Author: An incredible present client @thepathwayclinic
When I chose to give therapy another try I was under the very firm belief that there was something wrong with me, I wasn’t sure what, maybe it was something due to brain chemistry, maybe something I had developed or even something I was born with but the one thing I knew for certain was that whatever it was, it couldn't be fixed. I firmly believed that embarking in therapy for me was all about finding a way to cope and manage my out-of-control anxiety but that it was something I was going to have to live with forever. There was no future that was free of it, that simply wasn't an option for me. I believed that my spiralling anxiety along with the self-loathing, fears and terror that came with it were as much a part of who I was as my beating heart or the blood in my veins and
therefore something that I couldn't exist without. I had reached a point (and not for the first time in my journey) that I was desperate for help, I knew I couldn’t carry on in the way I was, but I had no idea if there was even anything that could help me or even save me from myself. I was constantly exhausted by the fight to keep my head above the water. My life had become a cycle of treading water and fighting the turbulent ocean storm inside my head to be able to breathe. I could go for periods of time while deploying every coping mechanism I had where I could just about keep my head above the surface, but I could never stay there for very long. I would become so worn out
keeping myself there and then I would run out of steam or one unexpected wave and I would slip deep back under again, stuck between the overwhelming calm and quiet of drowning and the panic in every cell of my being in need of air to survive. This meant cycles of burnout, cycles of just about controlling my anxiety and forcing it below the surface before then being plunged into deep out-of-control panic and terror, deep insecurity and feelings of being just so very very unsafe even within myself. When I took the decision to return to therapy I was desperately hoping that it could teach
me something I had not yet encountered in terms of how to manage all that I was going through. I was looking for more strategies, more things I could put into practice on top of the long list of things I already was. I was desperately hoping with every fibre of my being that there was something more to help me, because I knew that if my life had to look like this, if I had to deal with these feelings and this out of control fear forever that I simply couldn’t do it. I couldn't live on ruled and consumed by this dark cloud, it wasn’t a life, it was a constant battle to survive. I entered into the pathway clinic, knowing that something needed to change but not truly believing
it could. In one of my first sessions Helen shared with me an analogy and a belief that she has. I'm going to do my best to describe it here in my own words. This belief was that everyone is born as a pure and radiant ball of light, this light sits at the core of every new baby. No baby is inherently evil, or broken or rotting at their core, they all hold this light or potential for light. But this light can get hidden, dulled and buried as we move through life. Each trauma, negative experience and interjected belief can be a layer of dirt and darkness that gets laid over this ball of light. As the layers build up you can lose sight of the light, you can begin to believe it’s not even really there because of
how much darkness hides it, but it will always remain there, you never lose it or truly extinguish it. If you take the time to look and go through peeling back each and every layer you can get back to the light that is inside. With this, she shared with me that she truly believes that it is not what is wrong with us but what has happened to us. This means there is an option for me to be free of this anxiety and terror I live consumed by inside my head, to be free of the darkness that it feels is at my very
core. This for me felt like a very radical and out-there idea. It challenged everything I felt to be true about myself. For a really long time, I truly struggled with it, I struggled with accepting this as something that could be real or true. I thought it sounded like a really wonderful thing but just not possible. After some time I reached a point where I could believe it was possible for others and was true but was still utterly convinced that it would not be possible for me. I remained certain with the belief deeply ingrained within me that something was really wrong with me so as much as that sounded wonderful, and I really wanted to believe it, I just couldn't accept that it was actually true
or possible for me.
At this point I was so convinced that I was rotten and bad that this explained away almost everything. It kept me very trapped and blinkered to the truth, to what I had been through, to what I was still experiencing, to possibility and who I could be. I simply couldn't see past this. I was so convinced that there was just something so wrong with me, it was just part of who I am, and this lead me to believe and be blind to look at or accept anything that might have led or created this way of being. I could explain away all my issues in my present life and that I had been through because they were just symptoms of this rotten core. Whether this was struggles with food, or anxiety, or
self-harm or panic attacks or even traumatic experiences, they were all just signs or consequences of the darkness within me, signs I wasn’t keeping myself in check. I couldn’t phantom that there might be reasons outside of me that I might be experiencing all of these things. It was so deeply ingrained that it was something wrong with me, and therefore I just needed to do better, be better, keep things under control, and keep myself on track. But this analogy and belief that Helen had shared with me planted a seed, a seed that as I’ve said I thought it had no chance to grow but it had at been planted nonetheless.
Slowly over time giving therapy a chance things started to bubble to the surface. There was a power in having space and time to just be me and have that accepted, even if this did feel incredibly uncomfortable at times. I didn’t know how to perform here, I didn’t know how to get it right. I was so used to trying to make myself smaller, trying to make myself invisible so to be given space to just be, and to be me in all and anyway that presents itself was new and foreign but a very powerful gift to be given. I often felt like a deer in the headlights, so far out of my depth I didn’t know how to function, but over time this eased and I learnt how to being to take up space in this one little
supported area. This overtime gave me the power to safety start to opening up the vault inside my mind that I had been fighting to keep sealed shut for all my life. I started to bring things out of the vault and into the therapy space that I had buried for years. Through this exploration and without
really realising it at first I began to water the seed that had Helen had given me to plant.
Slowly through this exploration I started to be able to see all the interconnected threads that tied things together and became the knotted, complicated ball at my core. How experiences and connections to others have impacted how I was and how I see or experience the world. I have found that slowly giving time to each thread or tangle and working to pull and free each one is slowly loosening the whole knotted mass. With this process I have started to be able to look upon the interconnected web of my experiences, the past and to begin to understand that everything is connected and joined in a much more intricate and deeper way than I was able to recognise before.
One of the things I was starting to see was that although I could list a whole mix of experiences I could never explain or pinpoint even to myself what made me so bad or so rotten. I could start to see that a lot of what I had been through and a lot of what I experienced was just ways of surviving, doing my best to get through. I was able to start to question whether I was really innately as bad and as deserving of everything I had been through as I had always thought. I started to be able to look with compassion and curiosity to my journey and began to wonder if I had gotten things the wrong
way around. To wonder whether if the bad things I had been through were perhaps contributing causes to why I felt the I way did rather than being a symptom or consequence of who I was.
I can’t say I have yet been able to totally shed this negative self-view completely and there is still a part of me that even with no reason or evidence just struggles to release the belief that there is something deeply wrong with me. But I can say that I have truly started to question it and that I can see a light where there was only pure darkness before. Every time a thought about being the problem comes up for me now, there is a part of my mind that counters it or offers a different explanation. This counter voice is not yet the dominant voice but it’s there which it never was before. To me this is a sign, an indication of change and shifts within me.
It’s as a sign that what Helen told me in our first few sessions has the potential to be true. As difficult as it is to believe it at times, there is truth to the fact that no one is innately bad or wrong and therefore I might not be either. It’s a sign that the seed that we planted together when I first started this journey has actually against all
the odds I gave it, started to grow and sprout a little green stem. It’s a sign of new life, a sign of rebirth, a sign of second chances. It’s a sign that this plant needs to be protected and nurtured. It allows me to know that there is a chance and hope for me to be free of all the darkness that is inside
me. It's opening the door to the knowledge that it is simply what I have been through, and not who I am. This flicker of hope is enough to keep me on the path when things get too dark or when I get a little too lost. I hope to one day be able to truly say I know with every fibre of my being that there is nothing wrong with me, but I'm just not there yet. This is a long journey with many highs and lows, but I now
believe it’s a journey worth taking because there is hope for possibility, hope for light,
hope for freedom.
