So anyways I went directly to the psychiatrist and he told me that, ‘I’m not going to give you any medicine. Maybe he would have given me the reason that I was too young or something like that, which I can’t remember. But mainly he told me, ‘Look, this is a psychologist. She works in this hospital. Go and see her, and have a few sessions with her, and then we’ll see how things go. I said, ‘All right. So I went to see her I think altogether about three times, where we had a one hour session each time, more or less, and she didn’t charge me anything or anything like that. She was very nice. She listened to everything. She was actually a college professor, and a psychology professor. So she listened to me quite a lot. And she gave me quite a bit of time, and I felt actually better during that therapy.

But at the end of the day I think I was just too young to be patient enough to keep on going to therapy and talking about rubbish. I think it becomes a bit boring as well after a while. You know, ‘This happened, and that happened. You need a fix. You know what I mean? Like your mind isn’t working properly. You are in pain, you need a fix. You don’t want to talk rubbish for months. You just need a fix. So I think I was just too impatient. I was probably doing drugs as well. So, you know, I thought, ‘Sod it. And that’s it.

I mean do use kind of stuff like CBT which is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to kind of stop it getting any bigger. Sometimes it helps. Actually most of the time it helps but there are some certain occasions where I’m always having a kind of rough time anyway, and I’m not sleeping, or I’ve just been physically ill, so CBT is hard to kind of use. Then it does happen, it happens less frequently but it still happens.

So when it does work, how does that help?

Well for example’ the last time I used CBT effectively is that sometimes I think that people are clones, that they’re not really the people they say they are. And my kind of CBT therapist said, ‘Why do you think that is?’ I say, ‘Because the other people are acting strangely. And so we kind of broke it down and what she found, what we found is that’ I was already slightly becoming unwell, so people’s response to me, their kind of attitude would shift, because they will say, you know, ‘There’s something amiss with Dolly. So their, their attitude would change, but I was misinterpreting that change. I was thinking that that was proof that they were clones, because they were acting different. But she said, ‘No. It could be that because you’re acting slightly different way, they are acting slightly different. So I mean that kind of really stopped that. That kind of psychotic episode from being bigger than it was. So it was just breaking the things down, and just seeing, you know, psychosis isn’t, isn’t random it does follow a certain path and your thinking and your behaviour helps feed that, you know, directs that path, so to speak.

What is that path then, can you explain?

Well we’ve all got a set way of thinking and, you know, for example this, this clone thing. I would always assume that the other person’s kind of difference in attitude was there was like only one reason for that. So that was the usual path that I went down. So the CBT provided me kind of another path that, that was kind of more truthful and more showing what was, you know, really, happening. So, I think that’s what, you know, CBT has kind of shown me your thinking can change the psychotic experience so that’s what I mean really.

So I had a counsellor, who was absolutely rubbish, who then told me about a BME counsellor, who was equally rubbish, who then led me on to another counsellor, who was excellent. And she was a white Irish woman and she allowed me to explore my feelings. I think that’s probably the best way to put it. She never actually ever said that much, I have to say. But when I started to feel some kind of understanding and recovery, I talked to her about what type of counsellor she was. And she said, she must have told me right at the beginning but I can’t remember, she said she was a person-centred counsellor. And I thought, ‘Wow. This is really, really good. Because for the first time in all the so-called care that I’ve had somebody is allowing me to make my own choices, come to my own conclusions. And they’re not telling me that it’s wrong or it’s right, they’re just allowing me to explore. And, and in some ways, you know, it’s so subtly, but forcing me to think things through. Never giving me the answer to the next step. Allowing me to think about what could be my next step and what’s the pros and cons of my next step and really thrash it out. And maybe, you know, there’d be one question for a session and, and that’s all we’d ever get to by the end of the session, just coming to grips with what the question was, sort of thing.

And I had counselling for nearly a year, every week, one hour, and it was fantastic. And she was a volunteer. So then I decided, ‘I’m going to be a counsellor. I’m going to be a counsellor. And I went off and found an Introductory and a Certificate too and I started this person-centred counselling. And it was probably the worst thing that I ever did, because being a person-centred counsellor requires you to look at yourself. And looking at myself was not always a good idea, because I often didn’t like what was revealed to me when I started really looking. So it was a struggle to finish this course. And I had lots of challenging conversations with members of that group, that training group. And the tutors were fine, but it was really hard work. So by the time I got to the end of the certificate I decided I didn’t want to be a counsellor, because if this is what the certificate feels like, God knows how hard the diploma is going to be. I don’t think my mind can take it. And all my friends would just have a field day. And I think they did have a field day with the whole concept of me delving into my head. I didn’t often do that.

I think I find it difficult anyway talking to mental health professionals because they do, even if they’re not white, they are middle class, and I don’t know I think probably as I felt a lot of my life, you know, like I went to private school when I wasn’t like middle class and stuff and I have, I have got this thing about, I suppose I’ve got an inferiority thing, about, you know, people who are like clever and posh and stuff. I mean there wasn’t anything wrong with her, you know, she was a nice enough person, it was just when I was assessed I had said that I had these eating problems, and I’d also said that one of the other thing I had was that I was convinced for years and years that I was really, really ugly. I mean nowadays I don’t get it so much. I mean I know I’m not beautiful or anything, but you know, I am kind of average okay, fine, great [sniffs]. But I was really, really distressed at that point, about my facial appearance, I thought that I was really, really hideously ugly, and a lot uglier than other people, you know, and I’d said that. And there’s plenty of other people they could have given me as a therapist, but who did they give me? This like kind of, I don’t know, she was just, she was very kind of beautiful and thin and, and, I just sat there feeling really, really inferior. And I think as well because she is a psychologist, and I was a graduate and I kept thinking, ‘But I should be doing what you are doing, and why am I sitting here in this chair?’

