Episode Summary
In this short update, I share what happened in my second therapy session and a follow up appointment I had today. Nothing much to report, other than they happened and I still have to deal with the challenges of the hear and now.
Episode Transcript (Edited)
Hi and welcome to this episode of Hope, Help, Happiness.
Well, yesterday I had a second counselling session and I just wanted to talk about that today. I also had a follow up appointment with the crisis team today as well. So I’ve had two appointments in short succession and I just want to quickly go over those.
So yesterday – the therapy session. It’s difficult to reflect back on what was talked about because the session goes so quickly. It’s a meandering, rambling conversation around the things that come up or have come up. We reviewed what happened before in the last session. And I think we both agreed the first session was simply a brain dump of all the issues I was facing and challenges I was facing. We agreed there was a lot of stuff going on.
We talked a little bit about the emotional reaction I had last time and how surprised I was. We explored a few other topics and the conversation seemed to go from one thing to another. There’s no real strong thread I can draw out and talk about other than I sat down there for 45 minutes and talked.
It’s difficult at this stage to see where this is going to go because it’s still the early days. We’re still skimming over the top of the challenges I’m facing. I think the emotional reaction I had in the first session is encouraging and there is some benefit in doing this level of work.
And that’s really all I can say about it.
So it’s going to happen on a weekly basis and I’ll still keep doing it. It’s a rather passive approach to dealing with what’s gone in the past and it is working on the background causes rather than the challenges I’m currently facing.
I feel at the moment I still have lots to do. And my frustration at the moment is I’m still faced with lots of challenges around the consequences of allowing my mental state to get to where it was. Physically, I’m out of shape still. I’m unfit, I’m tight and I still feel tense.
There’s still the issue of low self esteem and underlying levels of insecurity. I still fear for the future about what is going to happen in terms of me pulling myself out of the doldrums and getting back to being a functional revenue-generating professional. I’ve also still got these issues of learned helplessness.
So there’s lots of stuff still to deal with.
Today I had a follow up appointment with the crisis team, just check where I was. And essentially the summary of that conversation was that I am no longer at risk and I’m in a relatively positive state.
I’m no longer suffering from the dark side of the feelings of depression. I feel in a good place. I feel positive, I feel optimistic about what can happen. But I’ve still got the struggles of the challenges I’ve mentioned before. So that’s where I’m at.
This afternoon I came back and I’m still a bit tired from the whole process. I’m emotionally drained, so I needed to take a nap just to recover from it.
I’m starting to be a little bit frustrated with myself about what I need to start doing. There’s still a reluctance to get going. There’s still a fear. I think there’s still a learned helplessness in place.
I can’t allow the rate of inactivity to continue at this level because otherwise I’ll just never get anything done. I think at the moment, it’s positive how I’m feeling and how I am at the moment. But there is frustration that I’m still finding resistance and that I’m not making progress as fast as I would like.
But that’s life, I suppose. And I’ll deal with it. So that’s all I wanted to share with you today.
Speak to you again tomorrow.
