My first psychotherapy session - hated it!

If I were to sum up, in three words,  how the first psychotherapy session went it would be: awful, daunting and awkward. To be honest, that wasn't what I was expecting. I was expecting the session to be smooth and comforting. 

So here's the story:
As usual, my heart was racing and my palms were sweating when I was sitting in the waiting room, but a bit of anxiety is normal when meeting someone new. As soon as the psychotherapist walked into the waiting room and introduced herself I thought 'oh she seems nice'.

Once we went into the meeting room we exchanged small talk and then spoke about what kind of difficulties that I feel I need help in and what psychotherapy generally is. So it started off good but when I mentioned the difficulties I was experiencing it seemed as though she was unprepared for the meeting. 

As the meeting progressed, she really annoyed me. I don't even know where to begin. 

1-  She didn't show me any compassion when I spoke to her about a subject that was very difficult for me to talk about. 

2- She also told me she got a phone call from my mentor about something really serious. She asked me to corroborate if the person who contacted her was a school counsellor but i told her she's a mentor. Despite making it explicitly clear that she is my mentor and NOT my counsellor, the psychotherapist told me that it would be best if I stopped seeing my mentor as things would get 'messy' and i might get 'confused'. I found her quite patronising because i'm 17 and I think I can distinguish between the advice they both give so why on earth would i get confused? It was also upsetting because it almost felt as though I had to choose between them two. I adore my mentor and i'm not going to stop seeing her just because the psychotherapist said so.

3- I felt like I wasn't being listened to because, as I mentioned before, I made it clear that my mentor wasn't a counsellor. Also, when I spoke about difficult topics I felt like she totally ignored me.

4- At the start of the meeting I told the psychotherapist that I had left education but yet again she didn't listen because when I later mentioned that again she didn't react in a helpful way. She stared at me for a good 20 seconds and said nothing. She was just shocked and that made me feel quite bad and embarrassed. I didn't expect her to look surprised. After the awkward silence, her response was 'so here we are half way in to the session and you have just dropped a bombshell on me'. I was just speechless because she didn't listen to me properly, despite me making it clear at the start of the meeting that I had left education. I just couldn't form any words. 

To be honest, I found her really intimidating and I felt excruciating discomfort talking to her. However, I'm still going to continue seeing her and give her a chance because maybe this was just a bad start and I might feel comfortable with her in the upcoming sessions. But if she continues to make me feel uncomfortable then I will ask my psychiatrist to refer me to someone else.

Sorry about my long rant! I had to let it all out.

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Big decisions

So I had a meeting with my head of year and my withdrawal from all exams has been made official which means from here onwards I wont be attending school. 

I spoke to her about maybe just doing my English Language exam and she said that would be possible however I would need to speak to my English teachers to see what their opinion is regarding this. We also spoke briefly about applying to different sixth forms and colleges but this will be talked about in depth on a further date. I'm not going to lie i'm feeling really scared about going to another sixth form or college. It's going to be a big change for me but my mentor said she would help me with the transition rather than throw me in the deep end. 

This is a big decision that i've made and I don't even want to begin to think about how my parents will react when they find out. 

Tug of war

Things haven't been great lately. Well, things haven't been great for me this whole academic year. I feel like i'm in a tug of war. On the one end there's my grades and education but on the other end is my health and happiness. My head of year always tells me to put my health and happiness first before anything but I know she wants me to stay in education and get the grades I deserve - I want that too. I want to do well with my A-levels and I want to succeed but i feel like my future is just a blur. I'm at a point in life where I don't know what I want to do with my life and whether i've chosen the right A-level courses. 

To top it off, today has just been an awful day for me. I had to retake my History mock exam and whilst taking the exam I started hallucinating. I'm not going to go in depth about the hallucinations as that will be talked about in a different blog post. But when I started hallucinating i was terrified and I spoke about it with the year co-ordinator as she was present when the hallucination took place. To my surprise, she was really empathetic and caring which was shocking as she's not someone who comes across as caring. Anyways, she told me that she was concerned about my health and so she decided that it would be best for her to withdraw me from the exams and allow me to retake Year 12. It was a lot to process but after a hard, long think about it I thought i've got nothing to lose and maybe restarting the year would be a good thing. At least the time between now and september will give me the chance to think about the appropriate courses that I could choose and possible career options. Although today was awful, it ended on a positive note. 

