My Journey: Overcoming Mental Struggles and the Impact of Psychotherapy

Okay, I have been letting you and me down once again. I'd made a big promise to keep regularly writing my blogs after a long absence gap during the time I was in a psychotherapy clinic. Yes, I have broken that promise. And sure, I feel extremely guilty and bad about it.

I'm struggling. With me. Have you ever shaken a bottle of fizzy pop, like cola? If you have you know the contents, get all fizzed-up, and if the bottle top is off, frothy foam pours out. That frothy foam that sprays your face, hands, clothing, shoes, and everything and everyone around you. Well, that can happen with psychotherapy. Doesn't have to, not with everyone, but it can happen. Anyway, it has been happening to me.

Psychotherapy shook me up a lot. Although, I guess that was the idea of going into therapy. I needed a good shake-up. But it is a bit like the Coke/fizzy drink. Once it (you have) has been shaken up, you automatically try to stop the foam by placing a hand across the bottle top. The result is usually that the gasses turn the froth into a spray gun, splattering everyone around you.

Well, psychotherapy and issues can work similarly. The ingredients of a frizzy drink are supposed to be printed on the bottle's label so you have some idea of what is in it, even if you might not know what those individual ingredients can do to your body. But I have no label stuck on me listing all the ingredients (issues), yet whatever they are, psychotherapy can shake them up and make them act like a spray gun. Usually, I have the most trouble with those shaken-up gasses (issues) inside myself, turning my life into a private hell. Occasionally, they can also function like a spray gun and splatter people around me who, unfortunately, are in my vicinity. Leaving me torn in guilt afterwards and berating myself about how I'm such a shitty person. Which, of course, isn't helping at all.

I'm also getting torn apart during the nights by extremely powerful nightmares. The last five days have been exceedingly heavy with me going through the night having one terrible nightmare after another. Waking me each time to feel absolutely dreadful. I spend time awake, unable to fall asleep for long periods, but eventually, tiredness throws me back into another horrific nightmare-torn sleep. Time and time again throughout the night. The next morning I am totally exhausted and just want to lie in bed and sleep, but can't. It's not pleasant, but I know something very important is going on. As though my body-mind is trying to clear itself from a vicious poison, or trying to make something clear to me which will cause the removal of that poison. But so far I am in the dark about what that exactly might be. With a lifetime of traumas in my body from the earliest age that are all severely tangled and interwoven with each other, layers upon layers of traumas, it's not so easy to gain the needed clarity or find the right key that will unlock and free whatever it is.

There are days I get up and feel so ill, so horrifically unhappy from all the sadness within. Another torturing element is the excruciating loneliness that I have known since an early age. With these comes the agonising sense of failure. I don't need a label stuck on me to inform me that these are the key ingredients of my fizzy self. Also, knowing there are many more that serve to complicate matters even further.

Does this mean that psychotherapy was a failure, a waste of time and effort? No, I don't believe so. The human brain is incredibly complicated. And no two brains (bodies) are exactly alike. Not even twins. So all these factors together make therapy a bit of a hit-and-miss affair. Although I believe that the medical and psychotherapy world was guilty of treating us as though we were all alike. This is slowly changing, especially because of the influence of brain research and brain scans. It needs to change much more, especially psychotherapy, but we often don't have much choice, so better than nothing. And not only is each person different but also their issues or how their issues are affecting them.

I have been in about 4 psychotherapy clinics over the years and spent seven years in group therapy by a psychoanalyst, as well as in shorter periods with other psychologists. So I have had my fair share of therapy. Some of those past therapy experiences were not good or of value. Therapy is like anything else. There are very good, good, mediocre, and more or less useless. I've had good, mediocre, and useless. Considering my last stay in psychotherapy was less than half the time of all the others, and far more results, I would say it belongs to the high end of good. However, I find psychotherapy methods outdated. Unfortunately, the German health system only pays for this kind of therapy despite its outdatedness. The more advanced techniques are only practised by private therapists, where you have to pay out of your own pocket. My pockets were not and are not that deep. I will write more on this subject later.

Trauma in childhood causes the most damage, especially in early childhood, because during childhood (especially early) the brain is forming (creating) the brain from the child's actual experiences and emotions. In other words, it is using the child's emotions and experiences to construct the child's own brain. It's like constructing a car with all the wrong parts and structures. Ensuring you are going to have endless troubles with that car.

Emotions and experiences that are created (made from) a massive array of influences at all levels and all forms, such as feeling, hearing, and more, but also from all kinds of vibrant energies that the body and mind absorb at subconscious levels, including tones of voices and other such things. At a below-conscious level, the child is programmed to learn what might be safe and what can be a threat or danger. Safe things can be learned to be threats and dangers. But equally bad or threatening things can be learnt in a belief they are safe, when in fact they are not. All happening without the child being aware of learning such things. This means such things can cause the child issues/problems later in childhood or in life, but be unaware of how these happened, or unaware that they even happened.

Over time, I will write more about such things, as well as how creativity can help you. For now, I will stop here.