Counselling/Psychotherapy

[chichirou]

Hi

Feeling very low and anxious today and I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel and would be very grately to hear from others who like me have struggled to cope with becoming a parent but have come out at the other end and have a happy balanced life?

DD is 2 and I have tried very hard for the last 2 years to cope and manage but had to finally ask for help a couple of months ago and was put on AD as I couldn't sleep. I have also started seeing a psychotherapist. Yesterday was my 2nd session and after talking about my childhood I am now feeling really scared and sad. Is this normal? I understand that repressed memories can cause anxieties but today I feel like I could just cry and cry.

Please can someone tell me if this is normal? I really want to get better but I seem to go round in circles.

[NanaNina]

Sometimes when we talk about things in our childhood, especially anything traumatic, it makes us scared and sad. The way we were parented has a great effect on the way we turn out as adults, and psychotherapy is meant to be able to allow you to uncover some of the hurt of childhood and make it more manageable. Pyscotherapy isn't magic as I'm sure you know, but by talking about childhood it will naturally bring back memories, both happy and sad, and things that have been buried for a long time. It's a bit like the top soil has been scraped away and there underneath are some hurtful things. You are doing the right thing, by talking about your past, but it is not a "quick fix" and can take a long time and lots of motivation to keep at it.

The main thing is whether you feel safe and comfortable with your therapist, so that over time you can confide in him/her and know that you will not be judged. We all have things in our past that come and hit us on the back of the neck when we aren't looking. Is the fact that you now have your own child, brought back memories of your own childhood.

Do you know why you cannot sleep - are you anxious about your child. Do you have any friends/relatives in RL, especially young mothers like yourself, who can maybe put your mind at rest that it is sometimes hard to adjust to being a mother. Do you have a partner, or are your a single parent.

[chichirou]

Thanks NanaNina. I do feel quite isolated but have some good friends who I try to keep in touch with.

Have you experienced similar feelings and worked your way out of them?

Regarding sleeping or rather the lack of it, I just get very anxious about DD or worry about silly things or think I can hear DD crying... just can't relax and go to sleep.

[thingamajig]

Firstly, well done for seeking help. Secondly, yes, it is very normal to feel sad and disturbed by psychotherapy. It is hard work going through therapy, but it does work, and the antidepressants will help you cope with the process. Talking about things that happened in childhood, especially bad things will bring back memories that hurt, but doing it seems to help; you take them out, look at them and put them away again, and each time you do this they get less scary, more distant.
I feel that I am living a normal non depressed life for the first time in years, it has taken a lot of drugs and several bouts of therapy to get here, but I can finally think about certain things without them going round and round my head and making me sadder and sadder. You will get there, but it is not quick.

[chichirou]

Hi thingamajig - thanks it's good to know that there is a point to going through this. I had another session on Thursday and feel a bit more positive and less overwhelmed. I guess I just need to keep going and keep positive but thanks for sharing your experience with me, it really helps. :)

[NanaNina]

Hi Chich - I don't think it's so much a case of working your way through painful feelings. It's more a case of them shrinking so that they are more manageable. So if the pain feel like a football in your body now, it may shrink to a grapefruit, then an orange, golfball, marble.........that kind of thing. You can't ever erase the past because it's part of you. Somehow talking about it and bringing it all out in the open, makes the feelings less powerful and puts you more in control, rather than the other way round.

There is a saying "no gain without pain" - it can take a long time to begin to feel any better during therapy and there will be times when you might feel worse. As I think I already said, the important thing is that you have a therapist in whom you can trust with your feelings, with whom you feel safe and understood.