Tag: Mental health

Love song

To those who cannot be themselves,

I ask you to listen:

(Not to those with certainties

Or clear cut ways to be)

But to the place your eyes reach;

Wild paths your feet long to tread;

And the call and leap of

Rhythms you have not heard.

Close your eyes and go!

For many also dance

To their own song.

And, in your lost exploring,

You will find

Hands outstretched in love to

Hold your own.

Bursting

Need the words today;

The space that aches in my chest

Is calling for words

To hold the hurt.

Pressing the page:

Paper stretched to translucence

By feelings too big.

Feelings to carve on slate

Or skin

But certainly too big

To keep within.

Paper wins and so I build.

Sinking into the deep unthink

Of curving ink.

I burst the inner bubble:

(The one I thought was full of

Wolves and stretchy screams)

To find a flood of

Paint and song and dance

That needed me to give it only

Half a chance.

Daydream

I would like to hide today:

Put my adult self away.

Find a place that’s still and dark:

Crouch on mulch and crunchy bark,

Underneath a veil of leaves,

Watching insects, chewing sleeves.

I just want to hide today:

Find my own safe space to play.

Here, where no grown-up could stand,

I would build my own wild land:

Among the dappled spots of light,

Nature’s toys would talk and fight.

Star-crossed stones would say their vows,

Pine cone friends have angry rows.

Leafy dragons, breathing flames,

Pick their prey and play their games.

Spider baddies lurk in caves;

Ants take orders as their slaves.

Earthworm spies would tell the queen

All the mischief they have seen.

In the midst of all this strife

I’d be happy with my life.

Ladybirds would climb my arms and

Flustered birds sound shrill alarms.

I’d lose track of time and space

In my damp and cosy place.

So I close my eyes and go.

No one else will ever know.

Bewilderness

Sometimes all I can feel in my heart

Is this hollow, aching, longing, need

But I don’t know what the need is for.

Today it hurts inside and I don’t know why.

It hurts inside and tears smart in my eyes.

I am fighting an invisible army:

Silent: taught to play at pain.

Each time I turn, they slip away.

But, as they do, they catch my skin

With whistling blades.

Finish me: I’ve lost this game.

Fromm’s Fear

Rushing blurred light-lines

Drawn towards a

Brooding mass: this torrid storm.

And there, in potent space,

The shadow shape of them,

As yet unknown, unheard,

But felt with all the feel

Of stranger’s prickly touch.

I dare not,

Dare not go inside this

Labyrinthine dusk,

To tempt my waxy wings

In hubris heat.

Perhaps it’s better here

Playing hide and seek with fear

Under the mattress springs

With other dusty things.

Yes it is better here

With blood beat in my ear,

Where all the harm I do

Is done to me, not you.

 

 

Writer’s PostScript
For any who haven’t read Erich Fromm’s book ‘The Fear of Freedom’ – (Die Furcht vor der Freiheit, 1941) –
it is a really good book about the difficult balance we all face between wanting to be free to make choices but feeling overwhelmed and frightened by too much choice/responsibility. It is just as relevant to politics now, as it was when he wrote it in 1941. My poem is about the way that this fear applies to individuals too. In particular, it is relevant to my situation at the moment returning to the workplace. I am really torn between a renewed sense of liberating confidence and the familiar self-doubt and anxiety that has dogged me for years. I wonder if it rings true for anyone else returning to work after a long break or taking on new responsibilities. Thanks for reading!

Change

When did I leave that urgent dark,

That plays a tune

On crisscrossed bark

To play amongst the coloured lights:

Sweet honey bees

On whimsy flights?

 

Today I run through blossom trees

And skip through waves

With sandy knees.

All grinding discord left behind.

Discarded bones: a

Stranger’s mind.

 

I like to think there’s nothing lost,

That day is gain

And night is cost,

But still a something lingers there

Of longing, grief

And musey flair.

 

How do I keep the richest thread,

If gritty truth

Is left unsaid?

I fumble through to feel for gold

In shifting sands that

Dreams unfold

 

And one day, at my fingertips

(Electric thrills and

Tummy flips),

I’ll find a way to join the two:

My summer yellow,

Winter blue.

Look Inside

My value is innate.

I know I cannot lose it.

I will not give it up.

It is not mine to give.

 

My worth is at my core.

I do not need to prove it.

I cannot give it up.

It is not mine to give.

 

So I can look you in the eye

And hold your gaze across our tears,

Across our differences and years.

 

For every person holds from birth

A rich, unchanging,

Human worth.

Sports Day from a Distance

Coloured noisy shirts

That jostle brightly:

Sugar strands

On wet icing,

Trace the long stemmed field

In well-worn wheels of

Summer sports.

 

In every hard-pressed heart

A different song is sung:

One that moves

Light feet or knows

The beat of mournful drum.

Young ankles turn on

Dried footprints.

 

But just for now, from

Far off, their sunny

Sport brings smiles

To tired faces:

Pale and lined from endless

Office hours. Their gaze

Rose-tinted.

 

For some, this light will

Blow out here, but not

For all. A

Bold white spark is

Thrown on restless kindling;

Nervous legs will come

Again soon.

 

Feet, unused to trainers,

Will regain their bounce

And eyes that

Lost their starry

Faith will glow once more.

Happy memories

Open doors.

Mat Leave

Watering can, little shoes,

April sun, baby blues,

Wet socks, soggy flowers,

Tired eyes, long hours.

