Letter to my therapist.

Hi please will you read and leave me any handy ideas in comments so that I can adjust this letter for Tuesday next week xxxxxDear Sally  I would like to take this opportunity to explain my journey over the past two years. I know that today is my final session in therapy today and I am pleased to have come so far with so much support from yourself as well as other staff members at Anchor House, especially Marsha  I really hit another point of crisis in 2007 due to nearly being attacked at work which resulted in me fighting off suicidal feelings and panic attacks. I engaged in support from Marsha and was as honest as possible which led to me going on an anxiety awareness course. This course has totally changed my life as I hadn’t even realised that I had been suffering with panic attacks from around age 8. I had hidden these attacks due to fear from being ridiculed and knew that once I was sick, I would be ok. I learnt that if I ate as much sweets/chocolate as possible. I would then be brought back up to a level where I was able to function again and so took this behaviour on until Marsha swapped it for banana and honey.  I was still quite poorly but the techniques that I learnt….worked for me.  I then went onto learnt mindfulness as well as going through a personal development course which slowly helped me through horrid thoughts which were plaguing me. I knew these suicidal feelings of old and had survived the battle many a time before but I was scared that these were so much more intense than the last time…but then I always think that. Then the feelings went and I felt like a war hero for winning the battle and surviving the battle of suicide.  I then met you and you wanted to know my ancestry as well as who had what behaviours/ailments. You also wanted to know what had happened in their lives to them and I knew that the more I told you….hopefully the more you would understand me. I had flippantly disclosed that I had been raped at age 15 and brushed over it as fast as possible because I couldn’t remember a lot about it and looking back I really had blocked it out as much as I possibly could. I went through my childhood issues which I can now see that I was a powerless child and didn’t have choices at that time…I was dictated to otherwise I faced unpleasant consequences. My dad ruled our lives with an iron fist…but then he had a dreadful childhood too.  Then I received a letter from you and was shocked at how much of my case history you had condensed into a letter. You read this out to me and shocked me when you told me that I hadn’t discussed much about being raped at age 15. I couldn’t believe it, someone else had just broken the news to me and I really hadn’t acknowledged that this had happened. Brand new harsh reality had woken me up and I then went through a horrific period of remembering things as well as sweating and fighting in my sleep. I was waking up disorientated and wondering where he was. This really scared me and I cried so much through the nights when my family were asleep. I really couldn’t see how I was going to cope with my situation and tried so hard to keep things normal and lucky for me you were able to explain that this was all part of the process and support me through it.   My family have supported me through this time enormously and even though the children didn’t know what was happening to me and were scared, they were there for me providing me with unconditional love. I didn’t feel like I deserved any of this due to feeling so dirty and damaged….what if I screwed them up? My husband has been an absolute brick and my worries have no3w gone. I was scared that if he ever knew the real me...he would leave me and take the kids away due to me being so mental. However, this made me more determined to finish with you what I had begun because I’d already hit the deck….what else did I have to lose! My husband and I are so much closer and he has reasured me that he loves me and now feels even closer now that I have let him into my world of vulnerabilites rather than telling him to use the dorr and never come back.  You have subtly pointed out my behaviours and that I am really bad with dealing with confrontational situations. I either go into fight or flight and neither is very nice. I am slowly practising different ways of handling situations and come away feeling drained due to working myself up. I am trying so hard not to react immediately when I am full of emotion and am beginning to notice that my relationship with my husband is so much better. I am still getting things wrong but I know that the more that I practise the more natural these new reactions will come. I still run to my piece of paper which has my exits written on but again, these will embed the more I use them. I now see that my confidence is beginning to grow and that people can’t actually physically/mentally hurt me if I try to confront/discuss an issue. I am entitled to voice bad stuff!!!!  I now look back at my journey through anchor house and sigh at how hard it was but I can see the reward of getting through this….HAPPINESS and I deserve it.  So I want to say a huge thank you to you for all of your support and well-done for being so damn good at your job and supporting me through this process. I have learnt so much   Kind Regards  Moooser