La Thérapie Alternative

Just sayin'!

Un Semi-Échec

I've a feeling that I'm going to have to keep thinking of different blog post titles with the word "fail" in 🤔 

Either that, or actually write about therapy after each session. The would be novel!

I didn't write after last week. Not particularly deliberately, just... I find it difficult.

In last week's therapy session we talked about my coping mechanisms. The list from my previous blog post, I had emailed to my therapist prior to the session. He had put them into two different categories - which I can't remember at the moment.

His two categories coincided strongly with my childhood and my teen years. I had developed some coping mechanisms that saw me through my early years, then developed a second set later on. I think it's fair to say that a lot of the childhood ones were to cope with being depressed. Mr Therapist read them very much as trying to cope with fear, or avoid that which made me afraid.

He also noticed that something that seemed important to me was writing. He's not wrong. As long as I've lived I've wanted to be an author. As a teenager writing used to just pour out of me. Poems, stories, letters. But I've been blocked for years. For a long time I thought I was being blocked by antidepressants, but I think I've just realised the cause:-

My sister is recognised as a journalist. She used to work for the Daily Mail, and has worked in editing, proof reading, etc, for a few sciencey things. I remember feeling absolutely gutted when my dad once referred to her as a writer. 

I don't know what I'd expected her to become, but writing was so far off her radar that it was a complete shock to me. She was the science and maths brain at school, but had always talked about being a singer or children's TV presenter. Or a hairdresser. Writing seemed too considered, and creative, to be up her street.

The way we were brought up, was very much as if we couldn't both be good at anything. She was always referred to as the pretty one, the thin one, the clever one, the one that's good at piano, the one with all the girl guide badges, the one that went to Cambridge, the one with children, the successful worthy of being loved praised remembered one.

So I had to make my own world. I created characters in my stories who were good at things that I'd never actually get the chance to try. She couldn't take those away. And yet she did... by her becoming the one of us recognised for being a writer, I think I subconsciously felt that I could no longer write. 

It feels as if I'm not allowed to. Like there's this wall that I keep banging my head against every time I actually think of writing. This is why it's really quite challenging to write these blog posts, too.

So, last week I had the homework to give myself some space each evening in which I could allow myself to write. But because I hadn't yet had the épiphane from 5 paragraphs up, I skulked into sleep each evening, guiltily wondering what alternative-me in an alternative universe might have written.

So that was last week.

This week we started off with Mr Therapist asking me what I thought of all the coping stuff. I shrugged. So he asked what I'd think if there was another child having to develop so many ways to cope.

My response was to go off on a tangent for an hour regarding feeling annoyed (angry, but I don't like that word) at my step mother all of the time.

So that was a waste of a session.

The truth is, I have no idea what I'd think. I often think I'll react one way to something, but in reality I act totally differently. I don't know what normal coping mechanisms children have to develop. Everyone has to develop something just to deal with getting through life. Who am I to figure out what's normal and healthy for other people?

That probably isn't the point. I'm probably supposed to be introspective about it. I don't think Mr Therapist has realised yet, just how much I really dislike myself. I don't want to think about me.

That's possibly why I'm in therapy.

L'échec

Ha! Literally the second week of blogging therapy and I didn't get around to doing it. The reason is two fold.

Firstly, I can't really remember what happened in last week's session - which just goes to show that I should blog them immediately.

Secondly, I was given homework. I was told to think about the different coping mechanisms I used to use. I'm not sure what we're going to do with them, but here are the things I've remembered:-

- Focusing on the next thing to look forward to, for example visiting Mummy or Beffy, or having the cousins to visit.

- Sometimes cuddling my large doll when I needed to hug.

- I learnt to cry silently.

- I used to rearrange my bedroom furniture frequently. This may have been a way to feel control.

- I used to rearrange my wardrobe and bookshelves frequently. Wardrobe by colour, clothing type even the length of the clothing. And bookshelves by book height, book colour, or authors name.

- I used to hoard wrappers and bits of rubbish up my chimney, because I couldn't bare thinking of rejecting them.

- Similarly, I couldn't cope with balloons going down. I'd keep them inflated as long as possible, taping up holes as they started to degrade. I still can't deal with balloons.

