Psychotherapy Experience - Part Four

Another thing no one tells you about therapy is often the big changes happen afterwards. I felt my group sessions were too laid back and too loosely structured for me to benefit. I went away thinking that all it had done was bring up painful memories and cause me to struggle even more. 

It must have been a week or so after the last session that I could sense something wasn’t right with me. I was starting to become aware of a place inside of me I didn’t know existed. Now, hear me out because this sounds a bit crazy, but it’s all metaphorical, and I can strongly visualise it in my mind. Before therapy I was aware of a great, big, aching emptiness within me. It has been the reason I have engaged in a lot of unhealthy behaviours, to try and fill that void. Where there seemed to have always been nothing, suddenly there was something. Small at first and barely recognisable. I had always visualised myself standing on the edge of a giant hole in the ground, that went on as far as I could see. I had always assumed that jumping over the edge meant that I had truly given up on life. There was something drawing me to step out into the void and see what was down there. So one day, I did. What I found there, was myself. Not all of me, but all of the negative and painful emotions I had tried to hide. In attempting to bottle it all up I had created a kind of other entity in my own mind. It scared me to death. 

After a long and drawn out summer I found myself exhausted. It was as if I was doing battle with my own soul. That girl I had found at the bottom of the void, I wanted to get rid of her, along with all my pain. I sort of saw her as some kind of adversary. All this fighting landed me straight back in the hospital. I sat in that dark place cursing my therapist for encouraging me to be more introspective. When she offered me a place in another ongoing therapy group I wasn’t exactly impressed, but part of me thought it couldn’t possibly make things any worse. 

Joining the second group was strange. It was like returning to a new school year, but all your classmates have morphed into different people. There was one girl from the previous group and I stuck to her like glue. We both described a sense of failure that we had had to return. It was as if we were having to resit the course. It took everything I had to be optimistic. I knew I had to try and get the most out of it. 

I poured all my effort into digging deep into that dark place. I talked and talked and talked, in the hope that it would lead me to getting rid of that girl in my soul. Over the next year and a half I went off sick from work time and time again. I would go through a cycle of struggling to keep up with life, starting to crack, having a breakdown, getting hospitalised, getting released and having a sudden realisation about my life. Lather, rinse, repeat, ad nauseum. What I didn’t realise was that this internal struggle, causing me all these problems, was actually taking me through a long and drawn out healing process. There was still one thing I couldn’t crack.     

I was at a stage now where I had to do this on my own. I had thoroughly used up all my resources. It is important in therapy to know when you’re done. Even though I still hadn’t defeated her, I just knew. Around October time I discussed my decision with my therapist. We agreed that I wouldn’t carry on therapy in the new year. She was encouraging and realised that I had gotten everything I could from her. I needed to take a leap of faith. She promised me I could remain under their team for a while, until I was sure I could make it on my own. I would still see the psychiatrist for updates and medication reviews. I also had a meeting with the head of service who arranged for me to be put on the short waiting list for Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT), so that I could gain more skills for coping with my emotions. This was a shock to me as before DBT wasn’t available in my area for outpatients. The final session came and went and I steeled myself to go it alone, out in the real world. 

January. It happened in January. Since leaving therapy I had been expecting it. I knew now that the biggest realisations happened post-therapy and that change usually came about after a breakdown. And it was one hell of a breakdown.  

Psychotherapy Experience - Part Three

One thing they never tell you about group therapy is how much you’ll cry for others. It is thought that some people with BPD have higher levels of empathy and compassion for others as a result. It’s heavily debated, but I feel like I have a very strong sense of it. When I see people in emotional pain it’s almost as if I am feeling it myself. That often leads to me avoiding people when they are upset or angry, in order to cope. Being trapped in a room with emotional people, would have scared the hell out of me back when I first started. It was a bit like exposure therapy in a way. I would have to learn to allow myself to feel the pain of others and not shy away. There really was some serious pain and trauma in this group. Because of confidentiality and not wanting to trigger anyone reading this I won’t go into detail, but so many topics were covered. We often found ourselves crying together. Fighting back the emotions became our enemy as we tried to navigate painful memories and allow ourselves to feel in the safe space we’d created. 

I’m not entirely sure how psychotherapy works, but truthfully talking about my life and issues  seemed to have a positive effect on me. At the start of therapy I had felt like I had no sense of who I was or what I wanted from life. I simply did whatever would make other people happy or what I thought was the right thing to do. I wasn’t living for myself at all. I had given up on me a long time ago. It felt like I was always wearing masks to hide the nothingness and confusion underneath. I always thought there was no one underneath, like I was just born wrong and empty. The first year of therapy gave me an awareness there was someone underneath. It taught me that it was okay to be angry and it was okay to be upset. I learned that if I started crying, I could stop it in time to get on with my life. It also gave me the fight to continue on despite feeling as if I would never get better. I suppose in a way it gave me hope. 

Meeting like minded people who were also struggling was one of the greatest gifts. I had grown up feeling so alone, as if no one truly understood. But these girls did, and the therapists too. A bond had formed between us. The only disappointment was that a year had passed and it was almost time for the group to end. I couldn’t believe it had gone so quick. I had talked about so much of my past, and the more current issues I was experiencing. Getting it out into the open felt really good and allowed me to start analysing my unhealthy behaviours. 

The last session was really emotional. We all gave each other cards and tried to secretly exchange our numbers. We knew we weren’t supposed to, but something about the end of group just seemed so final. In the world outside of therapy we felt alone. You don’t usually run into others that have experiences like that; at least not that are going to share their issues openly. There’s plenty of people online, but those sorts of communities can be incredibly toxic and triggering. The ending felt like I was losing some much needed allies.