Counselling blues

I realise I’ve not written too much about my counselling with L of late – mostly just because other things seem to have subsumed them, or my posts haven’t gone up soon after a session.

It still seems odd as the longer I know (as much as you can ‘know’ your counsellor, anyway), the more it seems that if we’d met in other circumstances, we’d probably have got on very well. It’s like that Thomas Hardy poem, ‘the man he killed’ – except unlike in the Boer war, bloodshed is very much frowned upon in therapeutic circles…. The concept is the same though – in other times, in other places, on different terms, our relationship might have been more equal, more balanced. I’ve thought a bit this week about how I’m now past the mid-point in counselling as once I leave for two months in a Nepalese hospital in January, L and I will probably never meet again. I also had an email this week from an old teacher at school, which has also made me think a great deal, as she was the first person I ever told about my dad’s drinking, after I came into school one morning after sitting overnight in A and E, and just completely broke down. She was the first person who listened to me – and when I refused point blank to try any form of counselling, she didn’t push me, and supported me through my final years of school by giving me books (she was a very stoic English teacher and very much subscribed to ‘reading through the pain’ – as do I) and generally being lovely. She also never breathed a word to my parents, which must have been a hard decision to make, but one I am eternally grateful for.

I was sixteen, then. It took another seven years for me to get myself into a counsellors office and capable of staying there. Growing up in a substance misusing household changes your perception of risk, gain, and potential for harm. For me, the risks of opening up were just to great, for too long. I’d lived under the shadow of a tabboo topic and couldn’t break it. There was too much at stake, and too many ways that it threatened to push me over the edge. By the time I had no choice but to go, I was already as far over that edge, that I could go. And it’s taken more courage, each week, every week, than I can often describe.

Yesterday, I hadn’t been thinking too much about what to talk about, but then had an extra half hour to waste as I headed over as I got away early from the childrens hospital, and as I was walking, realised that I’ve felt pretty flat recently. And yes, I’ve been busy and harrassed, and busy again – but I’ve also been a little numb, a little flat, in a way that being busy and somewhat misguidedly listening to the latest deathcab for cutie album,  just doesn’t quite explain (everyone has a band they should have outgrown, but never will – deathcab are mine). I was already crying, by the time I got there. I was already crying, and wasn’t even that sure why. It’s that feeling of mourning something, that I can’t quite shake off, that feeling of being without something, of being tired out and work out and desperate for some relief from the heavy days and all of their requests. I can cry in front of L, now. It does get easier.

Part of it is that I’m over-reacting a bit about a meeting I’m chairing next week for the medical school mentoring scheme that I set up (it’s going very well, which is nice) – and asked for a member of the medical school’s pastoral care counsel to come along to speak to us. The person they allocated is a psychiatrist that the student support person (aka ‘the dragon’, for longterm readers) told about my depression, without my consent, when I took myself off medication and went more than a bit haywire. And although I should be able to say that he’s a psychiatrist and this is what he does for a living, and that he probably won’t remember me by name alone anyway, I’m also terrified that he will and will say something, and I’ll start crying. I’m fed up of feeling as though every single time I feel like I’m getting past all of this stuff, something jerks me back. I’m fed up of feeling like I’m tattooed for life. I’m fed up of feeling as though I will always be judged first on my history of depression, before anything else comes into play.

L was pretty good about all of this, and I do find that I trust her opinion, which after six months, is a good thing. Counselling still leaves me exhausted though – it’s not as simple as being a release, or an outlet. It wears me out. Sometimes everything just feels so dramatic and difficult. Simplicity is a wonderful, enviable thing.

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