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So I started therapy, right. Three sessions so far. And I’ve been having a really shitty week, right, with a fairly shitty week before that, and standard shitty the week before that.

I might as well have been the fucking therapist this week. We were asked to recap for someone who wasn’t there last week, some people hesitantly offered a thing, then I gave a rundown of the whole thing, practically memorised as if from a text book. Eternal student, anyone? I got nods and smiles from the therapists. Go me, star pupil. [ETA: I’ve just remembered that I even referred to our home practice as a test and then froze in horror, which made them laugh.]

I can see past what people say to what they mean and I can tell when people just don’t get what the therapists are saying, with their words and metaphors and shitty little drawings. (Not that the therapists are shit, they’re not. I like them. This isn’t a post about the actual therapy.) I know exactly what is someone’s sticking point, and even holding myself back, sometimes I have to explain the thing, even if it’s just with a better metaphor, FFS. Again, nods and smiles from the therapists.

I explained to them last week that I am perfectly capable of understanding what they’re teaching us. I pick stuff up quickly, I know exactly what I’m doing, how it relates to the therapy, how the therapy is supposed to help, why I like the therapy in theory, and that understanding stuff has absolutely no effect whatsoever on my particular brand of crazy. 

I can’t help but want to help the others in the group. I unexpectedly like being part of a group. I like not feeling lonely. I’ve never come across people I can identify with like I can with this lot, not even fellow mentals. Almost with one friend, but not quite like this. I have more compassion for these people than I do for myself and my insight combined with compassion turns me into a pseudo-fucking-therapist.

And then there’s my life outside the ‘classroom’.

The really shitty week. There was the neurotic and then there was the depressed and this week there’s been the meltdowns and the not sleeping and the slurred speech and the getting out of bed but not functioning. I think I *might* not have been as prepared for my colleagues moving over to me as I thought I was. I thought I was doing quite well with it, until I didn’t sleep at all on Monday night and then had to sit down before I fell down at a train station the following morning. I thought maybe I was just feeling sick and dizzy because of the lack of sleep, but I started crying when I finally made it onto the tube and then froze in another train station and realised there was a chance this was a panic attack. Course, I went to work anyway. Sitting with my head between my knees in the middle of London is not a good enough reason to go back to bed.

Colleagues moving here has made me feel like I’ve gone back in time. Working with them, but not actually with them, was stressful and horrible before. Noise is always stressful. Time spent with my boss is usually stressful. I manage this by seeing him as infrequently as possible, and keeping myself reserved while I’m with him. My mentor has even been coaching me in this. All her advice is to keep both bosses as far away from me as possible, giving them what they need and nothing more. Now he’s next door to me, watching, disapproving.

My brain is behaving as though I have actually gone back in time. My mentor has been unable to meet me for a few weeks so I’ve had no one to help boost me. Going into therapy, knowing that if my GP saw me now she’d sign me off work immediately, and then being a good little student completely unable to make the link between understanding and ‘getting’… that does my fucking head in and amuses me in equal measure. 😀

PS. I felt a strong urge to blog about this because I had to stop myself laughing like a loon in the session yesterday but I feel a bit weird posting it, for reasons entirely neurotic, so I might delete it.  😛