Counselling

I've turned full circle.

When I first started counselling, I was too afraid to have individual sessions. There's something very frightening about sitting in a room with a stranger talking about your innermost fears and emotions; it's so unnatural to allow someone you don't know to enter into something so private. There's also something very clinical about counselling: the waiting with strangers and the recognitition that you are imposing on their very private problems, the little rooms with artificially laid out seating patterns that are meant to be friendly, the taking of notes as you speak....

Email counselling is very different. There's no invasion of privacy - just me, my laptop and the words. I always found email counselling very theraputic; the process of purging my emotions was enough to help me through the week, to last that little bit longer. Knowing that someone is going to reply feels like an annonymous acceptance - someone out there sympathises and agrees.

It was so hard to admit I needed more help. Once it became clear that email counselling wasn't doing enough to help, it felt like the only choice was 'real' counselling. Even then I didn't give in lightly. I did everything else first. Sitting there and telling your doctor that you think you are crazy is somehow one step easier than talking to a stranger. But somehow I found the courage to go, and for a while, it helped. Once I'd hit rock bottom, it was the turning point I needed and I did start to recover.

So I stopped. I thought I was ready to stand on my own two feet. I thought I had already made that new beginning that I needed. And I was wrong, so spectacularly wrong. My hands are blistered, my breathing too rapid and my eyes once again too used to tears.

And now I've admitted defeat, and I'm starting again. I await an email from my new counsellor.

Fighting back

Sometimes I get this feeling like everything is ending around me. The air somehow seems heavier and I find myself fighting to breathe. And the faster I breathe to try and stop the fear, the more I find myself losing control.

Sometimes I find myself scratching. Sometimes I do it deliberately because I need something to slow myself down; because the pain brings me back to reality. Sometimes I do it because I convince myself that I deserve the pain. I don't like doing it and yet it's like a cure, and I know that in allowing myself to inflict this pain I will find a release from the moment. Everytime I begin to panic I find myself looking at the scars and once again my mind fights with itself.

I don't know what brings me to do it but I know I should stop. And while I still get that urge to do it, I am fighting it. I am keeping my hands occupied. Making things, scribbling, baking, anything. Just holding a pen can sometimes be enough. I am fighting against the urge because I want to be me again.

And I am beginning to get better.