Therapy...what's Going To Happen?

[Nightmare89]

Hi all,

I'm on the waiting list for some psychotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy, but I don't know what either of them entails. If some people could provide some experiences orthe sorts of things they do and what happens etc that would be great, getting panicky as I don't know what to expect.

Also, I'd like to try art therapy, has anyone experienced this? What is it like? What do you do?

Cheers,

Nikki x

[addy2]

I am due to start psychotherapy soon it involves going into the past and talking through everything, i also have had CBT it works on there her and now and changing the way you think about thinks which in turn chanes your behaviour.

[Nightmare89]

Thanks for that. I hate talking about it all, surely dragging it up and causing all the pain all over again is a bad thing. Hopefully I'll find the CBT helpful.

No art therapy experience?

Nikki x

[fedup!]

Hiya Nikki,

I haven't had any experience of art therapy but I know a lot of folk on here have - as far as I know, the experiences have been mostly positive!

If you have a trawl through a few posts on here, you should find some responses to help you out and I'm sure you will get some helpful replies here.

Either way, it's great to see you take some positvie steps to helping you with your MH xxxxxxxxxxxxx

[Nightmare89]

Thanks fed up. I'll do that. Did do a quick search before I posted this but nothing came up, I'll have a proper look through the therapy section and see what comes up.

Thanks again,

Nikki x

[lonelyheartemma]

I havent done any of the things you mentioned but when i had drama therapy i sometimes had to draw pictures.

this was the basic structure of it

talking about what had happened in the last 2 weeks since my last appt

if i hadnt mentioned it already therapist brought up things we discussed last week

therapist picks up on 1 thing i said and asked me to draw a specific thought or feeling i'd mentioned or he asked me to concentrate on 1 thing i'd said and draw how it made me feel

I drew the picture, the therapist stopped me 10-15 mins before the end of the session and reminded me when the time was almost up

I showed the therapist the picture and talked about what i had drawn and why

the therapist points out things he noticed in the picture and related it to my situ

tbh i didnt find it helpful, the therapist didnt really listen to me and i'm really paranoid about drawing because i find it really hard and i come from a family of artists but if you have a good therapist and you enjoy drawing i think it could be good.

obviously we didnt do drawing that much as we mostly did drama and also did music, writing and other stuff. but the first session was mostly a talking session. the therapist explained a bit about drama therapy and answered my questions. we talked about why i had been refered, why it had interested me, how my life was in general. that took up a lot of time so the 'drama' exercise was very quick, i just had to choose an object from a box, say why i'd chosen it and answer a couple of questions from the therapist about the object.

But different therapists probably there own way of doing things and art therapy might be completely different from drama therapy

[Nightmare89]

Hi Emma,

Thanks for replying. I do enjoy drawing, but never know what to draw. I'm not very good either, but I do like to be creative and it calms me down too.

Haven't found any where that offers it in Swindon though and not seeing pdoc for 3 months and don't have a t yet :(0

Nikki x

[jenny1471]

Hi

This is just from my personal experience/thoughts so could be totally wrong.. but I think that psychotherapy is more when you'd go in to details about the past, like say about your childhood, events, etc. There are lots of different types of therapy and it would depend on what type you go for.. but most types would be very much driven by you, i.e. you can say as much or as little as you want. It's done in your own time and on your terms. Well, to an extent anyway as of course there are boundaries that the therapist will adhere to such as keeping to the 50 minutes and no contact between sessions etc. But largely I think psychotherapy looks at the past and how it affects your present. People can be in psychotherapy for weeks, months or years.

Whereas CBT I think looks more at the present and is often more a shorter term therapy (which the NHS prefers because it's often limited to 6 sessions which saves them money!). It looks at the here and now.. yes you may touch on something that happened in the past, but I think it's more how it affects you now and how you can change the pattern from going on and on. I think it's as much about teaching as anything else, so that you have the knowledge and skills to take it forward in any situation. I think you get 'homework' too.

I've never had CBT so that is a very made up version of what it could be like.. but I have had psychotherapy. Having said that my first therapist was a 'transactional analyst' which is one form of therapy. My current one is 'psychodynamic' and already I can see the two are very different. Not just in personalities but in their methods.

I guess it'll be a matter of seeing how things go I'm afraid.. either way it's important to remember that the therapist and CBT therapist will be there with your best interests at heart, and there's nothing wrong with starting off by asking for them to give you some information as to what they do! You're entitled to ask, and it's ok to let them know how you feel about it.

I hope it goes well

Jenny x

[greenthing]

can only really tell you about specialist therapy for PTSD, which is not much help

however i remain optimistic that sometime in the next 20 years the local NHS will discover that they have not offered me anything useful since then and that I remain in a mess...

[Nightmare89]

(((green thing))) sorry to hear that, the NHS can sometimes be appalling, fortunately, I think I must be in a good area as I think I may have a therapist after only 2 weeks of diagnosis!

Nikki x