It is time for me to check in with myself and sort out what's been ruminating around my head for the last few months, that and depression knocking at my door, trying to find room in my headspace again and push the blackness back in, as I push my foot in the door and try to stop it gaining entry.

So I made a decision to go back to therapy, but to find a new therapist. I did really like the last one, but didn't feel challenged enough, maybe that's my personality. I tend to like intellectual rigour and I felt I was just doing an emotional brain dump - which did work after my parents died, I felt as if I just needed to vent my upset and disgust at a life which seemingly had treated me so badly - but I need a bit more now.

So now I'm on a journey with another therapist, he's a man, which is different for me. He does clinical supervision and seems to like explaining things... but he's pricey which is a little more difficult, as it means I'll probably do a month and then have to cut it down quite dramatically. He also does hypnotherapy, as part of the armoury for treatment... so today is the first day I'll be hypnotised to try and look back at the reasons why I only fall in love with a certain type of man, the one who is as he put it a 'Byron type'...

It's the thing that's upsetting me the most at the moment. I spent about four years staying single, I was happy in the last few years, I'd manage to control the grief of my parents dying and the fact I was truly alone and in the words of the Moodscope test, I felt extremely Strong and Proud (both 3).

Then I fell in love, with obviously Lord Byron (apparently a jungian archetype, although needs more research), the great love I had always sought landed in my lap. It was fast and lovely and deep and amazing, so connected and delightful, we loved each other intensely... and then it unravelled, mostly when I kicked back and wasn't the 'in love' passive lovely girl any more. I became the slightly more difficult woman, who's needs weren't being met and I articulated it, gently then with more voice... THE END was nigh, the damage was done, the ghosting, the selfishness (both mine and his) and my childhood came back and I reverted.

So now I'm back in therapy working out why the damage from my schizophrenic mother and loving, but slightly controlling father, still affect and help me to damage myself (or save myself) who knows... So with a sense of trepidation I'm trying to stay calm and walk into hypnotherapy. I know it's not going to give immediate answers and I know it's just a tool in the psychotherapists bag of tricks. I wonder if anyone else has had hypnotherapy as part of their treatment? I know it's personal, but wondered if you felt it helped in anyway? I was also considering talking to him about Carbohydrates whilst I was under, see if I could get value for money :-)

Andrea

A Moodscope member.