After I complained to the NHS about their negligence of my care, following an extremely poor handover of care, I was referred to a community based team for therapy. It was a specialist service specifically aimed at caring for those with diagnosed personality disorders or complex needs. The team was relatively small and they provided both psychotherapy and help with social needs, like getting into education or work.
I received a letter inviting me to an assessment with one of the psychotherapists, a few weeks after I was referred. I remember going in nervous and not sure what to expect. I have a history of being assessed by mental health teams, only to be rejected because I didn’t match up to their views on how people with mental illness should present. The psychotherapist was warm and kind and most importantly she listened. Not the sort of listening when you nod and then just say what you were going to say in the first place. I mean really listening. Taking in everything the person has to say and thinking about it in the context of the person’s life. She really got what I was trying to tell her about my experience of life. I could tell she’d had a lot of experience working with young people with BPD. I felt, for the first time ever, truly understood by a professional. There was no judgement or unwanted advice. She wasn’t trying to change me, but was getting me to understand and question how I really felt. And this was only the assessment! I knew immediately I would be able to work with her.
Within a few more weeks I was told I had been accepted to take part in a young person’s therapy group for 18-25 year olds. I would be getting a few 1:1 sessions, before coming to group every Wednesday for an hour and a half. I knew that it wasn’t going to be Dialectical Behavioural Therapy, which I had wanted for years, but I welcomed any kind of therapy I hadn’t tried before. Especially due to the state I was in emotionally.
The first day I walked into the waiting room my heart was trying to jump out of my chest. I knew the group would be all female and that the other patients were dealing with similar issues, but that was about it. I sat in the corner, looking around to see if I could guess which of the other people I would be spending a year with. I couldn’t imagine sharing all of my problems. What if they thought my problems were trivial compared to theirs? Years of being told I should be lucky I hadn’t had all these awful things happen to me, had sort of brainwashed me. I had been told the issues I had weren’t because of trauma, but because of my general nature. I wasn’t traumatised, I was just weak or bad.
The two therapists came into the waiting room and collected us. It felt a bit like school as we filed in silently. I could feel my eyes darting around in panic and tried to calm myself. I could feel the panic rising. As we all sat in a circle I hesitated to even look at anyone else, but I could tell the others felt the same. For what felt like eternity we sat there in silence, looking back it couldn’t have been more than 30 seconds. I could hear the gentle ticking of the clock on the wall to my left.
The first thing the therapists had us do was introduce ourselves. I felt so silly. I was starting to have second thoughts about being there. I had fears it would just be like all other therapy I had had, stupid, embarrassing and useless. By the end of the session though I was starting to come round. Some of the girls were talking about why they thought they were here, and it encouraged me to think and start to contribute. Everyone seemed friendly enough. I had been worried that I wouldn’t be able to get on with a group of women. I always struggled to make friends with girls at school, they seemed bitchy and complicated. The end of the session came faster than I had expected. I didn’t feel like I’d said much at all.
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