February blog
'Therapy gave meback my life'
The first time I sat in a counselling room the silence felt deafening. The tick of the clock felt so loud - as if it filled the room - every second reminding me how long I had been sitting there, feeling exposed. The walls seemed to lean in; the air seemed so thick and stale. My throught tightened, my heart beat faster, and the urge to jump out of the chair and run for the door felt almost overwhelming. I'd been in firefights and gun battles where bulets cracked in the air and explosions shook the ground beneath my feet - but nothing before had ever felt as unbearable as that quiet room, staring at a stranger, knowiwg he expected me to speak.
When I was medically discharged from the army after being injured in Afghanistan it felt as though my whole world collapsed around me. One day I wore a uniform, I had purpose, a brotherhood; the next day it was all gone. I felt stripped of my identity, drifting in a life I didn't recognise. Without warning, anger, sadness and despair became my constant companions. I turned to alocohol and gambling to numb what I couldn't face. But sitting in that counselling room was the first time I realised that what I was carrying coouldn't be drowned out or outrun - it had to be faced, and I wouldn't have to face it alone.
At first I fought against the process. All I wanted was answers, quick fixes or ways to cope. But what I got was patient silences, thoughtful reflections and difficult questions. Anger surged when I was invited to reflect, sadness pulled me when memories surfaced and despair whispered that nothing could ever change. More than once I walked out after a session convinced I wouldn't come back, but I did, and each time it was a new turning point.
In those early sessions the work was all about trust - learning that my therapist wasn't there to judge me or to tell me who I should be. He was there to sit with me however messy it got. It took weeks before I could finally say how I was really feeling, but when I did the relief was almost overwhelming. Rage poured out of me in one session, grief in another - tears that I'd been hlding back for years. It felt like finally being seen for the first time in a long time.
Over time counselling gave me the space I needed. Session by session I began to notice patterns in my thinking and catch the harsh inner voice that told me I was weak or broken. My therapist helped me slow the thoughts down, examine them and challenge them. It ws exhausting at times but also empowering. For the first time in my life I began to feel like I had choices and not just reactions.
Along the way there were breakthroughs I didn't expect. I learned that my anger wasn't simply destructive behaviour - it was a signal of my loss. I learned that sadnes wasn't shameful and that despair wasn't permanent; they were the weight of carrying everything alone. Counselling didn't erase these emotions but helped to transform my relationship with them. I stopped fighting them and began to listen to what they were telling me.
The journey wasn't linear. I stumbled many times, relapsed more than once and doubted myself more frequently than I can count. But each time I came back to the room I was a little stronger, a little clearer and a little more able to carry what had once threatened to break me. The silence I had once hated became a place I could breathe. The ticking clock no longer taunted me but reminded me that healing was happening, minute by minute.
In time I moved beyond simply surviving. The process of being understood and given space to sit with my emotions gave me a new purpose. Counselling hadn't just helped me rebuild my life - it gave me a new calling. I began training as a counsellor, determined to offer to others what I had been offered to me; a place where they can face the unfaceable and know they are not alone.
Today I have the privilege of sitting in the other chair, providing the patient silences that once terrified me, giving the thoughtful reflections back and offering the difficult questions. I listen to the anger, sadness and despair of others knowing that however unbearable right now they can be survived.
Therapy didn' just chage my life, it gave me back my life - with a chance to help others find theirs.
Article by Thomas Quayle MBACP is a child and family psychologist and person-centred counsellor who specialises in helping men and teenage boys. His military background and personal experiences with counselling inspire his passion for supporting others tqcounselling.co.uk
Article first published in Therapy Today: December 2026. Vol. 36. Isssue 10.
November blog
'Therapy helped me finally see myself differently'
It took two years of workig with my therapist, Callum, for me to come to terms with my struggles and their origins. The breakthrough was accepting that my early experiences were influencing my current life and relationships, and that I was still impacted by past traumas and internal battles. That acceptance was the beginning of finally letting them go.