- When going to school as a teen I'd leave the house at 7:05am to avoid morning encounters with family members. Then walk dogs until 6pm after school.

- For some time - I don't remember for how long - I ate as little as possible. I don't remember what my thinking was behind it. I used to pour the milk from my dad's breakfast bowl into another bowl to look like I'd had breakfast. I saved my lunch money. Then gave various excuses to either skip or reduce my meals.

- Some of the things I wasn't allowed to do have become things that I never want to do, which I think is my brain pretending that these things were my decisions.

- I wrote fictitious diaries for characters I invented, disappearing mentally into their worlds, absorbed in writing and creating them.

- Writing stories in general.

- Writing poetry.

- I left some projects unfinished, I think because then I couldn't be told I'd done a crap job of them. They tended to be things my step mum knew I was working on. The projects I did for myself I finished.

- A teacher at college pointed out (to the entire class) that I wore dowdy unremarkable clothing, which she said could be psychologically seen as trying to hide.

- I threw myself into church and YMCA projects. My parents and James did at least drive me around a lot for these.

- I used to listen to music very loudly to drown out my feelings, and the thoughts on my head.

- I had up to 30 correspondents at one point. Perhaps this was another way to disappear from reality. I tried to list them while going to sleep, the other day; doing so was more attentive than counting sheep!

- I think maybe I didn't try very hard with school work, just doing enough to get through, because I knew that if I put my best in I'd be told it wasn't good enough anyway.

- As a teenager I spent as much time as I could with friends, preferably at their houses. Making this list is quite scarily making me experience the same feelings of needing them, that I did back then.

- Looking back it seems like I didn't notice when people didn't treat me with the same respect or kindness that I gave them. It's as if I was choosing to not see it.

- I used to bite myself and hit myself when really upset or frustrated. This still happens when I'm really wound up. 

- I got used to recognising the sound of each person in the house, how they walked up the stairs, how they arrived at the front door, or pulled their car on to the drive. I thought it was normal until discussing it with other people.

- I learnt how to hide from people, in plain sight. I found that closed eyes were less likely to be seen than open eyes, and that people don't look at ground level, so sitting down hid you really quickly.

- I learnt exactly where to tread on the floor and stairs in order to move around the house silently.

Le jardinier et le printemps

I find my peace in the garden. 

I don't want to be living here. I don't think it's good for my mental health to feel so insecure. I don't think that the cats are happy here. I feel too far from the part of Norfolk that feels like home, and too far from Trouble.

And yet, when I'm gardening it does feel like home. I can't help but make future plans for it.

When we moved into the house here, the garden hadn't been touched in years. The lady who lived here said that the only time she entered the garden was to bury her cats. (Thankfully I've not discovered them yet). The garden, although fairly straight, is kind of in five parts. 

1) There's an adequate sized lawn. It's been undermined by moles, so you nearly lose a foot when walking across it. It did have rose bushes going mad in the middle, but we've removed all but one of these.

2) A large triple sycamore completes the lawn. 

3) Beyond the sycamore there are thirty foot fur trees on either side of the garden (not on our side of the fence). The height of the trees means that this part of the garden is almost completely shaded. Either side, along our fences, the ground had nothing but a few weeds growing. Someone put some raised beds along one side at some point, which had nothing but nettles in them.

4) There was a portion of lawn in the middle, but it was (and still is) very dominated by weeds. Giant thistles, nettles, hemlock, creeping Charlie, ground ivy, dandelions, dock leaves, goose grass, and daisies. It also had a giant unidentified bush taking up half of the potential space.

5) The very end of the garden is completely barren. You could fit two green houses there, so it's a frustrating waste of space. We can't put greenhouses or sheds there, because the entire garden has cat proofing around it to prevent the cats getting out. If they can jump on and then off, outbuildings, it would defeat the object of the cat proofing.

So what do I see when I look at that mess? A challenge. A project. A beauty that I want to harness.

(That large tree isn't even half way up the garden. The view of the rest of the garden is blocked by an innocent looking bush, just beyond the tree).