 

Chubby cheeks, half-formed words,

Drone of cars, songs of birds,

Deepest love, smothered rage,

Silent protest, mother’s cage,

 

Eager eyes, sticky hugs,

New to nature, eating bugs,

Scraped knees, mummy kiss it,

‘When it’s gone,’ they say, ‘you’ll miss it.’

 

In fresh air, short of breath,

Should he nap? What if: cot death?

Filled nappy, teatime tears,

Guilt, resentment, shameful fears.

 

Fences, hedges, walls divide

So many of us trapped inside,

Feeling we are not enough,

Scared to say we find it tough.

 

I find it hard. How do you find it?

Do you ever wish you could unwind it?

Do you cry on cold baked beans

And plug your babies into screens?

 

Join the club. Come and share.

There’s others like us everywhere.

When we hide our fear and pain,

Depression smugly smiles again.

Helpless

Fierce garish horses trotting

Up and down with groundhog rage;

Paint chipped and reins long-handled,

Chasing nothing in their cage.

 

There’s something in the chiming

Tinny clatter of the songs

That speaks of childhood toys and

Rocks like parents’ well-loved wrongs.

 

And so she rides again, enduring

Sickness all the while,

Because it isn’t home without

That raw nostalgic bile.

 

There’s no use telling her to

Change the route of her old horse

Because she’s bound, with it, to

Take the same old dizzy course.

 

If only we could stop it:

Take her arm as she stepped down

And show her all the other ways

To play in this wide town.

 

If only we could stop it:

Take her gently by the hand

And show her she could live a

Life much sweeter than she planned.

 

A life that feels so strange at first

Without the seasick dance,

But one where love and happiness

Will grow with half a chance.

 

Now in the nightmare lights

We just slide by in coloured streams.

She slips from rescue reach,

Like whispered words from fading dreams.

Separation

In the falling dust:

A baby cries her mother’s tears,

Cradled in soft sheets,

Haunted by her mother’s fears.

 

In the dewy grass:

Curling toes that clench each blade

Totter to the slide,

Climb the ladder, unafraid.

 

In the classroom roar:

Unsure where to go from here,

Scared to run and play.

Taut hands holding Mummy near.

 

Kiss me once and go!

Give me back my fears at last.

They are not for now.

Let us leave them in the past.

 

Kiss me once and go!

Time we both found our own way,

Chase our own bright dreams.

We’ll feel smaller if we stay.

 

Kiss me once and go!

You have your own path to tread.

But you must come home.

We’ll share stories before bed.

 

In the friendly gloom:

Plan adventures, wild and free.

Cradled in soft sheets;

You are you and I am me.

Rescue

In the crunch tight

Heat creep of my fear

I sway to ill face,

No space, breathless.

 

You, the faceless,

Walk past, wondering,

Not wondering, in

Your high-ground flow

 

Of real life; no

Knife, no need to feel

Pain to stay sane, too

Busy to hurt.

 

You and your friend

Chat, laughing with red

Cheeks, dogs tasting run

Joy, chase toy, free.

 

I ache with wild

Eyes, mute cries, searching

A parched place, stumbling

And sand blind, lost.

 

Patter of fur paws,

Small claws, follow my

Right side. Our two worlds

Collide, changing

 

My mind tide. You,

Just a small dog, look

With your brown eyes, see

Through my disguise.

 

Water for dry

Lips, first drips, beat skips,

Knowing that you know:

Feel, care, somehow.

 

Just a few short

Steps, with you at my

Side, then, sharp, a shriek,

Call, throw ball. Gone.

 

Walk on, still in

A dark land: sounds grand,

But it’s a crass shop.

Sharp drop, tools that

 

Are missold: too

Old, broken and tacky.

Bright paint and cheap glue

Making them seem

 

New. But now your

Brown eyes, steady and

Soul kind, pierce through my

Heart rind: unwind the

Pain bind. I have a

Friend.

Something Rotten

Smug in the trappings; wisdom and time,

Smile like a child’s plastic jewel.

You finger our lives.

 

Gilded treatment hides the reaching rot,

Leaving only musty cloying

Damp to warn us off.

 

Smile and smile and still be a villain:

Hidden in clothes of congruence.

Wolf walks in wax wool.

 

Delicate footwork skates thin ice.

Mask slips; screech within

And fall into the pain of unloved skin.

A Good Day

Today we made a green robot.

It had cardigan buttons

For cheerful eyes

And glitter on its chest;

An old black thing

To press and beep.

It was done: without doubt the best.

 

Today we took out your skateboard

And had a go on the path.

We laughed and clung

To each other with fear.

Step up with one,

Push with the other,

Then fall with aplomb on your rear.

 

Today we hunted for nature;

You had a takeaway box

And filled it with

Flowers, acorns and leaves.

Red in the face,

Hair everywhere,

All sorts of damp bits up your sleeves.

 

Today we created three masks

For superhero figures.

Each had its own

Logo: complex and small.

Card to cut out,

Paper to stick,

And a place on each bedroom wall.

 

Today we went to the fun pool:

The one with the slide and jets.

I was the beast

For seeking and hiding;

You swam away

Squealing with glee.

I was the whale for riding.

 

At bedtime, cuddled on my lap,

You smelt all lovely and warm.

We read a book

About life’s rights and wrongs.

You brushed your teeth,

Not without fuss.

You slept whilst I finished your songs.

 

And now you’re in bed and I’m tired,

But I’m not stressed out this time.

I leave the mess,

Admire the cat’s repose.

I have to take

These little wins

And hold them close.

