuinely looking forward to it. I don’t have the same mentality as before and I am no longer struggling with the truth. I listed my trauma to this poor woman on her first meeting and was taken a back with her reaction, it was sympathetic. I don’t cope well with sympathy yet suddenly watching her made me feel warm. As if this is it, I’m finally ready to get help.
I believe therapy should be compulsory, everyone should speak about their problems. Therapy saved my life, having someone who didn’t know me on a day-to-day basis to speak about my life with is the only reason I still cope to this day. Sometimes you just need a different perspective and that’s all it takes to make everything better and easier. Please if you are hurting consider therapy, my therapy story hasn’t been amazing, and I wonder if I would’ve turned out different had I not been terrified for so long but at least I did it. I am forever thankful that I did.
Thank you for reading, as always my messages are open.
More than a Diagnosis 