What I really want to say is that the language and communication are so crucial in therapy. And I was saying that talking with people is never the same as talking to people. But we normally say talking to, I’m talking to Maria, talking to Juan, John to whoever. That sounds patronising. If you talk with someone it is different because there is a relationship that comes and goes. So the way we use the language and the words that we use had a lot to do with mental health, a lot, because we just repeat and repeat everything. It’s like the word ‘mind’? What is ‘mind’? I don’t use the word mind because mind is so many things and at the same time it is nothing. So yeah it’s questioning almost everything, everything that I was doing. And perhaps because I studied linguistics, the language became for me very crucial. Very and it helped me. So in the end it’s a lot of circumstances in my life that together make me a different person that I am now.

When I really became aware and conscious of everything, putting my own ideas and answers to my own questions, I came out as a totally different person which I am very pleased I am. And yeah I always wanted to be a calm person since I was working, there was a teacher who was so soft and so gentle, I wished I was like her, and now I can say I am [Laughs]. Having an easier life, my whole philosophy of life is totally different. It’s a pleasure, life is a pleasure, it’s not a rush, a pain any more.

And so did you experience difficulties expressing yourself, for example in therapy or’?

Oh yes, yes, I, the fact that I was not confident about English, about my English, put me off. Within this counselling course, it’s when I came about how important it was for me to speak up. The first day it was about 50 people sitting in, in a room and, and I, in my own view they were all, all of them were English and because they spoke very well and easily. And it was nearly the end of the day and I hadn’t said a word and my heart began to go [gestures], so it was following my feelings that I learnt to speak because I remember saying at the very last minute I want to say something, shaking and I said, ‘I’m shaking. And I explained that, ‘I’m a foreigner, this is the first time I’m in a room with so many English people, English speakers that speak so fluently and so easily, but my heart is coming out. So expressing exactly what I was feeling, that was all I needed. So that was another big, big lesson.

And then came the counselling, six sessions of counselling where I began to talk about my anger with my parents and with many people, just mentioning it because six sessions were not enough. Actually the, the counsellor was very distant, she was, used to sit in a corner far away. And I remember telling her after the sessions, the six sessions, she said, ‘I don’t see you any more,’ and I said this is like I want to say goodbye properly. And because the Latin American way is to give a hug, and to closeness but she just stretched her hands like that and just so I just felt it was a waste of time and then I became suicidal. In my head there was a picture of a baby, a baby, an unborn baby and I could see the umbilical cord and everything and I remember because she, she probably gave me another few session afterwards and she asked me what was the feeling and where does the cord link to, goes to? And I said, ‘It ends in this room. And since then, I became suicidal really. And I couldn’t get rid of the thoughts and gradually working with my anger they went and I cut my medication off and so.
So you mentioned I think going to hospital?

Yeah

When did that happen?

[Laughs] Yes that was, I suppose I was already feeling suicidal.
Was this around the same time then?

After the sessions with the counsellor, because, I took my daughter one day to school and I, and these thoughts of killing myself terrified me, I knew that my husband was not at home, he had gone to post office, somewhere nearby and I didn’t want to go back to the house on my own. I went to the doctors which is just around the corner and I told one of the staff how I was feeling and they spoke with the doctor and the doctor said for me to stay, that they would keep phoning home until my husband was there so I could go. But I suppose they also saw the danger of me being on my own anywhere and they suggested for me to go to the hospital.

And from then on in after I’d, after I was an in-patient for three months and I had electro convulsive therapy, or shock treatment, whatever you want to call it. That seemed to help me greatly, I had three, three treatments a week for three weeks, I had nine treatments altogether and that was a, that was a great gift because all that did was it , it calmed down whatever was bothering me and sort of put it to one side. And at the same time all I, all I forgot, because it does affect your memory, it does affect some parts of your memory, all I forgot was my life in England for the final year before I left back to Australia. So I forgot about all the movies I’d seen and I knew I’d seen them but I couldn’t remember the plot and I couldn’t remember my farewell party or anything like that. So now I’m back in England, it’s wonderful, how everything is sort of vaguely familiar, it’s, you know, it’s new, at the same time it’s new, it’s a delight, you know. But anyway so the shock treatment or the ECT was very helpful to me and so I spent three months as an in-patient and then about six months as an out-patient where I used to go back and see the psychiatrist every fortnight and he’d have a look at my medication and there’d be a bit of a chat and there might be some group therapy with some of the other patients, other out-patients. And that seemed to work really well.

At [psychiatric hospital] I met a Professor of Psychiatry and another doctor. And then I was telling my life story like this. Then they told me electric shock treatment. Previously I asked all the psychiatrists and no one wanted to give it to me. They said you’re not as bad as you think and we don’t agree with you. So when I went to [psychiatric hospital] they said, ‘Well if you are really suffering like that this, you can try it.

Then I belong to a research group in Institute of Psychiatry called CRAG, Consumer Research something, a group, and then I met some members and some said to me, ‘Oh yes, I have taken it. It was a quick cure. Or quick relief. I recommend it. Then another lady sort of said, ‘No, no, no, it caused me memory loss. I went through hell and I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole. So that’s the sort of difference of opinion.

So when I asked this Professor, they said to me, ‘Look on the net and make your mind up. I wish somebody would tell me, ‘Look go and do it. So then I thought to myself. Inside I’m still suicidal, I am going through hell. We have tried everything, come what may, even if my brain fries I’ll go and do it. So then, when was it, about three months ago, when the depression came in, I told my GP, and she contacted [psychiatric hospital], and [psychiatric hospital] backed down, and [psychiatric hospital] said, ‘No, no, no, unless the person is really bad,’ but I should have taken the offer then. But then when they first told me I was scared as well.