Did you have any individual counselling?

I’ve had loads of stuff, because I worked for the first year, but after a year, I could no longer do my job. I couldn’t think straight. My memory isn’t as good as it was. My organisational skills and thinking things through; it doesn’t work like that, so I had to stop doing my job, and when I stopped doing my job there was an insurance policy at work that would pay me a percentage of my salary if I couldn’t do my job through ill health.

Mm.

And I’ve claimed on that. And through the process of claiming through that, I’ve gone through on a private health scheme, seeing a psychiatrist, and I’ve, I’ve had counselling. I’ve had cognitive behavioural therapy sessions, which were very helpful.

Could you explain what that is?

It’s sitting talking to someone who can, …from what that person tells you, try and get you to think about things differently, not to assume things. There are, there are ways of thinking that aren’t helpful like, black and white thinking about, or mind-reading, thinking you know what someone’s thinking without questioning why they might be adopting an attitude towards you. So you might think that someone’s dealing with you [in a certain way] because you’re bereaved, when it might be the problem they’ve got that’s totally separate, you know. Someone might ignore you for what, for, for their own reason, you think it’s, so it’s not a good thing to mind-read. So there might be a dozen different ways that you can think unhelpfully to yourself.

Mm.

And CBT is about changing the way you, you approach people and think about things. So I found that very helpful. I’d often say that people should have CBT as part of their education in schools perhaps.

Just to, to teach people to deal with other people in different way. And you’d get, you’d have a lot less falling out if people could understand people a bit better. It’s all communication. And communication is a cause of lots of problems.