Magnetic Resonance Imaging – Human brain side view (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I don’t even know where to start with this one or whether I should talk about it and share it. It’s playing on my mind and therefore need to get it out – I’ll decide whether to share it later, so if you’re reading this “Hello”.
I’ve been having CBT for a few months’ now, not regular weekly session through was starting to think that maybe I’m reaching the end of needing it. I mean I haven’t cried in weeks, so surely that’s a good indicator as to how I’m feeling inside when we talk about tragic things.
So this session I went in thinking maybe he’s going to end things. I never want to be the person who says that “I think I’m ready to go it alone” cause how do I know. Yeah it’s me and my head therefore I should know, but I always believe that therapists have a way of reaching inside my head and knowing what’s really going on with me, in a way that I can’t see. Yes, they’re not magicians or have EEG’s or MRI’s etc etc, but they know – surely, they know.
The session started off as normal with a rundown of the last appointment and the same questions of “Where do you want this session to go? How you got anything specific you want to talk about?” and I replied “No. Let’s just see where this goes.” Inside my head I was thinking, this is a good sign, nothing to talk about, I’m getting better.
An hour later and I’m mopping up the worst tears imaginable from a therapy session. I have never cried like that ever, let alone in a therapy session. You know when you can admit to something inside your head, but to hear yourself say the words out load is so painful that you are taken aback by the whole thing.
You just sit there waiting for the tears to stop and bring enough strength to say it. All the while knowing that your therapist is sat there patiently waiting to hear it, knowing the pain that has just been caused. Then you say it, and it’s the worst thing that you could ever hear about yourself.
After everything that I have been through in my life, the mental health, breakdown, the homelessness, drugs, abuse, rape etc etc., deep down I always know that if it happens again then I can cope with it as I’ve been there before. Cancer is the only thing that scares me now, though not death – death doesn’t scare me.
So to hear these words, hurtful words that I have said about myself that criticise my being and any reason for life - to tell you the honest truth, that hurts more than what I imagine it would feel if a doctor ever told me I had cancer. This is much worse than cancer in my eyes.
How can I ever get over hearing that? How do I work with it to make me a better person inside? Why would I think that? How did that negativity grow inside me and I have only just realised? How?
I do feel that this has triggered something, something that I either work with and explore the whole issue or let it swallow me whole and join in that rollercoaster of a mood disorder. I don’t want to go downhill and enter a despair of depression, but I have no idea what to do with this information my subconscious has thrown at me.
CBT hurts, it makes you challenge what you thought was true but isn’t and then throws a curveball in when you think everything is ok. Though I’m sure that it is going to make me a better person in the long run, I just need to get there first.