I feel like everything is balanced because now I can focus on getting better and then start Year 12 again. I understand that recovery isn't straightforward as there will probably be bumps on this journey. I don't expect to be cured by september but what I do want is to be able to manage stressful situations better than i already do. 

I also thought i'd take this opportunity to thank my friend Karen for supporting me with the decision to restart Year 12. Love you. 

Thank you all for reading this post and I hope we can all embark on the journey of recovery. 

Does diagnosis matter?

Every time i'm talking to a stranger in the CAMHS waiting room, or when i'm having a conversation with a friend I am constantly asked what my diagnosis is. Now, honestly speaking, when I first started going CAMHS i was eager to know what was wrong with me. I wanted to know why i was feeling and behaving the way i was, I also wanted to know why i was experiencing hallucinations. I really wanted answers and i wanted to be cured. Of course, CAMHS are not here to magically cure you, me or anyone they're here to help me cope with the difficulties I am experiencing.

Back to the question of does a diagnosis really matter? The short answer to that is no it doesn't matter. Allow me to explain why - being given a diagnosis wont change how you feel or how you behave it will just put a label on it. So say for example  you've been  having the following symptoms: low mood, suicidal thoughts, increased/decreased appetite, less/more sleep and then you are diagnosed with depression, what difference will the label make? You're still going to be experiencing those symptoms but the only difference is that there's a label to it. What's more important being given a diagnosis or having those symptoms treated? I hope your answer is having those symptoms treated because that's what the mental health professionals are here for - to help treat those symptoms.

Now for those of you who, like me, haven't been given an official diagnosis.  Your problems are just as important as those who have been given a diagnosis. Just because you haven't been given a diagnosis of bulimia it doesn't mean the person next to you who's been diagnosed with bulimia is more important than you. Wrong - you both are equally important. You both are going through the same if not similar struggles and you both deserve to be helped, regardless of diagnosis. And if i'm honest, your diagnosis is for the mental health professional to know. This is because that way they can help give you the best treatment suitable to your needs. 

Before, I wanted to know what my diagnosis was but now I don't care. All i care about is recovering and living a happier and healthier life. I want to be able to live my life again and be myself again, rather than be the symptoms. I want all the symptoms to go away. 

To those of you who are seeing CAMHS or a different service I wish you all the best of luck and I hope you all recover! 

My self harm story (It may be triggering)

I first started self harming when I was in primary school and it started with me scratching and biting myself. At the time I didn't even know I was self harming, I didn't even know the term 'self harm' existed until I turned 14. Around the age of 12, I began using sharp objects to cut myself and nobody knew, except myself of course. Self harming became a little secret of mine and nobody could find out. But secrets don't last, well for me it didn't. A girl noticed how bad my arms were and made a huge deal out of it. She kept telling me to go to the medical room but i was adamant. Later, my English teacher came out to see what we were all bickering about and the girl had told her I had self harmed. I felt so ashamed and embarrassed and I wanted to get out of that situation. I promised the teacher I would go to the medical room but I didn't. A few minutes later, I had my head of year, year co-ordinator and the child protection officer looking for me and once they found me they took me in to the medical room. They asked me so many questions like did someone do this to you? Did you cut yourself? Why did you cut yourself? What did you use? Was the object clean? All these questions were just terrifying for me to answer. At the time I was already referred to a therapist so obviously the school notified her about this. 

So, the question I am always asked is why do I self harm? The answer to this is that self harming was a coping mechanism for me. It was a way for me to cope with the overwhelming feelings, it was a way for me to feel like I was in control of my body and that nobody could hurt me, It was a way for me to feel like I was alive. Self harm became a huge part of my life and I couldn't stop doing it as it was addictive. 

Another question I was commonly asked was did I learn to self harm from my emo friends? My answer to that is firstly these friends of mines were not emo, they see themselves as goths. Secondly, they didn't teach me how to self harm, in fact nobody did. None of my friends, at the time, were self harming and self harming was a topic which none of them understood.

