Hi @Till23
No need to apologies for any delays, I know that life, and our mental health, can get in the way. It makes me feel a bit better about when I do the same.
Yes, there's getting soaked, and the there's 'down to the undies' soaked! I sure it was well worth it in the end. I've had to do a bit of media as well the past 6 months. I know that it feels a bit silly, but as someone who has always avoided any attention for anyone, I find myself getting quite a buzz from the attention. I worry about how i come across of course, but i know it's important to raise the awareness and funds and it kind of nice to feel like i'm doing a bit to help that. It's also a bit of fun to see myself in the newspaper. Then even better to see myself on TV and be on the radio. As impossible as it seems, maybe there is a tiny little hint of an extrovert in there somewhere. I just had to send an email off just now about a feature on my story and my support group that is going onto the 'social medias' this afternoon. I think i just forget the embarrassment and the awkwardness when things like this come up. Well mostly. That passion for cause just takes over and I do things the me of more than a year ago whole have run and hid from. It's funny how these challenges in left can change us.
The psychology for me really started when i was invited into a study after I was first diagnosed. It was about the effects of hormone therapy on people going through it. It was a series of 6 phone interviews over 9 or 12 months i think. I'm not sure. The first 4 were fairly early and then the last 2 spread out a bit more. The first call we actually had to re do after the woman (a therapist of some sort by memory) that i talked to could tell i was depressed and we just talked about that. By the time we got to the 4th call (or 5th if you count the 1st one that we did twice) she suggested that I might want to talk to a counselor or psycholgist. I told her I had never really talked to anyone about anything in my life, but i knew at this stage that I probably did need to.
She was so good to me and we had had 5 good long talks by this point and i didn't want to lie to her. So i said that even if i agreed to look into it, by the time i got off the phone with her, the anxiety of it would just make me talk myself out of doing it. She asked me if I would like her to look into it on my behalf. She was in Queensland, but said should would try to find out what was available in Adelaide that may be an option for me.
As someone who was just supposed to interview my about the questions for the study, she really did go above and beyond and i've never forgotten how much she helped me. It literally changed me life. Everything I've done the past 18 months can be traced back to that talk with her and her offering to arrange to find some mental health support for me.
She found a free oncology psychology service at my treating hospital. And I started a couple of months later. I did get a lot out of it initially. I was talking about my feelings, fear, and struggles with another person!! It wasn't awful! For the first time in my life, i felt i could open up to people and it was safe to be honest.
The downside of the service was that it was the psychology students you spoke to, the ones doing their final placements. So you'd get one for 4 months, there'd be a 2 month gap and then a new one would take their place. It didn't bother me as i just liked having someone to talk to and talk about how much I was struggling.
So this was late 2023. There was the break at the end of the year and I started with someone new in February last year. That went well as well. Although at the end of this persons time (around June) she asked if i wanted to make an another appointment but that it wouldn't be until her replacement started in August. I said i'd like to continue. She asked me if i was sure because those distress tests they give you each appointment weren't really improving. I said i was aware of that but i did find these sessions helpful.
So the next appointment with the new person went well I thought but she seems hesitant at the end of the appointment about me scheduling another one. I said again that i found it helpful so we booked another. At the end of that one, the pressure to discharge myself really ramped up! She said that it was "making her feel bad because I kept coming back and it didn't seem to be helping", even though i said it did help. I didn't say anything though, i was a bit shocked. I only remember sitting there thinking 'I didn't know part of this was to make you feel better!'. So she added "You're using this as a crutch. You know you can come back here so you're not trying to improve yourself.". Again, not knowing what to say, I just thought "you've been helpful, but not that helpful!" I decided that if i went back I would just fake those distress test scores and pretend i was doing better than i was just to make this pressure go away and have them see the proof i was improved that they seemed to really want. I realised this was now pointless, so i just agreed to do it their way, said i wouldn't make another appointment, and was told if i felt after a few months that i would like to come back, I was more than welcome to. I knew that was never going to happen! So I just left.
