No, not from uni. I couldn’t go back to studying again. But from therapy.
Yep today was my last session with my amazing therapist. For nearly 8 months I’ve spoken to him every week, as well as the odd text or email. And now that’s us finished. I’ve been released back into the world.
Am I cured? Well no. Because I don’t think mental illness in the form of anxiety and depression is something that you can be cured from. Instead you learn coping strategies and mechanisms to lessen the debilitating intrusion that they can have on your life.
What I have now is a toolbox at my disposal. In that I have everything I’ve learnt in the past 8 months. I know that I’ve been able to overcome this and so if I start to feel a return of any uncomfortable symptoms I can deal with them in the knowledge that I’ve overcome it before. That it is within me to process things with a more positive approach so that situations are actually dealt with rather than locking them up and throwing them away in the depths of my subconscious as I used to do.
That is not healthy for me. In the short term it allowed me to move on from anything traumatic but in the long term it was devastating. All I really achieved was an internal mess with everything being stuffed away so much that eventually they burst out into my conscious and were clouding and all encompassing.
I’ve been battered and bruised. I’ve had shit thrown at me. But guess what? I’ve survived and come out the other side. In the words of Chumbawamba – “I get knocked down, but I get up again. You are never gonna keep me down”
