It is eighteen months since I left The Red House, the psychotherapy day-unit where I spent nearly two years as a patient. It is two months since I moved down to London to live with my girlfriend, and my mother has been down to visit and we got on like sisters! How things have changed. Or me, or times, or all of these and all of us?
I did not have a very happy childhood. At fifteen I was maniacally depressed, and two years later, obsessively suicidal. I saw lots and lots of counsellors and psychiatrists, up and down the country, but I did not find anyone to respect until I met Betty, the university counsellor whom I saw regularly for the three years it took for me to do my degree. It was she who referred me to The Red House: I was not becoming any happier, and I was repeating patterns of destructive behaviour.
I started at The Red House the week after my Graduation. I called it 'the finishing school' as a bit of a joke. I was very frightened by the idea of psychotherapy because I felt as though I had officially, and finally, been diagnosed as Seriously Mental. The Red House? The Mad House! I expected it to be full of dribbling lunatics, and after going there every day, every week for fucking months, the doctors would have churned me out, polite and calm and empty, stripped of all my fighting charm, completely normal. Initially I thought that it would all be over by Christmas, that as there was nothing that wrong with me, it wouldn't take them very long. However, I quickly realised that psychotherapy wasn't and definitely shouldn't be anything like I had feared and imagined.
The Red House Day Unit offered intensive psycho-dynamic Freudian group psychotherapy. It was always up to each individual patient whether we accepted that offer, and what we chose to make of it. I found the unit a safe place to be, where there were firm boundaries which were implemented and adhered to by both the patients and the therapists. Everything was talked about. There was time, and a suitable environment in which to explore the past, relive painful feelings and experiment with new ways of coping and experiencing the present. I did not know then that it was called 'unconditional positive regard', but I think that was what the therapists gave each of us. We were never blamed for what we had done or how we felt, but encouraged to take responsibility for how we now behaved, and to talk honestly and fully about what had happened, why, and how we felt. That we were never judged was very important for me, as I had always felt very judged and carried a lot of guilt and shame. I became aware that my guilt and shame were linked to how angry I had felt and wanted to be, and that instead of expressing all that innate fury I had become self-destructive and depressed. It was time to confront all that anger.
It was the hardest two years of my life. I wept buckets. It was exhausting. It was also the first time that I felt I belonged to a group and mattered. I was able to feel loved, and I was able to feel part of something that was larger than myself, and to still be myself. I worked very hard in those two years: it was give and take and sharing.
Recently I filled in a job application, and was asked to account for all the years since I became sixteen: employment, education, unemployment etc. I put down that I had therapy, and wrote about some of the things that I thought it had taught me, such as commitment, communication skills and working as part of a team. It felt like a risk to admit those years. I get more raised eyebrows when I mention The Red House than I ever do when talking about being a lesbian. I think the suspicions about therapy, suspicions which I used to share, are connected to peoples' fears of their own potential madness. There is also the idea that therapists are irresponsible and manipulate the vulnerable. These suspicions are hyped up by the media: psychotherapy can be very empowering and could threaten all the taboos if it were to stop being seen as a taboo itself.
Psychotherapy enabled me to feel that I was special and to see that what makes me special is what I can share with the people around me. There is no standard, nobody is normal. We are all different from each other but I feel that what we share is a need to love and be loved and to be accepted for all our various differences.
I left The Red House feeling on top of the world about myself: that is no longer my constant state of mind! I still get depressed and jealous and frustrated and angry, but I have not felt hopeless for a long time.
I have fallen very happily in love, I like my parents now and no longer think it's the end of the world, or all my fault, when things go wrong. Bad memories are always going to be part of me, but I can see a future to look to and have a present in which I live. The most important change that I made in psychotherapy was the ability to grant myself permission: not permission to do whatever I want and fuck the rest of the world, but the permission to be a part of that world and to respect the way that I feel.
Tabitha Draper