Until suffering a major depressive episode at age 35, I worked as a headteacher in a primary school in Lincolnshire. The job was very stressful, and looking back it was clear I was suffering from burnout, exacerbated by the accidental death of one of the pupils and the murder of a close friend. In deep distress and feeling suicidal, I eventually had to leave teaching after being admitted to a mental health unit on three occasions between 1995 and 1998.
While it was what I needed at the time to ensure my safety, my times there were not easy. I witnessed how not to communicate with people who are mentally unwell. But I also experienced a mental health nurse called Mike a few months before my admission. He was kind, understanding and consistent. He made me feel safe enough to be more flexible in my thinking, be real about my feelings and accept change rather than fighting it. I owe him my life.
When I left the hospital I started working s a volunteer for a homeless charity and retrained as a mental health nurse, later completing training in counselling and psychotherapy. I learned about the differerences between mental distress and mental illness, how to emphathically communicate with people and the importance of maintaining our mental health. I have put these things into practice in my everyday life. After three years of working as a registered mental health nurse in the community I got the opportunity to move to New Zealand.
I soon discovered that no matter how far around the world you go, you can't leave the past behind if you haven't properly processed it. Before long I was dealing with difficulties at work at and at the church I was attending, including bullying and passive-aggressive behaviour, which brought back traumatic responses from past early experiences. I sought help from a psychologist but it wasn't until more than four years later when I attended a men's retreat that I accepted the full extent of the abuse I had experienced as a child and how it was still affecting me. It left me under-confident, fearful of other men and paranoid at times.
At the time of the retreat I had already started working with Callum, but I was focusing on my day-to-day challenges. After the retreat I realise I needed to go deeper and finally face my childhood.
what had been activated during the retreat was centred around repeated patterns of being abandoned and alone, my need for a father's care and appropriate responses to my emotional needs. The confusion that my abuse, sexually and emotionally, had inflicted on me had affected how I perceived my sexuality and how I perceived the world. My projections onto others had become a way of life. I always knew there were more memories to be recovered, and when I re-experienced these they helped me to explain my present-day perceptions about mysef and others. Some of these experiences I began to realise were in fact abuse. Being humiliated, shamed and having my body invaded wasn't normal. It was difficult facing these feelings. Callum always tried to go at my pace and taught me to deal with my presenting distress in a safe way. My work with him consolidated, clarified adn built on all the therapeutic work I had experienced. He provided the safe, affirming environment that I was valued and my feelings were valid - something I never experienced consistently as a child.
Trauma never leaves us completely; it becomes part of who we are and integrates into our life and experience, deepening our character and understanding of others. It has helped shape who I am as a therapist. I have also used my experiences as the basis for my novel, which I wrote to highlight how trauma can impact masculinity, sexual identity and relationships. My hope is that through sharing my story other men will understand their own trauma cycles and how therapy can help.
Paul Reet MBACP (Accred) is an integrative therapist, a registered mental health nurse specialising in trauma and a mental health educator working in private practice in Macandrew Bay, Dunedin in New Zealand. His novel, The Plan, is published by Austin Macauley under his pen name, Paul Anthony.
Atrticle first published in Therapy Today. November 2025. Voume 36. Issue 9.
February blog
'Therapy helpd me walk into the darkness'
Extreme childhood shyness evoked a belief there was something wrong with me, that I grossly lacked relational capacity - the most fundamental human quality. The routes of my felt shame were set. I would usually try to work things out myself rather than seek others' help, so I did the same when I became depressed in my 40s. I extensively read relevant psychological material but didnt find the answers I was looking for. However, it did lead to my counselling training, which involved my own therapy. In the ensuing years my life completely changed.
Nina, my first counsellor, suggested I walk into the darkness that I described of my mood. I felt this was ridiculous - why embrace something that's destroying me? As hugely simple as it sounds, it was groundbreaking to realise that a dark place, whether physical or emotional, doesn't necessaily mean it's bad, it just means we don't know what's in there. In my case it was a lifetime of repressed feelings that needed their freedom. However, I'd become 'institutionliased' with my rigid process.
