Since the 2016 summer therapy break, I have been posting daily #therapybreak tweets during my therapy breaks, as a form of self-care, and also as a record of the breaks. It started simply as a way of trying to count down the days and to self-distract, but it ended up as somewhat of my own personal take on a ‘gratitude journal’. I found that as well as posting about difficult times, I also ended up capturing, and then actively seeking to capture, the small little positive steps or events that kept me going, and lifted me up.

That is, until this summer’s therapy break, the #therapybreak tweets of which, can be found here:

https://storify.com/lifeinabind/summer-therapy-break-2017

In my previous post I talked about some of the reasons why this was my worst therapy break in a while. On a very practical level, I realised how valuable it is for me to be at work for the first parts of a therapy break. I am a different person when at work, and the distraction and interaction with other people forces me into a place outside my head, where I can appear competent and content, and can leave my ‘other selves’ at the door. Work also means a familiar routine, and that, in combination with my ability to compartmentalize and put on ‘work me’, places me on a more familiar and even keel. That even keel helps me to deal with the start of a therapy break and for me, a break that starts well, has a better chance of continuing well.

This time, however, the start of my therapy break coincided with my summer holidays, and therefore time off work. It had never occurred to me that that might be a problem, but in hindsight I can see how the sudden loss of both my therapy routine and my work routine, led into a rapid decline in mood and an inability to lift myself out of that place. Everything described in my previous post – in terms of poor decision making, the setting in of fear and anxiety, and difficulty in feeling connected to my therapist – crept in so much more easily and quickly. Low mood meant I had fewer resources to fight those feelings off, and giving in to them affected my mood even more, so that it became a very difficult circle to try and break out of.

My #therapybreak tweets stop fairly abruptly on Day 30, two days earlier than I had meant to stop them. I have thought about going back and retrospectively adding those days in, but it would feel somehow dishonest, and I think leaving the story as is, is a more accurate portrayal of what happened. I will pick up on that in a future post, tying it in with resuming therapy after the break. In summary, on Day 31 I received a brief email reply from my therapist to a long update I had sent her a few days before; and on Day 32 I had my first session back. In that session we spent most of the time talking about my reaction to that brief email, and how it had felt as though it reinforced all my fears from the previous four weeks. But by the end of Day 32 I also knew that all my fears belonged to the past, and that my therapist was the same as she had always been. I’ve been back in therapy for a week – my deep depression has persisted, but at the same time I feel the safety, security, caring, and metaphorical warm embrace that I was so missing and unable to feel, during those four long weeks. I feel I’ve come back home.