I was just completely put of psychologists. I knew thew were at the start of their careers but apart from sitting there listening and being told to be more positive and not assuming the worst, i really never got any advice. The first got got me to do a few things as homework to try an workout how I could try to get myself back into doing things I enjoyed, but it was all just things you'd expect your neighbour to say to you after that. At one point I thought about doing the study just to see what these people learn for 4 years! I had no idea.
It was a month after this happened that our support group had a clinical psychologist from the Lift cancer support service as a guest speaker. As the group leader i was there a bit early as always and had the change to have a bit of a chat to her. She made the same face everyone makes when I told her what had happened. At the end of the meeting i decided that if i ever tried psychology again (which felt doubtful at that point) I would go to see these people. From her talk, it seemed far more like what I had expected it to be like.
So my appointments are about $260 and about $110 back for my MHCP. I don't know what i'm going to do after the next 10 visits! At this point, my feeling is I'll just pay whatever it takes. I've always had good day and bad day throughout this. But the past month or so, it just feels like it's all bad days, that it''s getting hard to hide and harder to distract myself, and that even day to day each day feels a little worse than the last. It just feels unsustainable at this point. Like I know something needs to change because it's just getting so hard to hold it all at bay now. Even the old bad habits like withdrawing completely feel like they're back in full force. If it wasn't for what i've learned the past 12 months or so and the improvements and understanding around trauma that i've discovered, I just think i would be a complete mess right now. But keeping that at bay is just starting to take suck a toll!
I'm still very apprehensive about my GP appointment on Thursday. I've talked about this with a few trusted people, like here, and gotten some really helpful encouragement. I know it will be on my mind when im there and hopefully it will help me to do what I know I need to do. I'll keep you updated about what happens.
The biological family question is complicated. Do i regret it? No. I have answers now. I met my bio brother and sisters, and met my mother. Those are things that are so incredibly important to me. But there's the other side. The knowing of things i could have done knowing what i know now. The regrets, the new questions i have. I think the photo i still have on the fridge of my brother and I standing together after we met for the first time. There are very few photos of me. My adoptive family never really took many, and what they did never really got kept. So there's very little of my childhood left. But that photo is one of my most treasured possessions. A photo of me and my biological brother and we both look very similar. I've never seen photo of anyone where i (or anyone else) can look at and say "those two are related." Its so special to me. But after that meeting it became really hard to get him to reply to anything. I've talked to him a couple of times since but that was only really sue to necessity from him. When my biological mother passed away from example. So while that photo of us is on the fridge and I see it every day and it my most treasured possession, it's also my most painful. That sort of sums up the whole biological family situation. Now it just feels like a third family that wants very little to do with me and doesn't ever ask me how i'm going health wise. With 3 families all being the same, it's hard to not see myself as the common denominator and know it must be my fault somehow. But now, it also feels like there's just not enough time to fix any of it, even if i knew how.
For me, the difficulty with Father's day isn't so much about the expectations, just the deep regret and sadness that i never had kids. It was always the only real thing i wanted out of life. But with those severe attachment issues, the utter lack of self-confidence for most of my life... it just never happened. To be honest, it never really go close. I was 42 when I had my first date. A bit of a late bloomer i guess.
You know its going to be a good day when you start it off by pooing into something and then poking it repeatedly with a little stick! It just really sets that foundation for the rest of the day!
The Long Run is run throughout September (Prostate awareness month). Anyone can sign up, it's national. You just have to walk, run, or ride 72kms over the month to raise money for the PCFA.
I had better get going. I've got my adoption counseling session soon, and i need to get ready. But i just wanted to say to take care of yourself this week, it's clearly going to be a very tough one with your dog. It such a hard decision and one none of us ever want to have to deal with.
While i have no personal history with CSA, I do understand not feeling like an important person in my mother's life and not getting support whenever i needed it. I wouldn't even know how to advise someone on learning how to really trust people after feeling like that. Let alone, all the other reasons life seems to throw at us! It does make me appreciate places like this though where we can talk about it finally and we can have those bad days (or weeks or months) and know people will understand and still be there for us. I know it means a lot to me, and keeps me here even when i just want to disappear under a rock.
