Saturday, March 25, 2006

Wiped out

I am wiped out. The last couple of weeks have really taken it out of me. What with all the trouble at work, followed by giving my testimony at the London Assembly on Thursday, I am beat

Yesterday I went to see my shrink. I have been seeing him for about 5 months now and have made the journey countless times. I left work early, as usual, took the bus, then the tube, got off at Tower Hill and confidently strode over the Tower Bridge. I was looking at City Hall and not quite believing that only the day before I had been speaking in there. As I neared the southern side of the river I stopped, looked around and the penny suddenly dropped. Wrong bridge!

My shrink is in London Bridge, I had got off at the wrong tube stop and walked over the wrong bridge. I was late and I told him why. He said it was 'slightly worrying'. I would tend to agree.

Everything that is happening at work has really taken the wind out of my sails. It has set me back, I am having, what we have started to call, 'a wobble'. My shrink tried to put my mind at rest. He said that I would naturally be more affected by things that I would have normally taken in my stride.'Wobbles' are normal apparently. Recovery from PTSD is not a smooth upward curve. All sorts of things, whether they are related or not, will knock you back down. He said that if I had been able to predict what was going to happen at work, and told him, he would have expected exactly this reaction. He wasn't surprised. He did, however, ask me to see him in two weeks time, as opposed to the usual four. I hope they make the connection at work.

I told him about Thursday and he was glad that I had done it. He talked about our frustrations from a professional's point of view. I am not trying to devalue my points ( I stick by them all). It is, however, always interesting to be given a different slant on things. He said that after events like this people are always angry. On top of that natural reaction, anger is one of the primary symptoms of PTSD. It is possible that we are finding it easier to direct this anger towards our government than we are towards the perpetrators. I have thought about this before and it is an interesting angle. However, the day at the London Assembly was arranged impeccably. It ran smoothly and without a single hiccough. We were looked after with exactly the right balance of care and respect. So it is not true to say that we are so angry that whatever the authorities had done we would have found fault. I cannot fault Thursday and I wrote to tell them so.

He also told me that he has known similar situations where people have been forced to seek help. This, he said, can be equally as harmful as abandoning people. A balance needs to be struck whereby people are made aware of the availability of help but are left to seek it when they are ready.

As the session ended he advised me to 'chill out ' this week end. I am intending to do just that.