"The space I was given to explore was fantastic"

My story is that I was having some trouble in social situations which seemed to be getting worse, causing me lots of confusion and anxiety as I felt I had dealt with all this stuff in my younger years and why was it all coming back...

Talking Therapies assigned me a wonderful counsellor who was active and attentive and really helped me look at myself in new light and what was going on under the hood. Helped me see triggers and patterns (ingrained from my youth) that I hadn't really thought about before. Helped me see myself in a new light and understand myself better, and actually appreciate that the feelings I was experiencing, whilst valid, could perhaps be looked at and re-contextualized with a more mature lens. Some models were explained to me that helped me understand the pattern, the way we learn to protect ourselves when we are young, from situations that cause our core self to feel fear. The models for me were a breath of fresh air, almost what I've always been trying to understand but never had anyone to teach me. 

The space I was given to understand and explore was fantastic. The support was full of sympathy and care as well as humour and I would recommend the TT service to anyone who is feeling alone and isolated in their own thinking and feelings and especially where there is low self-worth (as in my case).

The support I needed was not so hard to obtain – I see a lot of stories in the media where people cannot get the help they need, but for me that was not the case, I looked online, I found TT, I made a request and went through the process, and would say that circa 3 months after the request I was in sessions.. I feel that is pretty great service from the NHS.

Having had some counselling in my younger years it felt like the service has come on leaps and bounds – as opposed to just listening to issues and expecting me to become self-aware and figure it out, which is incredibly frustrating, as I say there was active ideas/ models. Input, challenge to my thinking, helping me to progress – a really great, positive process.

I feel very lucky that I was able to get the support I needed, it has helped me move forward - I'm sure there will be challenges with my mood in the future, but I do genuinely feel I am in a better place to withstand some of the feelings I have had in the past which have previously overwhelmed me somewhat - and that in itself makes me feel more confident in the future.