So, last summer I started the rehabilitation of the garden. I have a willing helper in Blob. He pulled out the rose bushes and demolished the bush for me. I sat on the ground trying to extricate the creeping crawling weeds from the little grass there was.

Along the sides, where it was almost totally barren, we pulled up the weeds, dug it all over, put down weed supressing membrane, and started planting. On one side of the garden the side bed is covered in slate. On the other it's covered in bark.

After the first year we've learnt that a lot of things don't survive here, even with a good feed and their own bed of compost, so I've been researching how to approach it. I've ordered some plants that should be happy here, which will be arriving next week.

The plans I have for the garden:

- obviously, plant up the beds we've created.

- where the bushes were, build a gazebo from reclaimed wood.

- allow nettles and weeds to grow in two of the raised beds, so that local insect and bug life is still ok here, but also so that those plants are contained.

- use the earth from the other raised beds to even out the garden where there are holes, etc.

- the back of the garden where nothing will grow, somehow turn into a place to relax, incorporating a fire pit.

- throw woodland wild flower seeds all over the top lawn.

I'm the one that potters out there each day, sitting on the ground pulling up weeds, listening to the birds, falling asleep at 3pm (I don't know why it's the same time each day). I'm also the one bossing Blob around in order to get the rest of my plans done 😁

So far this year I've mostly planted bricks. The beds look far better with the brick borders. Not that I've finished yet. I could have probably finished today, but I figure that when I'm no longer treating worms with respect, I should go do something else. Like write a rambling blog post that no one will read.

What a mess!

Therapie

Well, since this is supposed to be a mental health blog, I figured that it makes sense to write a post after each therapy session.

It's not long that I've been having therapy. Deciding in the middle of a Pandemic that I needed therapy could possibly be called bad timing. I'd felt like I was drowning for some time. A convoluted coincidence of events lead me to contacting a therapist recommended by another therapist.

So, I have an American therapist with tattoos, interesting piercings, and a Mohawk, who lives in Thailand. Sounds about right for me, doesn't it!

He's good. In a matter of weeks I felt that we were making more progress than I've ever made in any of the counseling I've had. I did say to him at the beginning, as I have done with various counselors, that I've a backlog of crap in my brain that I need sorting out, so I don't want to work on the here and now. It really bugs me that the counselors I've had, have always focused on the present. The present never goes away. Fixing the crap in my head will hopefully help me make a better present, in the future.

So today we looked at trust. I have a habit of either trusting people far too readily, or not trusting them at all. As an observation I can agree with this. However, I can't really comprehend how there can be an in between with trust. How do you trust someone a bit? I mean, there are people whom I know I can trust with certain things, but know that they have their limitations. Is that it? I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it's actually unfair to do that sometimes.

As a child I trusted some people, didn't trust others. But my dad I trusted even though he kept letting me down. I kept thinking that he'd come through for me. I suppose it started with little things, like needing help with my homework. He'd always tell me to look things up, or ask someone else. As the years progressed things became worse and worse with my step mother. I needed him to step in and mediate. I needed him to help. I needed assurance that my feelings were valid, that I was valid was a person. He let me down. Every time I tried to get help from him, he didn't come through. 

Therapist Man said today that some people just aren't emotionally equipped in the way that we need them to be. I think that's my dad. I know he struggled through that time, too. I feel responsible for his suffering. I should probably feel responsible regarding my step mother too. I don't.

Blaming myself is something else that Therapist Man has picked up on. I think it's quite a common thing that people do though.

Last session we discussed something that happened when I was at university. Twenty years ago. All of these years I've been holding on to guilt. During the last session I was able to understand that it wasn't my responsibility to take on that guilt. And yet, within hours of the therapy session I had sent an email to Therapy Man because I had remembered more detail of the incident. I didn't realise, when sending the email, that I was essentially blaming myself again.

I'd forgotten all about it by today though. During the two weeks since our last session I've felt sort of more light and airy in regards to that event. It happened, sure. But it wasn't my choice, or my fault, and my feelings have always been valid.

My feelings are valid.

My feelings are valid.

MY FEELINGS ARE VALID.

I'll have forgotten that by the next session.