Depression

I just forget it’s you that pulls me down.

I sometimes think it’s me, that I am bad:

A useless mother, weird, a waste of space,

A coward: lazy, pointless, going mad.

 

I just forget that you wait in the wings

For your first chance to sing about my faults;

You wait with sweaty palms and gritted teeth

To mock me, shamed, before the real adults.

 

Then, suddenly, you speak your words in flames,

They dash across the blank grief of my mind.

Your drawl, smooth and familiar, shrinks my spine:

And fondled, touched, my memories unwind.

 

With glee, you fling my laughter to the dogs;

Achievements, skills are torn, mocked and defaced.

You hop and dance and kick salt in old wounds;

You push away the ones I once embraced.

 

So under this internal, cruel abuse,

I cower, cringing, knocking my scarred knees

And, jeering, spitting, come your playground friends:

A crowd of puffed-up bullies. Angry bees.

 

The first is Shame, who laughing, climbs my back

And, forceful, presses down my thumping head.

She covers my white eyes with rancid claws

And calls to Guilt, who comes with heavy tread.

 

Before them, I am naked and alone.

I search blind for a person I once knew.

But, sickly sweet, it’s Suicide who comes:

Seductive, painting death in a new hue.

 

So sudden is the onslaught, I am lost.

Her subtle voice, that slides beneath my skin

Is leaking poison, spreading, gaining ground.

It wants the very root of Self within.

 

I stop. That core is fragile but it’s mine.

To build it I’ve worked hard on self-reflection.

It’s taken years of honesty and pain

And anxious re-starts when I lost direction.

 

I will not give it up, despite your taunts,

Although you’ll hide it from me for a time.

For I have grown within a seed of hope:

And from it springs a ladder I can climb.

 

You told me I was making their lives worse.

You told me just to leave the life we shared.

But now I’ve found the friend within myself.

We will outgrow you. Soon you will run scared.

Panic

Like a swarm they descend

And hover out of reach

But the buzz and hum

Screech in my mind’s ear

Is all too near.

 

Losing patience, my hand goes

To snatch one from thin air,

Stroke it in my palm.

Care: to halt its stings,

Love: its fierce wings.

 

Becalmed, I rest in sweat-

Wet respite from their roar.

Shiver on my skin.

Corner of my eye.

They multiply.

 

Spinning like a child’s toy,

Hands shaking, hold them back!

I haven’t got the

Knack. They crawl around

On human ground.

Lie In

Click and drop of water pipes,

Slightly off the beat,

Startles silence, cracks the hum;

Sacrifices sleep for heat.

Plaintive howl of aeroplanes:

Tired, waiting to land,

Dragging those who fled the grey

Back again from sun and sand.

In musty air, the gentle speech

Of ones who seem to know

About the world and politics

And how things ought to go.

But in my bed, I stretch my feet.

I wriggle my hips down.

I am the queen of duvet-land;

The pillow is my crown.

And, just for now, it sinks away:

The complicated stuff.

This sleep-soft world is all there is

And maybe that’s enough.

Hook

No I could never wash myself enough.

I do not wish to be a British girl

And yet I’ve had the good of empire wealth

Hard won by others’ hands and others’ health.

So in complicit luxury I kneel

And kiss the feet of those we used to steal.

 

In sweaty filthy dark we chained you down

In service to our tastebuds and our crown.

We trod you underfoot with polished heel

And gave you numbers so as not to feel.

 

No ‘sorry’ now could ever bring to life

Your children or your grandpa or your wife.

No ‘sorry’ now could ever make you feel

The way you did before he made you kneel.

No ‘sorry’ now could ever bring back days,

Or clothes, or food, now lost to British ways.

No ‘sorry’ now could take back words that stole

Your childhood; spray paint insults take their toll.

No shame, or guilt, or ‘sorry’ now could clean

Our monied hands of their blood-sugar sheen.

 

And even now I sit in candied bliss,

In clothes that maybe felt the slaver’s kiss

And drink my tea and wonder where it grew

And if the one who grew it got paid too.

We tend to think of slaves as those who died

Long long ago, brought here by whip and tide.

But slaves are kept in farms and brothels here

They live today in pain, exhaustion, fear.

 

No I could never wash myself enough.

I do not wish to be a British girl.

And yet, if I’m to take rich empire gains,

Then I must wear its rancid greedy stains.

It is not much to pay for what we took,

So I will hope to hang from history’s hook.

 

I do not wish to be a British girl,

Great Britishness: it makes my white toes curl.

School days

Through the smudged window

The snow falls.

A small wet sort:

Inconsequential, unsettling.

 

Smeary handprints:

A glimpse of fun and mischief.

A reminder of

What’s to come.

 

This last bit

Afternoon Nomansland

Where I wait for you,

Is tense and still.

 

Tendrils of anxious

Electricity creep down my arms

Up my throat.

How will we be today?

 

The Cat knows.

He is expectant,

Ears pricked ready

For the onslaught.

 

He is like me.

He loves you with every

Fibre of his being.

But the rough noise

 

And reckless motion

Send him, tail low, ears back

Dashing from the room.

Very sensible, the Cat.

 

But I will stay.

I must. To endure

My own inadequacy

My joy, my fear, my pride

 

Your love, your hate,

Your tears, your exquisite

Delicate miraculous

Humanity and daily grind mundanity

 

Because I am mum.

So I’ll stroke you now, the Cat

And later, we’ll meet again

And cuddle with the sleepy

 

Babes, rosy-cheeked,

Books-read and pegs-brushed,

Wondering why we ever

Were anywhere else.

