Once I felt ready to start counselling, to explore my issues, I thought that it would be easy. Just turn up to my counselling sessions and talk, and I would begin to feel better. But it isn’t quite like that. There's nothing anyone can say, even a professional, which will magically re-scramble my thinking, immediately make my life better. Counselling is helping me begin to facilitate positive changes in my life: learn new coping strategies for managing my anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts, develop my confidence, and build my resilience. I’m beginning to recognise the difference between a bad day and the beginning of another relapse. I’m learning that it’s ok to fail, that I just need to keep trying. That all endings are also beginnings.
Thinking of depression as a cycle which we can easily get caught up in helps me to understand how it works. I’ve spent the last year learning how to break that cycle, and how to spot the signs that I’m getting back into it so that I can do something about it before it spirals out of control again.
My depression doesn't just impact on me, but also on those around me who love me. Watching the effect on my family, my friends, is hard. The guilt I feel for how I make them feel is as difficult to learn to live with as my depression.
Working out how to ease the damage I've done to my daughter is challenging. Being her mum is a long journey that I'll be on for the rest of my life.
Being raped and sexually abused as a child impacted my beliefs and attitudes about sex in ways that I am now only just beginning to unpick. Being in a relationship where I was coerced into having sex has affected my ability to trust again. Taking a break from sex and getting help to challenge my distorted beliefs about it will, hopefully, enable me to build my confidence, help me to learn how to teach my daughter positive beliefs about sex.
I have a family history of depression. How do I equip my daughter with the skills she needs to protect herself, to cope if she begins to struggle?
What I’m learning is that I can’t make it stop. That there is no why. It just is. It’s in my genetics, in my bones. What I need to do is learn how to live with it.
I don’t love myself. I don’t even like myself very much. But I know that other people love me – my daughter, my mum, my dad, my sister, friends. Feeling worthy of this love, accepting that I’m worth loving is hard.
How you talk to yourself affects how you think about yourself and your ability to get the most out of life.
I am wearing purple 