I have come to the conclusion that mental health therapy is not good for you. As of Thursday 19th July, some four sessions in, I now feel worse than I did before therapy started, almost as bad as I was following my British Red Cross initiated breakdown in 2017. As bad, but in a different way. My already erratic sleep patterns have imploded. All that follows might be made up, just me drawing false conclusions. But I can’t explain it any other way.
As I said, my sleep patterns have never been particularly consistent. I always wake up repeatedly and then can’t get back to sleep. After therapy – and I have been here before – I am having to put up with wild anxiety dreams that verge on panic attacks. When I wake up, I feel exhausted but too alert to get back to sleep. So, when I get up – at the usual time – I spend a long time the following day just looking through a fog.
Therapy, when it’s good, is very tough. I have come to the conclusion that if it isn’t, then it’s probably not very effective. So, I am trying to convince myself that actually this sense of emotional exhaustion is somehow positive.
The therapy itself takes me back to childhood where I have been remembering some things I hadn’t thought about for years. It’s certainly taken me to places I’d rather not have been, bumping into people I never wanted to see again and have since taken out of my life. Even in my dreamlike state, I was very upset to see them again. I suppose I was running but couldn’t hide.
I have just the eight sessions to go. I am hoping that the remaining therapy will deal with the issues that have arisen so far because if they don’t, I’ll end up being worse off than when I started. At the moment, I want to do things but I don’t want to do things. I want to see people but I don’t want to see people. I am frightening of making a fool of myself almost all the time and I am worried that my imaginary smiling clown face will soon be smudged by tears. I hope things are supposed to get worse before they get better.
This thing is really out of control now and I am in the hands of a therapist who, fortunately, I believe in. I suspect this is my last chance to get better, for this series of treatment to succeed in the long term and not fail like most treatment has failed before.
The only mental health treatment that ever really succeeded was when I was treated, as a 12/13 year old, for panic attacks and night terrors. These, I now know, were the precursor to the depression and anxiety that followed. If the panic attacks and night terrors had remained, I doubt whether I’d still be here today. At least with the depression and anxiety, I have survived even though I am not entirely sure what I have survived for.