I never liked talking about self harm with anyone due to the stigma around it. I also didn't want anyone knowing I self harmed incase they started doing it because of me. When I first found out a few of my friends were self harming there was always a part of me that thought it was all my fault and they started it because of me. I don't think there is anyone out there in the world who would want to feel like they are the cause of a person self harming - it's a horrible feeling. However, the other part of me thought maybe it wasn't because of me. Maybe I wasn't the reason why they did. 

Every self harmer has a different story and this is my story. Thank you for reading this. Love you all.

A bit about what I was experiencing

During my time at CAMHS,  I was never given an official diagnosis. But the reason why I got referred to CAMHS was because I told my mentor about the hallucinations that I was experiencing and how I was unable to cope with life. Initially, she suggested I see my old therapist again, who worked at a different service,  or see a different therapist. However, I refused only because the service wasn't funded by the NHS anymore, and I was reluctant to have the school pay for my treatment. So finally she suggested CAMHS to me and I agreed to seeing them. To admit to my mentor that I needed help was probably the hardest thing for me  but i'm so glad I did because if I didn't then all my problems might have escalated out of control and I would have caused permanent damage to myself. 

Low moods

Aside hearing voices and seeing things, for many years I was always feeling low. Every night I would cry myself to sleep and found that getting up for school was a huge effort for me. I didn't enjoy doing the things i used to enjoy doing and being around friends was something I hated.  I know it's unpleasant but my low moods had affected my relationships with my friends. However, these past few months I have been trying my best to be around them but there are days where I can't help but withdraw myself from them. My low mood is difficult for me to deal with and it is often something I find difficult to explain to any of my friends. Thankfully my two best friends, Amy and Dan, understood as they've been through similar situations as me. They've done everything they could to ensure  I was feeling safe and getting the help that I needed and I am truly grateful for having them in my life. Honestly, without their support I would not have had the courage to tell my mentor how I was feeling. 

Eating problems

I have always lacked confidence in myself and felt inadequate academically and weight-wise. I've always thought I was fat and this was partly because in Year 7 I was constantly told I was fat by my peers and that put a huge dent on my self esteem. Looking back at my pictures in Year 7, I was never fat in fact my weight was perfectly normal but back then i didn't see that. Since then, I would restrict what I was eating and I would over exercise. Once i hit year 10, I started purging and taking laxatives but this time it wasn't solely to do with losing weight, it was more about having control over my body and punishing myself. I really hated myself so much. During that time, I was being physically and emotionally abused and I thought it was all my fault. I thought I deserved it and I just kept on punishing myself. Even now in Year 12 i'm still battling with my eating problems. Although i've stopped taking laxatives, I still purge it's such an emotional experience having to go to the toilet and stick a finger down my throat every time I eat. It tears me apart. It also hurts me every time people at school make jokes about me eating food. It makes me feel worse than I already do and tempts me to purge even more. To them it might be a joke but to me it's not. If only they knew how much their words affect me. 

Thank you all for reading this long post and hopefully in my next blog I will go into more depth about my hallucinations and also talk about my experience with self harm and anxiety. This post has been difficult for me to write so apologies about my awful writing. I tried to be as concise as I could. Stay safe everyone, bye :)

Welcome to my first new blog!

Hi everyone! hope you're all good. So my upcoming blogs will talk about various mental health topics however right now i haven't decided what i'm going to write. But what i do know is that i will be talking about my experience with mental health problems. Recently on the website http://www.time-to-change.org.uk/ i made a pledge that i would write a blog about my mental health problems to help break stigma. Right now, i do want to stay anonymous online and hopefully as time goes by i will be able to put a face and a name to this blog once i feel comfortable! In the meantime, i want this blog to show you all that you are not alone and recovery is possible, whether it's from self harm or mental illnesses etc. Yes recovery isn't straightforward but with the right support recovery will be possible. I've been seeing CAMHS since October 2012 and finally i am going to be receiving treatment, which will be psychotherapy. In the coming weeks, I will write a blog to update you all on how it's going and whether i feel psychotherapy is helping. Stay safe everyone, bye :)