With Nina I explored my feelings and started understanding them. Through these explorations, alongside my counsellor training, I was interested to learn of the power of environmental influence and how this likely led to my shyness and therefore my incongruence and conditions of worth. I also became aware that I was probably coming out of my shyness aged 10 but I suffered a trauma that led to a regresion of my old ways.
My unconscious mind - my psyche - was still strongly pulling me towards what it knew best, resolving things myself, so after a few sessions with Nina I felt I could go it alone again. I could still feel very low sometimes so it was a relief to move onto the next stage of my course, which required more personal therapy. With my next counsellor, Nadia, I became increasingly aware of just how powerful childhood experiences are. We explored my childhood trauma where I was able to feel appropriately sorry for that 20-year-old but through my 51-year-old eyes, mind and heart. Due to the suppression of my feelings back then and thereafter I couldn't access appropriate emotional support, but now I could with Nadia's help. A lot of this support, evoked through Nadia's empathic process, was from myself.
I started learning the crucial requirement of self-compassion and self-asurance. I was gobsmacked to identify the levels to which I emotionally abused myself with my dreadfully critical internal - sometimes external - voice. So I needed to learn to catch this process that my psyche would still pull me towards due to its chronic historic conditioning, and change it. This hugely helped me to feel appropirately sorry for my other earlier selves when shyness greatly inhibited getting on in life - over time I learned to stop berating myself and adopt kindness.
As my training progressed, my last part of mandatory counselling was welcomed and, although I was feeling better, I still suffered. My last counsellor, Joanna, helped me work on my shame. As much as I'd progressed, we explored there was still some shame that my psyche was interpreting as there being something wrong with me.
Through feeling Joanna's presence and her hugely empathic attunement to me, I came to really internalise that there never was anything wrong with me, it was my psyche's interpretation that was wrong. We worked through how unnurtured historic guilt repressed through the years had often mutated into shame, on top of the raw shame I felt over my historic shyness.
While this process was nicely 'cooking' through the years, psychological defences were being developed by my psyche to compensate. Further work was needed to catch these defences operating and change them. In time this released inappropriate shame and continually evoked more congruence and fewer conditions of worth -a process that updated my psyche appropriately to the present. I came to really learn where I was, who I was and the path I needed to travel.
Mat South MBACP (Accred) is a counsellor for an NHS servic. In his recenty published memoir, I've Started Feeling Depressed (Cherish Editions), he exploress the causes of his issues, his recovery and how he stays happy.
Article published in Therapy Today. February 2025: Volume 36: Issue 1
August blog
'Slowly I began to trust that I wouldnt be judged or shamed for expressng my emotions'
During my therapy training, I kept puttig off the requirement to go into personal therapy. Growing up in a traditional Punjabi household, we never openly shared emotions. Feelings were never discussed or talked about, and there is a belief in many Asian cultures that persistence and hard work can resolve any kind of problem, and that pretending something isn't happening will make it go away. As I grew up I became an expert at suppressing my emotions. I still had feelings but I turned to writing poems and stories rather than talking as a way of coping when things felt overwhelming.
I started therapy training after being bullied in a corporate work environment. Looking back I can see I was drawn to the training as a way of understanding what had happened and why it had affeted me so much. At the time I told myself I was doing it as it semed to offer a more flexible career.
Even though I now know I was traumatised and struggling. I saw the requirement to have therapy during my training as a tickbox exercise. I spoke to four therapists before I found someone who I felt comfortble with. As we got started I would dread the day I had personal therapy, thinking to myself, 'What am I going to talk about?' The session would feel so slow. I had always been more of a listener than a talker, and found a whole hour talking about myself very difficult.