 

Very sensible, the Cat.

Poem: Am I mother?

Some days are made of coloured paint.

I can follow you to your world.

I am light and made of stars

And it is warm and smells of

Gran: pavlova, sugar aprons.

 

You look like you should,

With flying hair, eyes dancing

And the fiery

Strand between us

Glows and holds.

 

On other days, the silence

Cloys and rings against

Your clamour. How to hear

Your world through all the

Jangle of my own.

 

I feel so far from you:

Lost in my loud breath.

I ache under my ribs

To know the glow again.

I knew you then.

 

When I am lost and broken,

Don’t you wait.

Go off and play, please,

Dance and sing

And I will find you soon.

 

Then I will hold you close

And wait in fear.

For it will come again

And take all I hold dear.

Poem: January Blues

My pen is stuck on a January day

When the splurge and flat of clouds

Hovers like

The edge of thought. Twiggy trees, sad and brown

Stand defeated. Words which once

Flew are caught.

 

A new year and we will, should, must feel the

Bounce and flip of stomach hope.

But if you

Can’t, then swim through last year’s deadlines of the mind:

Lost to urgency, tar-stuck

In artist gloom.

 

In all the rustle scrunch of Christmas wrap

We dropped our threads and now search

For split ends.

We watch The Briefcase Ones who stand tall in

Their stripes and see our slow start

Through their business lens.

 

But since this only highlights business cracks

Against the sky shard metal

Of the funds,

It fails to show the human need for art.

Paint’s perfect imperfection

Money shuns.

 

And so, uncertain, we must take our time

And know that meat is richer

And more tender for slow cooking.

We turn our minds but gently

To the page and trust it will

Hold riches for the looking.

Poem: Loud

My child is the loudest child in all our blue-green world.

He shouts out with his chin up and his ten tight fingers curled.

He calls with every neck vein taut and both his arms up high.

We ask him to be quiet but he can’t see why.

 

Why would he say it softly when it’s such fun to make noise?

To stomp around and crash about is one of life’s great joys.

Why would he hum it quietly when roaring sounds much better?

Why tiptoe in the shallow end, when splashing makes you wetter?

 

Yes my child is the loudest one in all the Milky Way.

Just when you think he’s finished, you find he has more to say.

He sings with great aplomb and smacks the beat against his thigh.

We ask him to be quiet but he can’t see why.

 

Why build a castle carefully when you could bash it down

Or read a book to daddy when you could tell half the town?

Why leave a person sleeping, when you could wake them up?

Imagine all the fun they’d have, if they’d just give sleep up!

 

Yes my child is the loudest child in all the universe

And when you try to silence him, it only makes it worse.

We tried and tried but we gave up because we were so stressed

So we decided to join in and set a noisy test.

 

We got up well before my son with saucepan lids and spoons,

We wore gold bells and whistles and we played some jolly tunes.

We borrowed Grandad’s tuba and some strings from Alf next door,

We got Aunt’s Edith’s double bass, some timps, some flutes and more.

 

Aunt Anna sent eight speakers, which she used for punk rock gigs,

And Grandma brought her cockerel, seven donkeys and the pigs.

The massive engine came from Godfrey: he likes mending jet planes

And Clive our builder joined us with a band of all terrain cranes.

 

That day we made a splendid racket all before the sun rose.

We sang and played and drove around and stomped away our woes.

It wasn’t long before my son was begging us to go.

He promised he would always whisper, if we’d stop the show.

 

But something strange had happened. The music had a hold.

Our limbs felt fast and flighty. Our hearts beat brave and bold.

So one after another, we took off down the street,

A strange, eclectic carnival of hooves and wheels and feet.

 

Astride his growling engine, bearded Godfrey crooned melodious

Behind him frolicked Grandma and the pigs, thick-skinned and odious.

Atop Clive’s cranes, the tuba blared the tune both strong and wrong

And seven donkeys eed and oord a descant to our song.

 

But, suddenly, we saw ahead a child we knew before,

Who stood in train pyjamas with a frown by our front door.

Once loud, now mute, his downturned mouth appeared to still be saying:

It was time to stop our noise and end our early morning playing.

 

‘I’m sorry, son,’ I mumbled from behind my saucepan lid.

‘I never knew how to have fun but it’s clear that you did.

You’ve shown me how to discard all my stressed-out adult ways.’

You’ve taught me how to smile again and dance through all my days.’

 

At that, my loud son found his voice from somewhere deep inside,

Addressing all the people who had come from far and wide.

He said that he was sorry for the past din he had made

But that it thrilled him to the core to see our odd parade.

 

The whole town hugged and sang aloud a new and hopeful song

And, arm-in-arm, my son and I skipped happily along.

Now, two weeks on, the mayor says every grown-up has to spend

Six hours a day with children, being driven round the bend.

 

In these mad hours, the children choose the games, the toys, the volume.

At their command the stairs will be a handmade duvet log-flume

And when the little darlings want to make a glitter carpet,

Create slug-slime, form a rock band or bet on the stock market

 

That’s just what they shall do and not one person can say no!

For that half-day, the grown-ups have to let their rule-books go.

But for the other half a day, each child will learn to play

In quiet ways, or reading books or making things from clay.

 

If mummy wants to meditate or daddy wants to write,

Each child will let them do it, with no shout or whine or fight.

If granny wants to water-ski and grandad wants to bake,

Each child will watch in silence eating cake around the lake.

