Seven Steps to Stability - Step 1: The Therapy

MHAW 2014

Clearly, the key to my Stability after the horrific incident of March 2011 was the professional help that I received.  I simply couldn't cope with everything going on around me; at the time, I struggled to even leave the house and day to day mundane things proved to be close to impossible.  Socialising was a no-go and going to work was also very difficult, albeit something I persisted with.  I was crying a lot and perhaps unsurprisingly having to cope minute in minute out with severe anxiety made me feel very low and constantly exhausted. I must have looked unwell at times; I remember people asking 'are you okay?' or saying 'you look tired.'  Of course, I never told anyone what was really happening, which of course did not help one little bit.

I was very ill and very worried about myself - which of course fuelled the anxiety even more.  I struggled to eat, sleep and even speak coherently at times.  I pushed people away almost accidentally and was slowly becoming a recluse, bar going to work.

At this time, it didn't feel like I was going to get out of this hole without significant intervention.  I'm against medication for mental health unless it is a last resort, but having had fairly poor experiences with counselling before, I was almost considering this as an option. 

This was, indeed, one solution I did take, in the form of beta-blockers, an analysis of which I shall include later this week.  But I still wasn't keen to go onto something more specific to dealing with anxiety.  I needed therapy again, but I needed it now.  My previous experience with NHS therapy was poor for two reasons: 1) it took well over a year from initially being referred to therapy to actually receiving it, and 2) the person in our area is not a particularly pleasant therapist.  His methods, shall we say, are somewhat blunt and as a person I couldn't warm to him at all.

My experiences of private therapy weren't much better; yes I got seen quickly, but I realised retrospectively that the therapy I was getting wasn't actually Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), typically the most common type of therapy to help with anxiety.  The counsellor was more concerned about how I had become the way I had, rather than trying to help me through the anxiety.  I'm not saying history isn't important, but CBT is all about dealing with the symptoms and the here and now, with history merely helping the therapist to understand over time.

Also, in both the private and public experiences, I was limited to less than ten sessions, which almost felt like there was pressure on to start improving.

So these, frankly, inadequate experiences prior to 2011 meant that I perhaps didn't get on to organising therapy as quickly as I should have done, simply because I'd lost a little bit of faith in it.  But I'd simply got to a point where action was non-negotiable.

So, as is the modern way of things, I did some research online and it took less than five minutes to come across Anxiety UK, a charity whose audience were people like me.  I actually spent quite some time checking that they were genuine; it, perhaps naively, never even dawned on me that such an organisation could exist.  They were willing to offer therapy not only quickly, but from someone who has had experiences of anxiety.  They were willing to offer unlimited sessions and even therapy via webcam, should a therapist not be practising in my area.

Needless to say, once I realised this was all legitimate, I phoned them up.  This took guts back then; to even pick up the phone to anyone was a challenge but I knew I had to try this.  I looked online and found that my nearest therapist was based about 20-25 miles away, which especially given I don't drive was simply not feasible at the time.  Work, about four miles away, was my limit in terms of travel.  So I filled in the application and opted for the webcam therapy.  Despite a couple of minor administrative errors, I had spoken to my therapist within a few days and organised an appointment within two weeks of making first contact with Anxiety UK.  It may have been even shorter had it not been for the minor errors. 

Don't get me wrong, at the time I was still sceptical.  "Just because it's gone well so far, doesn't mean the therapy will."  I also didn't know whether the impact of the therapy would be weaker via webcam than face to face.  But I knew I had to do this. 

My next blog will provide some more details about the actual content of the sessions, in terms of techniques I learnt and have practised.  The things that actually got me on the way and have helped maintain my stability.  But just to put things into context; I had 50 sessions with this therapist over the course of about 13 months.  Yes, fifty.  Five Zero.  She was human, she could empathise, she could understand and she gave good advice.  As long as I put the work in in-between sessions then progress could be made.  But I could tell she genuinely cared about me and my progress, got to know me as we went along, shared her experiences and wanted to me to make good progress.  She was, in fact, an NHS therapist up in Scotland, but helped a few private patients out of hours (of which I was one) privately.  And the webcam thing, bar the odd technical failure aside, didn't hinder the progress at all.  I would certainly recommend this if you cannot get help in your area. 

Now I grant you, I spent exactly £1,000 on this treatment (£20 per session).  I also appreciate some people would not necessarily be able to afford this (although it is worth pointing out the Anxiety UK charge dependent upon total household income, so it should be cheaper the less you earn).  But I fail to have seen any free service that you could get that would provide you with as many sessions of this, especially that are high quality. 

What this also proves is how much help I needed.  Fifty sessions at probably an average of 50 minutes per session is a lot of time.  But without it, I dread to think where I could have ended up.  There is a lot of talk about crisis care and how few people get the adequate support they need when they are in crisis.  I am reluctant to say that I was in crisis as per the definition, but it felt like it at the time.  And I can say whole-heartedly that I couldn't realistically have expected to get a better service, albeit I was willing to pay for it.

Ultimately, the therapy I received didn't just help me after this 2011 event, it helped my wider, more chronic anxiety conditions and made me learn a lot more about them.  It was the key thing towards helping me with my stabilisation and many of the rest of this week's blogs that detail things that have helped were triggered by things that I learnt during these fifty sessions of CBT.

Some of the more psychological techniques that I learnt will come tomorrow.

Mental Health Awareness Week 2014: Are You Anxiety Aware?

Best wishes
Al