The therapist was young and white but that wasn't the problem - I don't think I would have opend up my feelings to an Asian therapist either. She was very patient and made the space feel welcoming, not rushing me but just going at my pace. Then in my sixth session I broke down and began to cry. It all came out - I was a mum, I was studying. I was working, I was juggling so many plates that I didn't know if I was coming or going. Experiencing that release in the therapeutic space created a shift in my mindset, like a breath of fresh air.
Slowly I began to trust that anything I shared in the room was confidential and that I wouldn't be judged or shamed for expressing my feelings or emotions. I was able to explore the challenges in my relationship, my traumatic birth experiences, my grief at losing my mum to cancer and being bullied at work.
I hadn't realised that I had suppressed so many emotions, and that I had not processed or acknowledged the traumas that I had gone through. I was holding my feelings a a heaviness in my body. I became aware of how easily interactions with people could trigger me into a low mood, and I could finally admit to myself how anxious I felt a lot of the time, and that I had panic attacks.
By acknowledging and exploring the heaviness I was carrying, it began to move and no longer felt stuck inside me. The more I talked, the lighter I felt. I had my light-bulb moments, seeing patterns and connectionss that helped me understand my responses to present situations.
Now I am qaulified and working as a therapist, and I feel like I have come full circle by also returning to my childhood passion of writing. This time, however, it's not for my own survival - it's to help others find their own journey of inner healing and, like me, to discover their own strength.
Gurchehn Sing MBCAP is an integrative counsellor working online and by telephone in private practice from West Yorkshire. She recently published her first book, 'The Spirit Within: a heartfelt guide to finding strength and happiness' (available from www.amazon.co.uk), a patchwork of stories that highlight the dificulties of being a woman in South Asian cultures and traditons.
Article first published in Therapy Today. July/Agust 2024:Volume 35: Issue 6/
April blog
'Therapy helped me accept I am not defective'
When I was 11 I felt a thin, greasy paper cover my mind. I'd been moved up a school year at seven, due to being tall. I was academic enough to keep up but I completely lacked the social skills necessry to navigate the leap. I was bullied throughout school and struggled to understand why, or how to move along in spite of it. Even today, my inner critical voice is a result of this bullying.
I had my first therpy session during my first year at universtiy, and after my therapist told me it sounded like everything stemmed from my family I stormed out in a protetive rage. It didn't occur to me that I could find another person to speak to. I thought that was my chance, and it wasn't right, so I wouldn't have it again.
It was another five years before I had another go - not that things were fine in the meantime, more that I was poractively taking antidepressants and dealing with my brain by overeating, overdrinking and overspending. I had a not-very-impactful course of CBT to tackle depresion. I had a small breakthrough in 2012 when I had private therapy through my work's health insurance, and my lovely therapist sid, 'it soulds like you think you're defective'. I didn't know the root of why yet, but this was a huge moment of self-realisation.
Away from work I did lots to build up and enjoy the time I had. I got involved with the Olympics ceremonies in London, and I learned to run and ran the London Marathon. I challenged myself and ideas that I had. But underneath there was always something that I couldn't identify let alone solve. I didn't feel like other people - from what I read, or heard, or even how my friends and colleagues behaved. In 2016 I was diagnosed with bing-eating dissorder and had outpatient therapy, but I saw three therapists over the course of that year-long programme due to staff illness, and struggled to rebuild relationships.
I didn't know there was a bigger picture to see, so I carried on having therapy on and off without really knowing what I hoped to get from it. Some therapists were wonderful - I told one how I found it hard to enjoy small things and that it was as if I needed an entire street of cherry blossom. Whenever I pass them now I look at them individually with great joy, just as she helped me to do.
I was struggling to conceive when I saw her. After my husband and I went throough failed IVF and faced childlessess I broke and saw a new therapist who helped me to cocme to terms with what was happening and to know that it wasn't because I was bad or useless. We did a lot of work with schemas, which I found fasintating - learning wat was under the bonnet and why that helped me feel more in control. She was also the first to gently suggest that I look into ADHD.
