Young Writers Society

This is another piece of my autobiographical writing. I want to put a trigger warning here, there is mention of self harm (not graphic), so if you would be easily triggered, please do not read. Again, being autobiographical I would appreciate reviews that don't suggest changing the plot. Believe me, people have done it.

My second attempt at therapy was vastly different to my first. I had an appointment all set up with my new psychologist, John. I was happy that it would be a man. This was much closer to my expectations of therapy, which were dreams closer to Freudian Psycho Analysis. John’s office was in the city, and my parents allowed me to catch the bus there on my own. It felt very grown up, taking myself off to my therapy appointment like the screwed up adult we all wanted to be. With my Doctors letter in hand, I arrived fifteen minutes early so that I could stand outside contemplating vomiting on the pavement or running away. Eventually, sweaty and nauseous I walked in the front door of the offices to a room that was completely empty.

At this point I was dealing with some pretty big demons. I was struggling under the life of a teenager combined with the roots of a serious mental health problem. I had been self harming for some time, and even I knew that things were getting out of hand.

My self harming had begun at a relatively young age, and it started in innocence, before I knew what self harming was. As I’d gotten older my self harming behaviour became fused to my feelings of anger, feelings that I knew were too dangerous to express. I would rush to my room, block out all the noise with my headphones, and commit damage to my body that turned out to be permanent. It was an angsty, lonely time, and I was reaching out desperately for help.

Eventually I told someone about the self harming. Once the cat was out of the bag I felt a strange responsibility to continue doing it. It was almost a way of reassuring myself, of telling people ‘yes, I’m messed up, you see? Look at what I’m doing to myself. What are you going to do?’ I placed that burden on too many people who couldn’t handle it before I agreed to go back to therapy.

John was tall, dark-haired and bearded. He looked absolutely perfect. He filled all of the criteria that Linda didn’t. In my first session we took a brief trip through my childhood, talked about my family and my school. At the end my Dad was there; ready to take care of the very awkward process of paying for services. This was always something that I felt uncomfortable about, paying for therapy. I think I struggled with the idea that these people were just doing a job. I needed to believe that they cared. I needed to know that I was more important than money. I needed so much, I leeched what I could, and cut away what I couldn’t.

In the few years that I saw John there was a lot of silence. I found out years later that this is a technique used by psychologists. Long periods of silence are supposed to bring out sudden and honest comments from patients. I don’t think I ever made a comment that sudden or honest. This therapy was more like a game. He would throw out a question, way too close to home, and I would throw a smoke bomb, and exit stage left. There were too many secrets. Secrets that were eating at me, secrets that wanted to get out. But when you grow up with lots of secrets, you know that the consequences of telling them are catastrophic. I thought that then they would know, they would know what I was. Then it would be over, because who would care about a small, dirty, bad little girl?

John was a kind man, and he taught me a lot about Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and the ways I could handle my anxiety and my depression. He listened very intently, and he expressed that he felt I was intelligent and engaging. He told me that he liked talking to me. It was more than two years in to our time together that things in my life began to escalate. I came to therapy, and I dropped the big bomb. The biggest one. I cannot express the fear that goes with this confession. I laid it down straight. ‘I want to die’.

Every one of my fears was realised. He had nothing to say. He didn’t even blink. I left that session with nothing more than I’d arrived with, a heavy sense of despair and loneliness. What was I going to do? I had unloaded a massive secret, risked the involvement of my parents and my doctor. But nothing had happened.

So John was sacked. I told my parents that I didn’t need therapy anymore, and that I was going to go to university and be strong and capable, look after myself like a real adult. More than ever, I kept my secrets close. I would never face that kind of disappointment again, even if it meant dying for it.