" Once upon a time, seems long ago, I was a dutiful daughter and a super efficient, hard nosed manager, in short I was in control. Then my mother died and I lost my job... and I was nothing.
Oh I appeared on the odd course as various characters, but none of them suited and I couldn’t keep them up for long. I was still nothing.
Then my GP put me on CBT, and the therapist saw straight through my outstanding act (I thought) and suggested I come here.
Flipping cheek!
I knew exactly what was wrong with me and what I SHOULD be doing to fix it, Thank you very much.
However it was something to do, and they did have a craft course.
Well I had a shaky start (after all I did know best) didn’t these people realise I wasn’t like them. They insisted on being nice to me and treating me like a normal person, very strange. Then something even weirder happened I was on an anxiety course and found myself in a Stephen King book, we were all sharing thoughts and feelings... and they were the same. This was not on at all, I was supposed to be alone after all I was the freak, right.
What was worse I started making friends... proper ones, ones I didn’t have to try with, ones that didn’t want anything from me but friendship, and they actually seemed to like me for me. Obviously they needed help, but I went with it waiting for the `catch`.
Anyway one day while I was still trying to come to terms with this strange situation Lu asked me what I wanted from the next course, and I told her to go back to being like I was, she told me that it would never happen WHAT after explaining and giving me something to think about, I think I actually went through the whole grieving process for the old me.
This was the point I started to accept. I accepted maybe the people here weren’t being nice to me because they had to. I accepted my new friends may actually like me. And I accepted a new me may be better than the old one. "
By Lorraine