After my diagnosis I saw another therapist specifically for therapy around ADHD. We did a lot of work around radical self-acceptance, which became invaluable when I had a routine hip replacement that became infected and I spent three months on antibiotics, unable to work and think. I was hugely grateful for the work we had done. It compounded the reading istening and understanding I was doing to navigate ADHD, to understand the conditions that came under its wider remit and then, in turn, to be able to use what I had learned to help other people. I spoke to people with ADHD, and experts in the field - psychiatrists, researchers, clinicians and even those who set up the first adult ADHD clinic in the UK in the 1990s.
That I have two books coming out, within a month of one another, both intended to act as support groups for people who are struggling, feels like the best possible outcome for a life with undiagnosed ADHD. I am not defective - I know that now. I hope my readers ccome to know that too, and apply it to their own lives. It has taken me a long time to build this understanding, and it has been worth the journey.
Kat brown is a freelance journalist and commentator whose national work on ADHD, mental health stigma and other social and arts commentary has appeared in The Telegraph, Grazia and The Times and on Woman's Hour. Her new books "No One Talks About this Stuff:twenty-two stories of almost parenthood "(Unbound) and "It's Not a Bloody Trend: undertanding lif as an ADHD adult "(Robinson) are out now.
Article first published in Therapy Today. March 2024: Vol 35. Issue 2.
NOVEMBER BLOG
My first experience of therapy was at 24 years of age. I can't remember what made me go at that time, but I have had therapy on and off ever since. A central theme over the years has been the unresolved trauma of a back operation I had for scoliosis when I was 15. During the operation a nerve in my leg was damaged, which left me with a permanent limp. The psychological damage has been complex, especailly as in those days no therapy was offered.
What happened to me was seen as purely physical, and trauma was not mentioned. Everyone knew it had been a difficult, life-changing experience, but getting help to adjust was not considered. In those days you were just expected to 'get on with it'. People who did go to therapy were seen as 'having problems', and when I first decided to go and see *Claire, "a local counsellor, the girls in the office where I worked took the mickey out of me.
Claire was a calm, middle-class and unassuming woman; a woman of faith. All I remember about my visits to her are the sense of peace and the way she made me feel. I don't remember what we talked about. It may have been about my operation and the effect it had not only on me, but on my relationship with my mother, but perhaps more likey I just spoke about the girls in the office, and my dreams of becoming an actor not working out. It is interesting that I do not remember what we spoke about, only the calmness of the room and how I was feeling at the time. I saw her once a week for a few months.
Since then I have seen countless therapists, healers and medical professionals and recently trained to become a counsellor myself. Having thought I knew it all due to my extensive soul-searching, when I began the course the impact of my operation once again surfaced along with many other things that I thought I had 'dealt with' but I had actually just emotionally bypassed.
Today trauma is widely recognised and discussed, and it's accepted that the effects can be long-lasting. As well as counselling as I knew it when I met Claire, there is eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing, trauma-informed therapy, somatic therapy and emotionally focused therapy to name but a few. Having thought I knew it all, I am now fascinated and encouraged by the amount there is still to know and learn.
Every day I peel another layer and shed light on another part of my past. I wonder which part of me it is that remembered Claire recently out of the blue - the simplicity of our first meeting, where I felt valued, loved and safe. My wounded teenage self perhaps, who is now finally ready to speak up and feels safe enough?
Remembering how if felt has reminded me as a therapist not to to forget the power and beauty of simplicity, and the importance of how the client is made to feel. This may be obvious but in an increasingly complex world it could be something that starts to become overlooked. I am grateful that I have been on the 'other side' as the client many times, and that I remember how it felt, good and bad, when I stepped into the room of someone who was, I hoped, going to be able to help. And simple and uncomplicaed as it may have been, all these years later I still remember Claire and the way she made me feel.
*Name has been changed.
Auriol Burgess pursued her dream of being an actor and went to drama school, despite being left with life-changing damage after spinal surgery . When her acting career didn't work out the way she had planned, she started to question the meaning and purpose of her life, culminating in her training to bcome a counsellor.
