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.
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