How I Lost Hope By Looking to Therapy As THE Solution

I'm going to share some words written a year ago today. Things were not good. Six months to the day later we had an idea about whether we'd gained enough mental stability to take one very short course. Today we got notice that the certificate for another qualification was ready to collect. We also burst into tears at the optician which wasn't good. However, we went to a writing group, discussed a forthcoming trip to London, and went to the theatre. All of which was good. I'm not going to define the day by the part that wasn't good.

Why am I going to share these words of pain and despair when they're not happy?

For one reason only. Something that I've learned and absorbed in the last year. Because a year ago one of the major reasons for distress was a waiting list. I'd been promised therapy would begin at a certain time and I'd placed hope in that therapy. The specialist DID therapy was what I needed. It was the solution, the way forward, and nothing much could improve without it. But then I was told the original promise wasn't true and that I probably had longer to wait after waiting so long than I did at the beginning.

That's something I see quite frequently. Hope and power placed in a mental health service. Hope and power removed from the mental health service user, or the person hoping to become one. I see people in despair because they are not in the service they need, receiving the therapy they need. And so they think, at least on some level, that there is no hope.  I also see people in despair because they reach the top of the waiting list, receive some input from services, and life has not been solved.

In the last year I've learned this to be a bullshit way of thinking. The service may help someone lots. It may harm them. But outside of the service, the structure, the particular view, the NHS mental health strengths and weaknesses, there is always hope.  In the end, healing has to come from within, whether or not there's a psychologist to guide parts of the way.

How have I learned this? Simply by doing so much work for myself, outside of the structures. Simply. That's a very inadequate word for something that wasn't necessarily simple at all and which was difficult.

The tailored DID therapy comes in three stages. Firstly, stabilisation. I've worked so hard at that, without therapy and continue to work at it. Thirdly, building a life. I'm doing that too, achieving and creating realistic short and long term goals. Secondly, direct trauma work. Now that's the one that I almost certainly would need help with, had I not decided that this isn't the right time for it.  Trauma therapy is definitely safer with wise assistance.

I'm not saying services are bad things. I'm not saying that they can't be very useful. They can help us in ways in which it would be very difficult to help ourselves.

I am saying that not being in a service is not a rational cause for despair or hopelessness. I'm saying that we are powerful, incredible people who can learn to do more for ourselves. I'd also say it's tough and that learning of our power can take time.

I am saying that the despair I felt a year ago rose up, at least in part, from an idea that was wrong. The idea that I couldn't sort out a lot for myself. It turned out I could, even with this diagnosis and truth that was so difficult to come to terms with.  I ran out of hope.  I forgot that hope is contained more within us than in the therapist's office, no matter how good that therapy may be.

As for the mattress, I still have it.  One of these days I'll get something much better.  The night after that day will be bliss.



Another day cancelled. Started rough but doable with things arranged to look forward to. Worsened. Eventually blotted from the calendar including all five places I wanted to be at different times. The first two were cancelled anyway.

Please send pink fluffy unicorns. Actually don't. On this day they'd only poop on the carpet and I haven't got the ability to clean up unicorn poop right now.

Please send fairy godmother therapist / sleep magician / healthy but tasty food I don't have to think about resulting in a third meal of tears today / access to nonexistent support / or even some kind of drug to take some crap away without fucking me up like any drug so far invented does.

Please send miracles. Please send a mattress that isn't crap and wasn't part of a £45 secondhand double bed. Please send the ability to adequately look after myself long-term. Please send functioning skills so I can get house things fixed some of which needed fixing the day I moved. Please send curtains and curtain poles fitted at my windows.

Please send a crisis team that isn't rubbish. Please supernaturally enable my GP on Wednesday to find me help that doesn't feel too far away to survive for.

Please don't tell me it'll get better. I've heard that for all my life. Today I won't believe you.

Please don't send me your thoughts. Or your love. Or light. Or bloody universal vibrations. And definitely not your prayers to a God I don't believe in. Your prayers help you to feel better about me but they don't affect me. All of those things in a social media message are of less use than the crisis team saying to drink yet more tea.

Please send lift to the wilderness tomorrow where my head will quieten for a while.

Please send hope. Right now I've run out.

Please send a head that is only typing as another distraction having lost the energy and focus for others. Please take away the destructive thoughts.

Please send hope and belief that I can get through to whenever therapy begins. November they say. But who knows?

#struggling
#SafeHugNeeded - a rare thing