I was diagnosed with depression before Christmas and for the past 10 weeks I have been seeing a counsellor. Tomorrow is my last session with her and I am dreading it being the end. I have literally only just begun to feel comfortable to open up to her, to bring up what I want to talk about and to be completely honest with her and it’s over before I know it. When I started counselling my main goal was to be able to open up to those around me more, I thought I would be able to manage it but I still can’t. I just have a barrier up constantly and I am trying to talk myself into breaking it down but it just does not seem to work for me. It honestly terrifies me, but I don’t know why. These are the people who have seen me at my lowest, people who I know so much about yet I can’t let them in. I can’t think of a specific reason for this but all I do know is that it frustrates me so much. This is definitely going to be the focus of my last session.
Counselling has helped me to feel aware of my feelings, be able to banish negative thoughts if need be or be able to take a moment and try to solve what is causing me these thoughts. It has definitely helped me to feel better, going from spending all day alone in my room feeling rubbish to being able to go out and socialise with my friends. Obviously I do have some days where all I want to do is be alone, and for a while I will do that but then I know when to draw the line and stop excluding myself.
A friend of mine suggested writing down my thoughts and feelings as she knows I find it difficult to talk about them, so this is something I have been doing on and off for the past few weeks. When I’m feeling particularly down I have begun to find that writing it down and having a little cry does wonders, before I would literally let things make me feel so rubbish and get stuck in a vicious cycle. The next step for me is definitely to try and share what I’m writing down, but I know this is going to take a lot of courage for me to do it.
I have always lacked self confidence which I think plays a major part in me feeling like I can’t open up to people. I constantly feel like I am split in two, as I often have discussions in my head – one side will be telling me to go for it and that it isn’t as scary as it seems, whereas the other is telling me that I shouldn’t do it. The majority of the time I allow the side saying that I shouldn’t to win. I hate this.
To sum up what I have learnt from counselling; I have far too high expectations of myself and hold myself responsible for too much, it is okay to have negative feelings and be able to keep them without letting them affect you, sometimes I need to make myself a priority rather than other people, I need to have a voice, I hate silence but it can sometimes be a good thing, being able to tell how you’re feeling can help you to feel better and always try and find the positives even if the situation seems completely negative.
Beauty by B.x 