I am having weekly therapy sessions under local authority having been on the waiting list for a couple of years so I am very lucky to have got this far I know.
At the start of the sessions in January I asked the therapist to help me treat the fact that I don't feel like a woman following a double mastectomy after breast cancer as an intrusive thought.
I had come to the conclusion it is a waste of my time and is part of my brain's reaction to the BRCA1 genetic cancer killing my mum and my sister (ovarian cancer). It was triggered by the school telling my son it might be possible for me to identify out of my cancer (yep got the gene, got my cancer diagnosis 2 months before my sister died) because it only attacks the females in our family. I was furious at the school at the time because it meant my mum and my sister had chosen to die as women rather than live as men. The school also wouldn't elaborate on how me no longer being female would be communicated to the cancer. I have already had my ovaries removed as well so there is less and less for the cancer to feed on.
So when my ex employer offered their Employee Assistance Programme I did try and speak to counsellors there but I didn't think of it as an intrusive thought then, I thought of it as a truth I had to find out. And their attitude was yes you can identify out of cancer if it is sex-specific because you can identify out of your bioligcal sex. Again, like the school they wouldn't say how my cells would go from XX to XY they would just say positive things like you can be who you want to be and when I said I want to be cancer free they'd say yes you can do this. Even Macmillan advice line wasn't helpful in being clear (they have now changed their advice - it says you can change sex but it won't reduce your risk profile if the cancer is sex-contingent) and so helped perpetuate in me this belief that there was a nugget of truth in what all these professional people were purporting to know.
Thing is I came to realise I had never felt like a woman even before my breasts and ovaries were removed. I had only ever felt like me. I had never identified as a woman. I just existed as one and was perceived by others as one. But before I came to realise that i went along with the EAP Aviva counsellors trynig to work out how I could trick the cancer into thinking I was a non-woman.So while they would want me to see if I was non-binary I said that was no good because the cancer might not recognise that and I would still be female enough for it to come back. So when they kept asking me what did I think my gender identity was I just said cancerfree - that is all I wanted to be, I wasn't really bothered about male or female I just wanted the cancer to know it couldn't return.
This turned into a song in my head (kind of to the tune of Spiderman) Cancerfree cancerfree everybody can be be cancer free when cancer's just an identity it's not a fucking disease. This is like a repetitive shibboleth I use but I know its OCD. I know it is nonsense and it can't keep me safe but I am compelled to sing it over and over (in my head mostly, out loud if no one is around). It drives me seriously insane. I hate it. But it makes me anxious not to do it.
So anyway - at the start I explained all this to the therapist and to say basically do not allow me to steer these sessions into musing over whether I can identify out of cancer. I have a huge distrust of mental health professionals as a result of all this advice as a result. I know deep down that it's not possible and that these people telling me I can identify out of cancer are not kind or are unwell mentally themselves.
So fast forward 6 sessions, gaining trust in counsellor and my cervical smear goes wrong. It isn't labelled and I now have to wait 3 months for the cervical cells to regrow before I can have a smear again. And I confide to the therapist that I fear this has happened because I wasn't keepng myself safe by singing that song over and over etc Anyway we finish the session and she has to ring me back about an hour later to confirm something and when I answer the phone she asked Hello is this Cancerfree? And I said yes but my heart sank. She believes it too.
I've had 1 more session with her since and I've closed down. It was a lot of silence.
If she thinks I can identify out of cancer what is the fucking point and if she doesn't but thinks it's kinder to help me be deluded what hope have I got of getting any better? I need to get back to work and I am just so rageful that on top of being required to fight / do battle with cancer (so my mum and sister died because they just didn't want to live enough?) we are now required to identify in or out of cancer like its a fashion choice.
So AIBU to say to counsellor I asked you at the beginning to help me STOP THINKING this not collude with me, the school or Aviva or is it utterly pointless to remind her of this and accept that mental health professionals (at least those in my orbit) are not well enough to help me.