At the age of 25, I've been in therapy for a perfect decade. That includes a child psychologist, various bouts of NHS cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and psychotherapy, and various private psychotherapists. If this was a marriage, it'd be a tin-slash-aluminium anniversary – a metal that supposedly represents how a successful partnership can be bent without being broken. Which is fitting, considering I've had phases of thinking of canning it altogether, convinced it isn't working, before crawling back with my tail between my legs.
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At different points, my therapy has been for specific issues, as well as other difficulties that have fallen short of clear categorisation. I absolutely can't claim to understand how therapy can work for different illnesses, and every person will respond to mental health treatment differently. Still, I've realised a lot of things through trial and error that I wish someone had told me before I started.A caveat before we begin. The NHS is severely underfunded, to the point of being near-hopeless when it comes to mental health. You will truly understand the meaning of mental health crisis when you've been on a CBT waiting list to treat depression for months, only to find out the treatment you'll receive is for half an hour, once a week, for ten weeks – and that if you miss or rearrange two sessions because you're so depressed, you're discharged. If you have a chronic mental illness and need long-term access to a psychotherapist, god help you.That said, just because treatment is hard to get, resist feeling guilty for getting it. Don't think you aren't "sick enough" to have it, because that lands you in a cycle of deterring yourself from asking for help when you need to. Similarly, don't feel guilty because you are ill and can pay for therapy.Therapists are people, and people can be irritating. It's probably not imperative that you actively like your therapist – unless your relationship is extremely unprofessional, you're not about to invite them for birthday pints – but you do have to find them agreeable and, more importantly, like their approach.Some therapists are outwardly empathetic. I had one who was such a genuinely kind man that he'd run well over the hour I was supposed to be there, often into two or three, and recommend fiction and TV shows he knew I'd like. Going to his house was a bit like paying to visit your grandad, but with more existential chat. I'd wait until I'd walked around the corner after a session, as he waved me off from his doorstep, and burst into tears because he was nice to me, an uncomfortable reminder that I wasn't being very nice to myself.
It's not easy to get therapy
Shop around for someone who works for you
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Others are clinical and hard and let you project whatever you want onto their response to you. You sit, deflated, in the crease of their sofa, snotty-nosed and chest heaving with sobs after recalling visceral details of a trauma, and their face is like a mirror. You almost want to say, "Excuse me, did you hear the miserable thing I just said?" Neither approach is wrong, per se, as long as you respond well and feel comfortable with it. I, perversely, have come to enjoy the latter.
If you're private, you're allowed to ditch them or cheat on them by testing out someone else behind their back. Don't buy into that stupid British attitude of sticking a commitment out because you've picked one now, haven't you, mate, and it'd be a tiny bit awkward to say it's not working. This is even more important if you've managed to access NHS treatment. If the person giving you CBT is a trainee and only reading off a print-out, shrugging helplessly when you ask personalised questions (this happened to me twice), tell your GP or them that you need someone else. You better believe that ten-week course will come to an abrupt end, so you deserve to get the most from it.This desire for change can happen at any point, and I've learnt that a therapist who helps you work through one "issue" successfully might not be the best person to shed light on another. After a significant relationship ended I knew there was some sex and sexuality grey matter that I wanted untangling, and I quickly realised that the straight male therapist I'd been with for a while – who actually had a specialism in relationships – wasn't grasping the true essence of what I was saying when it related to being a young woman and my interactions with men. I ghosted him by never arranging the next meeting, because I couldn't face saying goodbye. I handled it like an utter child, but the move was the right thing to do; I quickly found a female therapist who could bring a shared history to the discussion."When my therapist tells me they're going on a three-week cruise the week before they leave, I'll be outraged, thinking, 'How selfish. What do you expect me to do now? Look after myself?'"
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You'll want them to like you – get over this quickly
Don't hold back on the dirt
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Communicate early on what you want to get out of it
You won't remember what they said that helped, or at least the nuances, and grasping at it after the session will be impossible
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My therapist kept asking me earnest hypothetical things you'd imagine a therapist to ask, like, "Imagine you went to find your mum to tell her a problem – where was she in the house? How would she respond?" and "How does that make Younger You feel? What do you then do after feeling ignored?" She then dragged out some scarily accurate analysis about me feeling like being a singular unit is the safest and only viable option, especially for when I'm struggling with my mental health, because relationships are temporal, depressing and dangerous to get tied into. That written down looks obvious, nothing, bullshit. But the way she said it, at the time, shattered me.I'll always write some notes when I leave to try to capture some of it. But often, you have to accept that whatever it was that made perfect sense is now just a nugget nestled somewhere in your subconscious. The reason it seems so poignant at the time is usually just because it's the first time you've heard it – but you're now another step along, whether you realise it or not.I had a therapist who told me repeatedly to make this big life decision. I ended up making the change, but I'm still acutely aware that I only did it because I was told to. There was no major threat to my health or life. Therapists are there to advise, to suggest and to guide; never let them take you to a place you don't like. Every move you make regarding how your life affects your mental health is – and should remain – within your control.After ten years of this, I have no idea whether I was this much of a over-sharer to start with, or whether the fact I'm so used to splurging everything that now, like a cow edging into its stall to be milked, it just automatically happens. I'm ridiculously shameless in real life. It's very hard to embarrass me. Nothing that happens to me in real life can be worse than what happens in that room on a weekly basis, and this carries over to relationships. Therapy has improved my relationships with people more than I can quantify. I'll talk to a stranger in the street about anything. I have brilliantly honest friendships, where both sides know we can talk about anything; but because I'm only ever days away from talking about my mental health, I don't feel the need to bang on about it unless I'm really struggling. If anything, it's the last thing I want to speak about. Male friends like that I can be an armchair psychologist for them when they don't feel comfortable talking to other mates. People I date or are in a relationship with love it because I can use my session to consider any problems that crop up between us. It's like couples therapy, without them having to pay or show up.
Recognise that your therapist shouldn't be telling you what to do, only advising
Your relationships with other people will change
"I always suspect therapists get curious and do a internet search of me. They're as human as the rest of us. I'd do it. I'd 100 percent do it."
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