Thankfully, I didn’t need to take action to get away from the self-referral therapies like I’d been planning to.

When the pain management programme I’d gone to ended in Feb 2022, there was a catch-up call with the two women who ran it. One was a physiotherapist and the other was a psychologist. Neelie, the psychologist, said she thought my stoicism had served me well up to a point, but she felt I might benefit from health psychology. Finally, someone not trying to send me for CBT! She thought I needed to do some emotional processing. Seriously, what did they think I’d been trying to do for the last 8/9 years?!

Anyway, I was referred to health psychology in May 2022, after some delay, and because I chased it up. The letter that went with it was so depressing. It literally listed everything that the psychologist thought may be a negative factor in my mental health. The list was long. I don’t think I’d really acknowledged how much I’d been through until I saw it there in black and white. It looked like a lot. It felt like a lot, especially for just one tiny human.

Health psychology

I was given seven sessions, which ran between August and December 2022. The psychologist seemed lovely. I can’t fault her manner at all. However, she must have received the list of potential negative factors and thought what am I supposed to do with all of this in seven sessions? During the first session, we briefly touched on many of the things in the referral letter. She felt it would be best to focus on one “stressor” per session, providing a safe space to reflect and explore each one.

I think that’s where the problem was. How are we supposed to get to the root of any of the issues in one hour?

There was some overlap in certain areas, which was interesting to see. We talked about my needs not being met as a child, which then continued in adulthood and into a toxic and abusive relationship. This has likely been a factor in my stoicism, which is understandable because I learned that other people could not be relied upon.

I was also doing fertility testing at the time, which was not one of the topics we had agreed to discuss. However, every session started with an update on how life had been since the last session, and I was a bit stressed out by the testing at the time. This meant one of the sessions was basically taken over by that.

We touched on my traumatic medical experiences in one session. I told her about the avoidance I am aware of but don’t seem able to free myself from. Because of my control issues, making a plan for future intestinal blockages made sense. I have to admit I have still never presented at A&E despite multiple obstructions. That’s still a work in progress, I guess.

In conclusion, the therapist was very nice, but, too many topics needed to be covered. I felt exhausted after each session because we’d talked about things that weren’t nice to think about. I’m not sure any improvements came from these sessions. I certainly wasn’t all better now. That became clear just a few months later. I’ll talk more about that in the next article.