Article first published in Therapy Today. November 2023. Volume 34. Issue 9
September blog
'I could finally let go of thinking I was a strong man'
In 2016 my life fell apart wen I was sectioned for four weeks under the Mental health act. I had split up with my long-term girlfriend and was under a lot of stress in a corporate job that I didn't enjoy.
My mind was so broken that I thought I was being watched, tracked and followed online by well-known corporations that wanted to snap me up. I firmly believed that I was receiving messages through the TV, radio, internet and even the weather. I was speaking a lot more than usual and very fast, jumping from one subject to the other without making any sense to those around me.
Being sectioned was very traumatic, not just for me but for my family and close friends. However, spending time in a psychiatric ward and being medicated with antipsychotics and mood stabilisers was necessary to start my recovery.
I struggled to get my life back when I got back home. The side effects of the medication were mainly sedation, so I had no energy and put on a lot of weight. I was eventually made redundant from my job and became very depressed.
I felt ashamed and embarrassed about hat had happened to me. It wasn't until two years later in 2018 that I began to talk about it after reading a powerful memoir that resonated with me and gave me huge comfort. I started blogging about my mental illness and the reaction was so positive. I received supportive comments and messages, many from other people who had also struggled with their mental wellbeing. These were such life-affirming connections that I began to accept that the stigma may not be as prevalent as I initially assumed.
Around this time I was put on a new medication, which is what I still take today. This antipsychotic turned out to finally be the right formula for me, with minimal side effects and allowing my mind to be clear and my energy levels to remain.
I was wary of therapy after a bad experience at relationship counselling with my previous partner, but I was so desperate to get better I found myself saying yes when the mental health team suggested it. I went on a waiting list and eventually received CBT through the NHS, which turned out to be life-changing. we were able to explore why I was previously so hard on myself and why I struggled with stress and uncertainty in particular. I ws able to learn self-compassion, how to remain present and use practical tools to help with my well-being, such as the 'stress bucket' and 'friendly scientist' exercises. I felt very lucky that I was matched with such a great therapist. She was around my age and I warmed to her instantly - she met me at a very human level and I always felt deeply understood during our conversations.
My response to the sessions was very emotional, and I would spend much of th time in floods of tears. I soon realised that these were probably tears that I had been holding in or a long time, thinking I was being a strong man. I was finally able to let go, and it made me understand that crying is actually a powerful stress release rather than something to be ashamed of and avoided.
Sadly, at the end of 2019, I had a full-blown relapse of psychosis after a mistake with my medication. I had been taking one 100mg pill a day, bu when I renewed my prescription the pharmacy game me 50mg tablets instead. The instruction to take two per day wasn't pointed out, so I was unknowingly taking half of my dosage.
My second psychotic episode had some similarities in the terms of my behaviour and symptoms, although this time I was a lot angrier, so I found it overwhelmingly and difficult to manage.
Thankfully I didn't get sectioned again - instead, I voluntarily attended an NHS day treatment centre where I participated in group therapy classes and also had one-to-one support. My medication had to be drastically increased and it took months for me to become stable, but I got there in the end and I have been healthy ever since. Once again I found the therapy helpful, particularly in understanding and processing my anger. My latest diagnosis is schizoaffective disorder. I no longer feel shame about it and instead wear it proudly as a badge of honour. I know now that I will probably always need to be on medication to keep me healthy and functioning, which is something I feel at peace with. One of my many lessons is that I need to keep talking, sharing, be understood and to process and articulate what is in my head. Sometimes the best outlet for this will be a therapist, so I am happy that they are always an option if I need it.