 

And so I’ve learnt to party, to cavort and jive and caper.

Then afterwards I sit in blissful peace and read the paper.

Back when we thought in black and white we couldn’t see each other.

But now we think in happy grey: a loud son and proud mother.

Shopping for a Therapist

For many people in England, talking therapy is something you have to wait weeks, months, even years to receive on the NHS. For others, however, paying for therapy is an option. But when you go looking for private therapy, how do you find it? What are the potential pitfalls or advantages of shopping for a therapist? I am not claiming to be a great expert in the subject, by any means, but my experiences of receiving therapy and studying to become a therapist have given me some thoughts on the subject, which I hope might be helpful to other people.

When I first needed therapy, I didn’t know anything about it. I had no idea that there were different models to choose from or, more importantly, that therapists vary hugely in their natural competence and their training. I have now had various therapists who have received different training and work very differently to one another. More than one have been genuinely helpful and one in particular has supported me in transforming my life to be richer and more meaningful. The more I have learnt about the field of counselling and psychotherapy, the more I feel that it is a world that needs to be explained to society. There needs to be transparency about how to access therapy and how to choose the type that works for you. If you have the luxury of choosing your therapist, then you need to know how to find a good one.

Key Points:

• Shockingly, there is still no government body that regulates therapists or counsellors. This means that people can set themselves up as a practising therapist without any qualifications. They may not have received any therapy themselves and their motives for helping may be dubious. It is therefore very important when you choose a therapist, that you do it through an accrediting body, such as the BACP (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy) or the UKCP (UK Council for Psychotherapy). It is also advisable to ask to see the therapist’s qualifications when you first meet them; any therapist working within the ethical guidelines of these bodies will be happy to show you their qualifications.

• I am going to use the words counselling and psychotherapy interchangeably. Although there is debate in the field as to the differences between these terms, to all intents and purposes they are forms of talking therapy which do similar things. When you choose a therapist, it is more important to look at the therapist’s experience, qualifications and what they say about their own practice, than it is to worry about the terminology they use.

• The therapist themselves and the relationship you develop with them are key to the success of therapy. Choose someone who seems to ‘get you’ and with whom you feel comfortable.

• No therapist can ‘cure’ your mental health problems by themselves: the best results in therapy come when the client works together with the therapist and commits to the process. For this reason, try not to give up straightaway. It can be scary starting with a therapist: after all, you might not have shared your feelings with anyone before, especially not a complete stranger. Plenty of people do give up after one session. But it’s worth giving a new therapist a few sessions to see if you might be able to work together.

• The therapeutic process can be cathartic, reassuring and helpful. Sometimes, however, you might have to feel uncomfortable emotions in order to truly process them and this can be scary. If you have developed a good relationship with a therapist but it starts getting too heavy and painful, you might want to walk away. But try, instead, to share this with the therapist. They are there to provide a safe space for you to explore these difficult thoughts and feelings, so if you’re not ready to do that, it’s ok to say so.

There are many different types of talking therapy- too many to mention here but I will attempt to describe some significant ones.

 

• At the moment, the NHS mostly recommends CBT: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. This is for a number of reasons. It is partly because it has been shown to be effective in certain clinical trials and partly also because it is a time-limited form of therapy, which is therefore cheaper for the NHS and easier to structure because they know how many sessions each person will get. If you haven’t tried CBT before, it is worth trying it. It is particularly useful if you do not wish to talk about your childhood experiences, but you do want to learn some new strategies for improving your wellbeing. I can only talk for myself but I found CBT really helpful for my OCD and for my anxiety but much less effective when I struggled with severe depression. However, different people respond to different types of talking therapy differently. The key is to be curious, try things and see what works for you.

• Psychodynamic counselling explores the way in which your childhood experiences have formed an unconscious pattern of feeling and behaving that continues to occur throughout your life. Expect a therapist who might be reserved and does not give much away about themselves. Possible positives: if you’ve had enough of advice or had your fill of structured sessions with homework to do, then this might be for you. The therapist is likely to sit back and listen a lot, giving you space to explore your own problems and find your own way out of them, with the goal that this should be an empowering experience. Possible criticism: strictly psychodynamic therapists might seem cold and unfriendly. Sometimes it might feel like there is more of an unhelpful power dynamic in this sort of counselling- with a reserved expert quietly analysing and a patient at the receiving end of a mysterious treatment.

• Humanistic therapy was developed as a backlash against the more deterministic outlook of psychoanalytic and behavioural approaches. It takes an essentially optimistic view of humanity: that every individual has intrinsic self-worth and that every human has the capacity for personal growth and fulfilment in life. Possible criticisms: may take longer to see results than with CBT. Possibly easier to avoid the most difficult bits of your past, which might need dealing with at some point. Possible positives: you are likely to find a warm, welcoming therapist, who treats you as a fellow human, struggling with shared human difficulties. Also, if you develop a good therapeutic relationship with your therapist, then you will feel safer and more able to take risks to explore difficult stuff in your own time and when you’re ready.

• An integrative therapist will draw on lots of different models to offer you therapy that is tailored to your individual needs. Possible criticism- jack of all trades, master of none. Possible advantages: will not make your complicated human situation fit their rigid model. Should not come with a preconceived idea of what exactly will help but work collaboratively with you to help you understand your difficulties and ascertain what you want to achieve through therapy. This is my preferred model and the one that I am studying, since I believe it gives me the best opportunity to treat each person as an equal and an individual.

