By Sonia Neale
There was both bitter and sweet news in this month’s Federal Budget for all Australians suffering mental health issues. While it is most prudent that the Labor Government is placing much needed funding for people suffering severe mental health issues in low socio-economic, rural and indigenous areas with their early intervention programmes, Headspace Centres for youths and Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centres, this comes at a cost of cutting back the number of sessions available to patients under the Medicare Better Access Initiative with psychologists, both clinical and registered.
These have been sharply reduced from 12 sessions with an additional 6 for exceptional circumstances to 6 sessions with an additional 4 for exceptional circumstances, the Government rationale being, that people who see clinical psychologists suffer from a mild to moderate form of mental illness rather than a severe one. Here is a section taken from the Federal Budget 2011.
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By Sonia Neale
Death of a spouse, divorce, moving house and losing a job are four of some of the major most stressful incidents that could happen to you. I’d like to add a fifth one; and that’s making the decision, or having the decision made for you, to leave your long-term therapist.
I don’t need my therapist anymore for therapy – or survival. I am able to look after myself and be my own therapist. I can survive in the big, wide world with all the tools and devices I have learned over the years, yet to move on from my therapist would leave a huge hole in my heart.
The more child-like and dependent I was the more I needed her to stay alive, but the more I grew up and matured in therapy the more I relied on myself and less on her. It’s not about the therapy itself. That is the giddy part, growing up and away and moving on. One can only move on in therapy as one gets stronger and eventually that dependence is replaced with independence. And as one gets stronger one naturally starts to separate, first at an unconscious level and then one becomes aware that the nature of your feelings are changing.
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By Sonia Neale
Letting go of the fantasy of a post-therapy relationship with your beloved therapist means you are ready to move on from the transference. When your mind starts to shift from an enmeshed relationship with another to a singular meaningful relationship with yourself where the focus is now “me” and not “we” it signals a profound shift in cognitive thinking.
There is much self-examination and reflection and untold pain that comes with this. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living and I have explored every possible nook and cranny of my inner life. Letting go of someone you love is the hardest part and this creates a vacuum which needs to be filled with something that is just as meaningful. Never take a crippled person’s crutch away from them unless you have a replacement that is equally as effective. But before you do that, you need to reach into all corners of transference options and the therapist who is willing to explore every aspect of your attachment to him/her and their own considerable counter-transference issues and/or attachment to you is doing themselves and their client a huge favour.
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By Sonia Neale
My therapist, who is a great fan of the Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan, has a dog that she loves very much but when he misbehaves or breaks a boundary he is firmly disciplined and because of this he is now a well-behaved dog. She is pretty much the same with clients who break important boundaries as well – as I found out recently.
I broke a boundary when I asked her an intrusive question. Seeing as I am about to embark on a career as a peer support worker, my personal boundary issues have to be exemplary so she thought she would, not unkindly, teach me a lesson; an experiential one and a message I am unlikely to forget.
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By Sonia Neale
I was in session last week with my emotionally and socially intelligent therapist learning important role-modelling and personal negotiation skills when my mobile phone started to ring. I swore loudly, threw my arms in the air, jumped up, and raced out the door and into the courtyard. I was expecting a phone call to tell me whether or not I had a much-wanted part-time job.
Only for me it wasn’t someone giving me potential employment – it was a life or death experience. If I got the job I would be ecstatic and if I didn’t get the job I was going to throw myself under a train. One would make me feel very important and the other would annihilate me. If I didn’t get the job, I would just keep walking to my car, without explanation because the alternative was to tell my beloved therapist I had failed – yet again. I just could not face that. Ever.
Not that I overreact or anything.
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By Sonia Neale
Ever since I can remember I have had major issues with food. This was not a problem till I was ten and my mother told me I was going on a diet. I promptly went to the shops and bought a bag of lollies.
By the time I was fifteen I was medically obese, then I discovered bulimia for a short while. At 22 I revisited bulimia with its partner in crime laxatives, lost and regained half my body weight within two years. I went up and down for the next twelve years and developed type 2 diabetes. Then the lap band was invented and over the next ten years had two lap bands installed, followed by numerous cosmetic surgeries, and two lap bands removed due to slippage and erosion.
This was followed by several hospital stays for abdominal pain resulting in a small bowel obstruction operation. My pancreas died completely and I was now insulin dependent and whenever I moved my insides swirled around like a sack of goldfish and I regained back half my body weight.
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By Sonia Neale
I read this article on bullying last week. The journalist called for people affected, both the bullied and the bullies, to be part of a documentary series by the ABC. I have emailed the journalist and applied to be part of this documentary.
My story is quite different from the average norm of girl-on-girl bullying. My story enters the realm of same-sex sexual assault. Not something I hear a lot about. Today it would make news headlines, if not the international news but back in 1975 it barely caused a ripple because I was so ashamed and guilt-filled by what happened I could not bring myself to tell another adult. My parents had decided it was my fault and punished me for it.
Thirty six years on it’s difficult to describe without it triggering off a harrowing reaction from me. Female bullying is usually something underground and subtle with snotty putdowns and social isolation, something if you were to describe what was going on and how you felt, you would be met with quizzical cynicism because each incident on its own could easily be explained away but add them all up and you’re looking at eating disorders and suicide ideation.
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By Sonia Neale
Recently I had to rearrange my headspace and lifestyle because I was getting bent out of shape because of what someone else was doing. I wasn’t happy with the information I was receiving and it was causing untold grief and obsession within my life. Luckily for me I was reading “Destructive Emotions,” a dialogue with the Dalai Llama narrated by Daniel Goleman, one of my three favourite Daniels (Stern and Siegel being the other two).
According to the book, when you have had enough of the shit in your life you can do one of three things:
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By Sonia Neale
It took a lot of mindfulness and mental strength to get through December 2010. Christmas and the New Year are incredibly stressful times for some. In Australia it is hot, so we have the heat to contend with, but cooking all day in a stifling kitchen with inadequate air conditioning is not part of my challenge of the season.
Organizing who goes where on what day, getting the tree up, buying the presents, posting the cards, making the Christmas cake, food shopping, wrapping the presents and decking the halls with boughs of holly is the easiest part in the world.
What is not so simple is coming to terms with the fact that we do not see certain family members because of a major fallout fifteen years ago. One could very easily blame my mental health issues for this and sometimes when I feel kicked and down I do blame myself. But relationships are never quite that black and white.
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By Sonia Neale
Life is all about perspective. It’s not what happens to you or what you do but how you react to it and deal with it. That is what is important.
Nineteen years ago I had a row with my in-laws just before we went down South for four days before Christmas. It ruined my holiday. I could not concentrate, focus nor appreciate the beauty of the scenery, enjoy my husband and our (then) thirteen month old daughter. All I could think about was exacting revenge. I could not move on, put it behind me, have a fabulous time and resolve it when I got home. It was beyond my capabilities.
Since then I have learned that life is not fair, people are not logical and living peacefully with this dilemma is called life. Some people and family will love you, some will hate you and the rest will be totally indifferent.
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