I saw my consultant psychiatrist, NewVCB, for the second time this morning, an appointment that I’d been dreading for days.  Even though my first encounter with her back in January had gone without any significant hitch, and even though I had established on that occasion that she was not as formidably intimidating as OldVCB, I [...]

TRIGGER WARNING – If you hadn’t guessed from the title, this post contains a number of references to child sexual abuse in varying degrees of detail.  Please, please be careful if you think this material may trigger you.  Take care, Pan x
I received a text message from my cousin SMcF early this afternoon to report [...]

In response to this.  See also this update.  I have corrected a few minors errors in the author’s writing and have, as you will see, provided (italicised) annotated notes of the most rational and considered variety.  *cough*
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Dear Pandora
Advocacy in Accessing Mental Health Services
Thank you for your letter dated 17 December 2009 about accessing our mental [...]

Apparently I wrote this epic gem of a post on Thursday, post-C. It reminds me of a diatribe that A wrote to his friend W whilst in the early, very bleak years of his long university career:
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck it all,
My fucking life.
Suck, suck, suck, suck, suck it all,
My fucking dick.
Here is [...]

This hardly even warrants an entry, but in my obsession for complete records of my psychotherapy with C, I am going to write at least a rudimentary account of it anyway.
The reason it doesn’t merit a post is not so much because it was a useless session – though in some ways it was – [...]

My descent into complete madness continues, ironically – I am convinced – as a result of anti-psychotic medication.  I am fairly certain that I am experiencing, and have been experiencing, the phenomenon of akathisia.
It is so difficult – impossible, I believe – to describe this thing of complete awfulness in any coherent or accessible way, [...]

Even though it’s just a litany of whining misery and suicidal self-hatred, I’ve really become rather fond of this blog. I’ve certainly put a lot of work into both its content and, since the move to a self-hosted Wordpress domain, its aesthetics. I even invested money in moving it to its own domain, [...]

Yet another day with two posts.  Sorry.
In short, she is better than her predecessor, though as W said to me this morning, she could hardly be much worse.  In fairness to OldVCB, I had come round to her a little before our relationship was severed, but nevertheless, I am not exactly sorry to see the [...]

Thursday was the first day back to therapy after C’s Christmas break.  It was a successful session in a long-term sort of way, but was nevertheless very traumatic for me, tackling as it did a lot of hurt and vulnerabilities that I don’t want to face nor admit to.  There was nothing specific that was [...]

Let’s deal with these chronolgically and, coincidentally, in order of bad to good.
FAIL
On 17 December, I wrote to two mental health advocacy groups (Mindwise and the Northern Ireland Association for Mental Health) regarding the whole ‘you can only have 24 more sessions’ bullshit with C.  Both have now responded, and both have represented something of [...]