There are so many other models and they are all interesting but I know that it can be overwhelming to have too much choice. If you need any more information, these pages can be helpful:

https://www.rethink.org/resources/t/talking-therapies-factsheet

https://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/

https://www.bacp.co.uk/

I wish you the very best of luck finding a therapist. Good therapy is out there. When you find it, given time, it might enable you to transform how you feel about your life.

Family Christmas

Seems so strange: the way we all

Expect perfection once a year.

Resist change: stay neat and small.

No self-reflection welcome here.

 

Play the game by the same rules,

Your place set in our house of cards.

Do the same: frogs to home pools,

Tricked by the past’s power. Bauble shards

 

Mirror us in distortion.

New angles to shine: double light.

If only we had their truth:

Their way to sparkle: broken, bright.

 

No need to fit the old mould.

Rather build beauty in new skin.

We can find warmth in the cold

If we allow our real selves in.

 

To find love we must accept

Ourselves and others in true form.

Do not fear to be different.

For that is how babes all are born.

Poem: Home Sweet Home

In the dank and mulchy winter chill

Slump the sunken cheeks of England’s child.

One who danced to school and dawdled home

Now sits hunched, her eyes both wide and wild.

 

How to hold her dignity and faith

Now she hides her shoes in sleeping bags,

Frightened of the faceless few who come

Late at night to look for clothes and fags.

 

Once she had a teddy and a home,

Tried to learn her lessons, do her best,

But, like all of us, she made mistakes.

Hers were not forgiven like the rest.

 

Where to go when daddy shuts you out?

Who to tell when mummy lifts her hand?

What to do when gifts from those you trust

Become code for sexual demands?

 

Better: in the tunnel by the tube.

Better: disregarded and alone.

Better: facing danger on the streets

Than to suffer in your so-called home.

 

Children sleep on sofas and in tents

Scared of shelters they have never seen,

Told of dirty rooms and scary folk,

Kept from help by those who’ve never been.

 

Many were in care: a safety net,

Where they tried to build themselves a space.

But their eighteenth birthday marked a change:

Leave and work. A new child needs your place.

 

Now our girl has been let down too often.

England’s child has got nowhere to shower.

Snuggles down inside her cardboard coffin,

Colder every minute, every hour.

Poem: Theatre of Fools

You laughed as he stumbled and raved,

Lined with grief and mopping his tears:

An actor, yes, but aren’t we all

Learning lines, denying the years?

 

You laughed as he jumbled his words.

You showed us you read the York notes;

Focussed on drinking your wine;

Selfies for cultural boasts.

 

You laughed as the mad led the blind:

The alien parent and child.

You laughed as he rode on a broom,

By years and by power defiled.

 

But Lear’s lostness held flashes of Gran

And the thief who stole half her dear brain,

Who dishevelled and scattered her days

And muddled her John with her Jane.

 

And Lear’s lostness held flashes of Grandad,

The way that he talked of his mum:

The mum that he lost as a wide-eyed boy.

Still at ninety he longed her to come.

 

And in Lear’s wild eyes, my Anne’s blind fear

Of things seen, unseen, around her,

As she sat in her new home, not home,

Fighting thought-gaps that threatened to drown her.

 

Anne needed someone to hear her;

She didn’t know anyone there.

She couldn’t get out in the sunshine.

She spent all her time in that chair.

 

And then she was gone one Tuesday.

Gone and lost to us all.

Memories and dreams and life long lived:

Now hidden by death’s silent wall.

 

We went to the theatre on Friday.

Wednesday we fought to end stigma:

World mental health day, progress made,

Your laughter is Lear’s enigma.

 

But how to respond when we face it:

‘Second childishness’ wears a fool’s mask,

In the slapstick and word play,

The tangles and plaques,

Time dead tissue can’t do what it’s asked.

 

So next time you chuckle, just picture a day

When you mix up your Mavis with Mabel,

When you lose all the words you are trying to say,

And fall when the world feels unstable.

 

When you don’t know what happened

Last weekend, last year,

Or who is your son? or what is most dear?

When you look in your handbag

Again and again

But you don’t know what’s gone, or who took it, or when.

 

Yes, next time you chuckle, just think of that day

And think of the fear of losing your way

And swallow your laughter. Choke on your tears.

Hold out your hand to those with long years.

Hold out your hand til they need it no longer.

Old age is cruel but friendship is stronger.

Poem: Good Therapy

You take all the threads

The knotted and tangled threads

And tease them out.

Slowly, frustratingly,

We work.  We pull and push and

Struggle to find

A bright reflective

Stream of thought that clarifies 

And breaks the chain.

It comes all at once,

Resonating deep in my 

Gut: it just clicks.

It’s not just sense.

The grind and click of logic

Replaced by the

Purity of feeling.

Like cold water on my wrists

A truth spreads its

Electric tendrils

Through my veins. The past, my life,

Enthralled by a 

New hue. Like a child

With a kaleidoscope, I

Can only gaze,

Wide-eyed, and wonder.

Framed by this transformative

Idea, my life

Looks alien and

Unfamiliar. It hurts:

Loss of a firm

Perceived sense of I.

There is fear there, uncertainty.

There is hope, too.

Because through this new

Window of perception I can 

Jump. Not to fall. But

To fly, expanding

My beautiful half-formed wings:

Imperfectly free.

 

Poem: Bubbles

Your laughter dances with the bubbles.

You change direction drunkenly

Heavily leaving limbs behind to 

Follow where your red face leads.

