Tag: compassion focused therapy

195. The letter.

At the midpoint of my psychology journey with K, I was informed that she writes a letter to her patients at the end of therapy. I should have been given this in our last session togethar but she admitted not being in the right frame of mind to complete it, and thus it would be posted to me.

Since our ending, I have been waiting desperately for that letter, and today it arrived.

At first read, I was angry with her. It seemed to me, to be to clinical in nature, and the lecturer in me couldn’t help but get annoyed by the typos and grammatical errors. Had she rushed it? At first read I couldn’t find the optimism, kudos and words of encouragemt that I had hoped for from K. At first read, my failings, stupid behaviours and inadequicies jumped from the pages, mocking me. I almost ripped it up and threw it in the bin.

I’ve since been to the gym, and upon returning home, I’ve given it a 2nd read. The letter is indeed a truthful representation of our journey together, and under careful scrutiny it does contain some kudos.

What I’ve learned from this letter and my expectations of it; is that there were some issues around transference that we never dealt with. In short I was expecting a letter from a “friend”; but I received one from a “therapist”

I really miss K, and I suspect this feeling will last for some time yet. She was awesome. I will keep the letter and remind myself to focus on the positives contained within it.

Loopy x

179. A sucker punch to the gut.

Today I had my last psychology session and now I can’t stop crying. I’m not ready to say good bye.

K has been my one constant through everything. I first met her on the psych ward, and I liked her instantly. It has always taken me multiple sessions to “click” with a therapist, but not with K. Her warmth and kindness swept up my broken shell, and for those one hour sessions I was cacooned in a place of safety, a place where my thoughts and feelings mattered, a place where I could let my demons roam without fear off judgement or rejection.

K has been my advocate, my champion and my rock. K is the type of person everyone needs in their life. She got me, in a way that no one else has ever done.

She’d admit herself that we’re quite similar characters and had we met through different circumstances we could have been good friends.

I’m feeling this loss heavily. I’m feeling vulnerable without her, and honestly it feels like someone who I really care about has died.

I guess I now need to learn to navigate this world without her, and put into practice all the things we worked on.

She’d want me to take care off myself this evening, so I will try.

Loopy x.

155. A compassionate letter.

I’ve been a little hard on myself lately. I’ve hit some bumps in the road. This afternoon though, I realised I have grown. When your in the midst of life, it’s often hard to sit back and take stock of your achievements as well as failures. I’m learning to forgive myself. This afternoon I sat down and penned my latest attempt at being compassionate towards myself. Although it makes me feel a little vulnerable, I’m going to share it with you all. I was sceptical at first, but actually this is a really good exercise. It feels odd and cumbersome at first, but go on, give it a go. Don’t over think it, just put pen to paper and see what happens.

Loopy x

140. A Compassionate Letter.

For this weeks psychology homework, I’ve been tasked with writing a compassionate letter to myself. The last time I sat and wrote a hand written letter was when I penned my suicide note on August 3rd.  That in itself made this feel a little difficult.

I did give it a go, but I found this really tough.  The perfectionist in me wanted to plan it out, write it logically with good flow and appropriate paragraghs, but the advice given on the homework sheet was to just let it flow.  I’m not a let it flow kind of person. I feel like I’ve failed at this although I guess it will just take practice.  When I’ve written one I’m happy with I will share it with you all. I have a psychology session tomorrow and I’m not sure I’m even comfortable sharing it with her.

I ended the letter with “you need to stop binging”.  I’m struggling with food at the moment.  Even though I’m hitting the gym regularly the numbers on the scale keep rising.  I hate my fat disugusting body, which paradoxically makes me binge………….and then I purge…. I’m at a loss here. It must be the meds, and I can’t stop those. I really don’t know how to control this.

Loopy x.

119. Breathing in light, and releasing negativity

I pumped those pedals hard tonight.  It didn’t matter in which direction I travelled the wind was hitting me square in the face. I didn’t want to stop; I’m not sure why.  I had to return home though, given recent history and the fact that I usually only do around 30 minutes, I thought OH might start to worry. 45 minutes against the wind was good though.  I tried something a little different tonight; something my psychologist had mentioned to me; “Breathing in light and releasing negativity”.  It’s dark out so I breathed in the orange glow of street lamps and breathed out a heavenly white beam (it was easy to visualise with my bike light glistening against the tarmac.).  Thinking about it; I should probably have breathed in the heavenly beam but it kind off worked anyway.  I’m not very good at these abstract methods of finding inner tranquility, but I need to practice. The benefit tonight, was that whilst focusing on light; I wasn’t really thinking.  I wasn’t self destructing or harbouring thoughts of worthlessness, I was merely focusing on breathing light. Off course once I stopped my head cogs picked up pace again.  I do however, need to become more comfortable with these abstract concepts.

The next few weeks wiil be all about finding a compassionate self, and the excercises are all a bit abstract and uncomfortable for me.  My psychologist will be using good old fashioned “chair work”.  I will be encouarged to engage in dialogue with an imagined person (possibly my younger self, or something symbolic such as my inner critic) or indeed I may have to assume the roles of both parties in a conversation.  The emphasis will be on self reflection and change, in the hope of removing (or at least reducing) my tendancy to self criticise and ruminate.

Before I go; Night 2 of the “Keep Sally Up” challenge has killed me.  I wanted to self harm earlier, but I’ve no need to now by abs/flabs are burning.

Loopy x.

61. Psychology at last.

So from week 1 in here it was pretty much agreed that I would benefit from psychology.  It has taken forever, but today I finally met with one.  It was both brilliant, as I felt comfortable talking with her, and terrible because I’d been feeling low today anyway and once you start talking about stuff it sort of opens up the floodgates.

I told her a little about my PTSD past and a little about how I feel towards my son. That was enough for today. It was draining.  I then went back to my room, head racing and wept pretty uncontrollably for about 20 minutes. I dragged myself to lunch, took it back to my room and wept some more.  I don’t know how I’m ever going to get through all this.  I hate myself, I’m ugly, I’m (technically) disabled, I’m a terrible mother, I suck at my job and I don’t know why,  but all the guilt I felt about that drowning experience (see the blue face post) has resurfaced and it’s showing itself everywhere.

To end on a positive though we have decided compassion focused therapy is the way to go.  At least I feel like there might be some progress.

Loopy x.