James Lindsay lives in Watfor with his fiancé. He works in the marketing team at Hertfordshire Mind Network, a mental health charity. He aims to use his experience of mental illness to help others by raising awareness and ending stigma. His first book 'My Brain: a psychosis story' is available now on Amazon.www.linktr.ee/jameslindsay
First published in Therapy Today, September 2023; Volume 35: Issue 7
August blog
"Therapy helped me identify the little cuts and bruises that shaped me'
I was changing trains at Earl's Court station when I bumped into a mate I knew from football. He asked where I was going as people do the you bump into them at a station. I completely panicked and started babbling about a fictitious meeting. The truth was, I was en route to my first-ever therapy session. The idea that I would admit that to anyone, let alone this passing acquaintance who knew me only as the loudmouth joker with who he shared beers every other Saturday, was terrifying.
I was married to this identity of being carefree and fun to be around. I took nothing seriously, least of all myself. the was the way almost all the blokes I grew up with behaved. Seeking help from a therapist represented the antithesis of everything I stood for. So I muttered and mumbled a lie and he eyed me suspiciously, probably assuming I was going to see a dominatrix and just didn't want to admit it.
That first therapy session went OK but, to be honest, I wasn't quite ready and we didn't quite click. I was in my mid 30s and feeling overwhelmed by work, family, money worries and the continued maintenance of my 'Jack the lad' persona. I had started to suffer from sometimes debilitating anxiety and was losing sleep. I felt ashamed of, and alone in, my feelings, and a voice inside was constantly telling me that I was a pathetic whiner with no right to feel as miserable as I did.
I quit therapy and turned instead to alcohol as a form of self-medication. Eventually I started to use cocaine to supplement it. With 40 looming on the horizon I had become a secretive daytime drinker and drug user. I convinced myself that drink and drugs were the fuel I needed to keep going. I really thought that my bad habits allowed me to be a better father and husband because they provided the necessary anaesthetic to an overstretched and exhausting lifestyle. Eventually even I stopped believing that lie. I tried and failed to stop using on numerous occasions until deciding to give therapy another go.
In the clutches of addiction, I had developed a siege mentality; I thought everyone was against me. My wife, my friends, my colleagues, my relatives - I felt all of them were judging me and trying to control my life. I was angry. I was in pain and I resented the fact that nobody seemed to care.
But in our first meeting my new therapist showed me kindness and understanding. she was the first person to suggest that I was justified in feeling the way I did. That I didn't need to feel ashamed, but the I did have a problem that needed tackling. She helped me to understand that quitting drink and drugs would be just the first step into a longer journey. I would have to accept that the sadness I felt inside was legitimate and that, rather than drink and snort it away, I should investigate where it might come from. Only then would I be able to process it and move on. It sounded like a lot of hard work. But I was so desperate to stop the destructive cycle of wanton hedonism that I resolved instantly to give it a go.
The was almost eight years ago. Since my first meeting with my therapist, Lizann, in June 2015 I haven't touched a drop of alcohol. It wasn't easy. Giving up the soothing distraction of booze made me face a ton of thoughts and emotions I had been repressing since adolescence. Therapy gently took me through a personal audit of all the pain I had blithely ignored for so long. I started to get to know myself. I caught up on all the emotional development I hd ben deferring since I first stated getting thrashed on lager and weed with my pals when I was 12 years old.
The most important part of all this was the kindness and understanding that Lizann showed me. She helped me identify the little cuts and bruises that had helped shape me. She made me feel less embarrassed about feeling the way I did. Most of all, she made me like myself. She made me feel less embarrassed about myself. I'm not sure I ever have done before. Certainly, through the final years of my problem drinking and drug taking, I was constantly berating myself for being a lazy, pathetic, nail-gazing loser. But I wasn't really any of those things, I was just a bloke who had failed to ever show himself much in the way of compassion and care. So I had burned myself out by the age of 39 and was heading towards oblivion. Lizann helped me step back from the edge. I still see her for my weekly session every Wednesday morning. And since 2015 each year has been better than the last.
Sam Delaneyis a writer and broadcaster from London. His book, 'Sort Your Head Out: mental health with al the b*****ks" was recently published by Constable.
Article first published in Therapy Today. June 2023:Volune 34:Issue 5