Elusive baubles flirt and burst and spin

Fragile victims of the wind’s rough play:

The breeze that longs for even bubbles’ brief

Visual matter, their ephemeral chance to shine.

Tripping in giggling distraction

You fall, muddy knees and shaking shoulders,

As rainbow pearls descend to crown your

Innocence and joy with soapy jewels.

Knees weak with glee, up you get to

Reach again for spinning, leaping air 

And I can only grin from ear to ear.

Up from somewhere deep within

The grey and muffled lostness of my joy,

Laughter froths and bubbles, 

Irresistible as a sneeze or tears.

It erupts and you are both there,

Crowned by sunshine and fun:

A pair of mad, delightful, independent souls

With so much to explore,

So much still to love.

Poem: Semantics

How the words work: matters to me.

The way they sound, where they ought to be,

The tone of voice, the click of tongue,

The silence when the words are done.

Tell me you didn’t hear, that it doesn’t matter,

That I’m over-sensitive, that it’s only chatter.

But how the words work matters to me.

The space they find; the space they leave.

 

Phrases echo in my head;

They catch and pull like knotted thread,

Stroking others long-forgotten,

Old, enchanting or half-rotten,

Showering me with painted rain

That, dancing, sings an old refrain

In new language; or leaps away

Inviting me to come and play.

 

But, like sweet sirens on the rocks,

Words call me to Pandora’s box,

Leading me to wander blind

Towards a labyrinthine mind.

To wonder what the speaker meant

Is poisoned by my temperament.

I worry and I follow breadcrumbs

Cold, alone, until the witch comes.

 

Far better now to look instead

At what the words spark in my head.

Why the language resonates,

Why it flatters or berates,

What that comes from, who and why,

Why it makes me laugh or cry.

Then I need not be just reader

Rather, find the page and feed her.

 

Words are power, gavel, sword,

Music, danger, peace, discord.

Sometimes darkly rich, intrusive,

Sometimes maddening, elusive.

Whoever spoke of stones and sticks

Had never felt the stabs and kicks

Of lifelong, inbuilt, guilt and shame

Every time you hear your name.

 

Now I own words, they can’t claim me.

I am learning to be Amy.

The A&E Merrygoround

There is a fantastic, thought-provoking BBC documentary on the iPlayer in its second series at the moment: Ambulance. It leaves me with enormous respect for the work of paramedics and an overwhelming sense of the human potential for suffering.  However, I am incensed by the treatment of mental health patients in crisis.  

Over and over again, viewers watch these patients being ferried to A&E, which is completely the wrong place for them.  A&E can be a very triggering environment at the best of times, with traumatic injuries coming in, distressed children, angry people waiting, tears, frightening sounds and long delays.  To somebody for whom the basics of daily life are overwhelming, A&E can be a suffocating, frightening space. We must stop sending people to A&E when they are experiencing the intense psychological pain of a mental health crisis.  Those people need specialist care from people who understand their difficulties.  You wouldn’t send someone with a broken leg to the dentist.  You wouldn’t send someone giving birth to an optician. The current system is senseless and broken.  It causes great harm to patients and enormous frustration to the paramedics stuck helpless with patients they don’t understand and can’t help.  

If none of those reasons are enough to convince you to provide proper resources for mental health, then consider the insane expense to the NHS.  Currently we are sending ambulances over and over again to the same people, so we can take them into A and E, where they become frightened or disillusioned and leave, or are offered an endless waiting list for therapy.  The patients go home to continue experiencing the same problems.  They feel unsafe and call again the next day, the next week, month and year at huge public expense.  People who reach out for help and don’t get it are going to look for help elsewhere: perhaps the permanent quiet of suicide, perhaps drugs, alcohol, smoking, food, violent abuse of their loved ones, the list is endless.  The cost to society is endless.  The cost to our humanity is endless.  

We must start taking mental health seriously and treating everyone as we would wish to be treated.  Because the reality is: it could be any of us struggling next time, left running in a hamster wheel of panic and sirens.  It could be any of us.  

Without compassion, society cannot function.

Words Matter

Please read with care: the following content could be triggering.

I am fed up with people being reckless with their use of words around mental health.  I want to share some particular examples with you.  They are symptomatic of a deeper lack of understanding in society about the link between language and shame.

A few years ago, I overheard the following conversation in my kitchen.  My friend (let’s call her Daisy) said, ‘Today, a girl at my school tried to kill herself.’  She rubbed her eyes and cleared her throat.  ‘It was awful.  I had to go with her in the ambulance.’  Daisy was understandably shaken up.  She added, ‘Thankfully, she later came around.’  I don’t know what I expected my other friend (we’ll call her Lucy) to say, but it definitely wasn’t what she said.  She replied, with energy:

‘Well, I hope the silly girl was ashamed of herself.’

Daisy looked confused and shifted her weight.  ‘Yes. I’m sure she was.’

Of course she was. Of course she fucking was.

I have tried for so long to understand how someone who is normally kind, like Lucy, could say such a hard thing.  I have come to the conclusion that what she meant to say was that the suicidal girl had been thoughtless and nearly caused her loved ones great pain.  But Lucy has completely misunderstood the causes of suicide and the way to help someone who feels suicidal.

The girl who tried to die was ashamed before her suicide attempt.  She was so ashamed and full of self-loathing that she went against every animal instinct to cause herself pain and try to take her own life.

