I have a treatment plan!! But do I want it?

Technology is an amazing thing. I have just come from a virtual meeting of my support group (Little Steps) via a video link. it isn’t the same as an actual real meeting, but my goodness, it is more than a first rate alternative.

I also have been having zoom meetings with my church and with with my choir. both which have been fantastic. To see every one at church and to be able to share and pray with them has been almost life saving. The same with choir, only no praying, just singing!!

On top of all of the above, I have over the last few weeks, eversince Lockdown began, been in receipt of a video linked assessment from a CMHT (Community Mental Health Team) therapist to decide what type of therapy would be best suited to me and after 12 weeks of assessment which amounts to 12 hours of work, it has been decided that I should undergo a course of DBT (Dialectical Behavioural Therapy). This is going to be a very intense, consisting of a 15 month course of treatment involving both group work and 1:1 work. it will run alongside my ‘regular’ therapy and will consist of, in total 4.5 hours of therapy a week. Eek! I have just said in my support group that i am not quite sure how I feel about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I am inordinately grateful for it and I recognise how incredibly lucky I am to be given the opportunity of receiving such an expensive course of treatment. but if I am honest, I am a bit afraid of it. 4.5 hours of therapy is a huge amount, I have been warned that it is going to be very intense and that at times I will find it tough and that is what I am dreading. I wonder of I am ready, if I am strong enough to take it. I imagine, that it will take me to places that perhaps I don’t want to go.

I am also ‘scared’ of getting better? that might sound strange? but i have been hidden for 45 years, a long, long time. I have no idea what the ‘new’ me would be like. I don’t know how else to behave. I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone? It is the same with my weight. I don’t know what it will be like to be ‘thin’. I don’t even know if I want to be thin. In many ways being thin is a great shield, it’s a great ‘wall’ to hide behind. How will people react to a ‘thin Vince’? How will I react to a thin Vince? After all and this may shock people, I deliberately made myself look he way I do, now that’s a confession!!

In my head, people are much less likely to want to become involved (and by involved I mean intimate) with me, if I am gross. By and large for the last thirty plus years this philosophy has been successful. Will Shedding the weigh, and looking like a normal person, whatever that means, make people want to become involved with me? Will it make me more available? Will I behave in a different way? Will I have to re-enter society, because to be frank for the past thirty-forty years I have taken steps to live outside it. Its easier to be on the outside edge looking in.

The older I get, the further away from ‘the crowd’ I get. quite honestly, I am now so far behind, away from the crowd, that at times I can barely see it and wonder if I have stepped just too far away?

This may surprise people, to read this; it is perhaps not the way that I portray myself, but something that I have believed for decades is that those of us who live with this awful illness depression, quite quickly become oscar winning actors. We present ourselves in such a way, that unless you know us very well, you would not know the turmoil that we are in.

It is of course also a form of self harm, some eminent people (eminent in the field of depression!) have described it is slow suicide. Having been close to suicide myself on several occasions, I’m not sure that I agree with that one. I can think of far better and surer ways and if it is a form of slow suicide, then it doesn’t work!!

Anyway, I think that’s enough for today, so till next time…………