Nosce Teipsum
Can you? Should you? Is it an exercise of vanity to try to understand when ultimately we can only fall short?
Four years of psychotherapy on, the needles she pricks so gently are finally hitting nerves. More garbage emerges nightly, as my dreams take on epic proportions. Why now? Because I've been eating pretty consistently, and my brain is nourished enough to make all those nasty connections I used to starve away? Because there is a very real possibility that our time is running out, and I need to reach the bottom of this sludge before its too late?
I don't trust my motives. How do you distinguish fantasy from reality when bits of you you haven't even met yet are getting anxious and clamouring to be heard?
Four years. It sounds a long time, but it isn't. Not in terms of how far we've gone. The distance between us may have increased dramatically after I moved across the country for university, but in other ways I'm still as close to her as ever. Same tensions. Same anxieties. Same fear of surrendering completely. Writing helps. She lets me write to her. But when I let go of the words they're not really mine anymore.
I travel to London for weekly sessions. They used to be twice-weekly, but train tickets from here and back are already ruinously expensive. Expense is the problem. At a beurocratic rather than a personal level. She thinks its very important that I continue to see her, but since I live somewhere else now she has had to apply for funding from a different pct. I know she'll do her very best for me, but in all likelihood it will go to a panel. And judging from the current climate there's a decent chance it will be refused.
Tired now.
Off for some more adventures.
4 years on and it would seem you've a well established therapeutic relationship with your therapist in London. Grand!
ReplyDeleteEqually, a new local therapist, although a scary proposition, would inevitably have a slightly different personal approach which could be helpful.
4 years on, improvements made, it can sometimes be that fresh starts and fresh energies and fresh ideas makes for useful fresh new support.
Just saying, a new therapist may be neither better nor worse, but may be usefully different. So whatever the panel's view, hopefully things could play out well for you!
Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI was in the process of writing a reply, but it was becoming rather long and complicated, and I didn't want you to think I was expecting a response.
I'll make a new post instead. Trying to get to grips with this blogging thing...it's not easy. Even with pseudo-anonymity (I'm sure if anyone who knew me came across this they would see through it immediately) it still makes me feel very exposed.