Suicide is not silly.  It’s the very opposite of silly.  Silly means frivolous, flippant.  Silly means dressing up as the donkey called Bottom, or baking pancakes shaped like llamas. Silly doesn’t mean cutting your own skin or swallowing endless pills with the hope of inducing irrevocable liver damage to yourself.  If we want to understand her decision, we’d have to ask the girl herself why she felt that life was hopeless.  Why did she feel that it was more painful to go on existing than to face the gaping void of death, the pain of cardiac arrest?  We’d have to ask her.

But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t out of some silly whim.  And I’m pretty sure she was ashamed beforehand and now she is even more ashamed.  And that judging her, and shaming her again, does not help.

Why is it that people who are normally kind and generous behave like emotional fascists when faced with suicide?  It’s not just suicide: it’s self-harm, addiction and eating disorders too.  Visible emotional pain terrifies us.  Our knee jerk response is to alienate the person in pain, to judge and shame them, so that we do not have to feel our terrifying shared humanity.

Yesterday, I sat next to a girl in a coffee shop.  Let’s call her Fiona.  Fiona was on the phone loudly discussing her mental health problems with a friend: anxiety, suicidal thoughts, OCD and alcohol addiction.  She was expressing huge frustration about the lack of understanding she had found from GPs, friends and the general public.  At one point, she looked around the coffee shop and expressed her loneliness.  She commented that lots of the people there might be suffering but that no one talked about it.

At this point, I couldn’t stay quiet any longer.  I passed her a notepad, on which I’d written: I have severe depression and anxiety. I was nervous she might find it intrusive but it was a risk worth taking in the hope of reducing her sense of isolation.  As it happened, she looked at me warmly, squeezed my arm and enthused to the friend on the other end of the phone that ‘the lovely lady next to’ her had just passed her a note.  When she got off the phone, we had a conversation about our shared experiences and coping mechanisms.  We swapped numbers. It was a life-affirming moment for both of us about the human ability to reach out and feel connected to each other.

One point from my conversation with Fiona particularly stood out to me.  Recently, she had found herself in the grip of an eating-disorder again.  She had sensibly reached out for help.  She wanted to tackle the feelings before they got a strong-hold and became totally debilitating.  At this point, when Fiona was so vulnerable, the situation required praise for her courage in confronting her illness.  She needed a system to make her feel safe and show her there was hope.  Instead, what she received from the doctor was the unbelievable line: ‘You’re not thin enough to have an eating disorder.’

Imagine the damage: the potential for shame, the deterioration in your mental health as a direct result of this ignorant, throw-away comment.  The stupidest thing is that the only natural response to this would be for the patient to go away and lose lots of weight in order to get help or prove her illness.  At that point, fundamentally the doctor would be responsible for causing the return of a life-threatening condition.

The most alarming thing is that this is not an isolated incident.  I have lost count of friends who have been told that ‘unless they’re suicidal’ they can’t see a therapist for at least two years.  Are we now at a point where we are encouraging people to self-harm, as it’s the only way to access basic support?  Even if people don’t make a conscious decision to do that, it is deeply unhelpful to people that support is out of reach until you are desperate.  Like cancer, prevention of many serious mental health problems could be greatly improved by early intervention and treatment.

I have a friend who was suffering from severe depression at the tender age of seventeen.  Her only real ‘coping’ mechanism was self-harm and she desperately needed some expert help.  One day she was so ill at school that she felt unsafe, so she took the mature decision to speak to the doctor about getting help.  Many teenagers would have bunked school, got drunk, taken drugs, had some risky sex, been violent, or taken another rash decision in these circumstances.  But no. This girl called her father and asked him to take her to see the doctor.

The response from her GP was hugely irresponsible.  He said:

‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ After giving her a speech about being over-sensitive and over-dramatic, he sent her away with the unbelievable words: ‘I hope you’re not going to go away and do something stupid, like hurting yourself now?’  An incredibly damaging, belittling line, even from someone with such little compassion.  Perhaps, through his thick, cyborg skin, he had felt the faint waft of an emotion we humans like to call guilt.

Fortunately, my friend was with her dad, who quite rightly marched in, gave the doctor a furious speech and made him write a letter of apology to his daughter.   But even this is not enough. That doctor should not be allowed to work until he has learnt some basic counselling skills for dealing with people who are suffering from painful emotions.  He is irresponsible and could have caused this vulnerable child to come to great harm. In fact, with the help of some empowering, empathic counselling my friend came through this time of great pain.  She is now studying at university to become a teacher in a school for children with special educational needs.  She has great value to society.  She has great value to all of us who love her and could have lost her, thanks to the emotional immaturity of this one GP.

It’s wonderful that mental health is being discussed and that the stigma is (very slowly) lessening.  But we must, as a priority, start educating people about the way in which language can induce shame or, on the flip side, be therapeutic.  The way we talk to people in crisis matters.  The way we talk to people about their normal everyday feelings has an impact too.  Our choice of language can show we understand or that we don’t care.  It is one of our most amazing tools, distinguishing us from animals, enabling us to form societies, help each other and make progress.  But with that enormous potential for shared human development comes a responsibility.  When we discuss our feelings and those of others, our words must be chosen thoughtfully and with compassion.

Who am I and what am I doing here?

Hi, I’m Amy and I’ve started this site to share some of my writing. You should expect: lots of poetry, fiction, rants, thoughts about mental health, vague attempts at sketches, ideas about feminism, responses to the news and a general eclectic mix of stuff in which you might be interested. I write because it find it therapeutic.  Hopefully some of it will resonate with you in some way, even if you disagree with me on things.  Thanks for reading.