Stumble It!
Well, unusually, I can come out of my CAMHS session today saying I have learnt something. In fact, I have learnt several important things and had my mind opened to a host of new ideas. They’ve kept me thinking busily for the last hour or so, since I curtailed my session by being monosyllabic and generally uncooperative, but seriously. Seriously now. I’m genuinely amazed. This is what I have learnt:
Teenagers have mood swings.
Teenagers – hell, everyone! – have fights with their friends.
People in general have fluctuating self-esteem, depending on the situation in which they find themselves.
I need to face it, and I’ve got to ‘fess up to you: although I’m a pretty bright bunny, none of these concepts are ever ones I’ve caught my mind grappling with before. None of these ideas have ever been seen socialising with my other thoughts (on the infrequent occasions on which I have them, and then always unoriginal) in the barren wasteland of my brain. It’s a sensation comparable to liberation – this is the dawning of my own personal Aquarius. The Robinson Renaissance. The Immature Illuminatus.
All right, Suzy; enough already.
So anyway, the EI woman spent a year or three explaining to me just what CBT is, while the CBT woman herself sat in the corner looking cowed. Strangely enough, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy turns out to be a form of therapy based around behaviour and cognitive processes. This is also something I have never realised previous to today.
Then the above points were explained to me, those ones about being a teenager.
I got a fit of the giggles when the EI woman made ‘thinking faces’, which were basically her squinting and pushing out her lips to let me know she was taking me seriously. I quashed them because the CBT woman started writing something, and then I stared at her for a while till she stopped.
I decided before I went in that I would somehow find a sweet and tactful way of saying ‘I hate you and I think that maybe someone else might be better for me’, but when the time came, words failed me. Instead, I said this:
“I don’t believe thes es emotionally healthy for me…”
“I come out of here feelin worse than when I go en and that’s surely not the best of worlds to be en…”
“I hate…” thinks, ”the way…” thinks, “people here…” thinks, ”talk. A lot. Completely. Always. How you talk. Not that you talk. Uh…”
And the upshot of it is, I’m out of the system. I don’t feel remorse for screwing with my friends, and as the CBT woman told me last time I was there, don’t try to fix wot ain’t even broke. There’s no point their wasting time on a kid who doesn’t care, so that’s it. I’ll get a phone call in September to make sure I’m not psychotic, which will probably go something like this:
“Hello, Susan!”
“Suzanne.”
“Hello, Suzanne! So how are you?”
“Fine.”
“Yes. Well, that’s good. How’s school?”
“I only bin back a day yet.”
“Oh, OK. Right, yeah. And how’s that day been?”
“Fine.”
“Hmm, yeah. How are… those girls? In your class? The ones you don’t like?”
“They’ve changed school for sexth form, ent they.”
“Hmm. How do you feel about that?”
“Fine.”
“Yeah, OK. Is there anything you’d like to talk ab- ?”
“No.” Cue dial tone.
And thus will conclude my short, sweet (well, about as sweet as lemons) relationship with the Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services. Least, till it turns out that that pesky old family tendency towards a slight manic depressiveness is stewing away in my brain somewhere, and I end up right back where I started but significantly less optimistic about the whole deal. I don’t understand how women like that could ever help anyone. The word ‘psychosis’ was mentioned once in forty minutes (should have been sixty but I’m a right chatty little bugger in CAMHS). The rest of the time, it was ‘those experiences’ or ‘voices’ or ‘that stuff you mentioned before’. I’m a tough little cookie, OK? I can deal with the word.
However, I cannot deal with being patronised. And today I have been patronised.
I consider myself well out of the system; so well out I ran home barefoot and while I didn’t remove any more toes, I did shred the soles of my feet. Ah, well. A heel for a heel.
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: | age of aquarius, barefoot, camhs, cbt, cognitive behavioural therapy, early intervention, fights, illuminatus, monosyllabic, mood swings, my smooth welsh accent, no longer crazy, out of the system, patronised, psychosis, renaissance, school, self esteem, sixth form, teenagers
Congrats on getting out of the system- how do you do it? I have been trying the lie, lie and lie method but its not working and hasnt for the last year and a half. They must think of you as a genius to give a description of CBT, only geniuses can read the name on the can or whatever that saying is. I like your mentaly healthy line, I know what you mean you either end your meeting by overthinking things or feeling so crap that you could easily walk in front of oncoming trafic. Your poor feet, I hope it wasnt too far to walk or your feet weel really be riped up.In celebration of your discharge I shall now have a nutella pancake (ok I was going to have one anyway but hey) Hope you have a good holiday. Hannah X
Suzy: ah… you have to lie convincingly.
And I am in fact a genius; it is a well-known fact.
You’re getting the Chouettey habit of making me snort unflatteringly on keyboards, what with lines like that Nutella one. I hope you’re happy about that!