8 sessions in

This week marked my 8th session at Mind and my impending return to work became the topic of the session.

In many ways, I am looking forward to going back to work. Illness during pregnancy inhibited me from doing my job to the best of my ability and in some ways, disabled me from doing my job at all. For this reason, I feel like I've been on maternity leave forever! I'm really looking forward to sinking my teeth into my work again, achieving something other than being Mum for a few days a week, whilst proving that I'm still capable of doing my job well.

You may wonder why I haven't returned to work sooner if I've been missing it; I haven't been ready mentally to return. It's a fast paced, high pressure environment and I'm aware that some people felt let down by my inability to perform my duties well when I was pregnant. I felt like I'd let myself down for a good while and shortly after Baby H was born, my mind kept on wandering back to all those I'd 'let down' when I was pregnant. It's only very recently that I've made peace with myself and my pregnancy, I'm a hard working person the rest of the time, what happened was not my fault and in fact, I deserved support, I didn't deserve to feel the way I did. It's a sensitive subject for me, so returning to work too early could undo the work I've put into getting better.

I confessed to Zoe that, had I been better supported in the work place, I think I could have possibly battled through the pregnancy related illnesses and continued doing my job. For a long time, thoughts of this made me feel ashamed, "I should have just carried on doing my job regardless, I should have forced myself to do this and  that."

Zoe asked me if I felt ashamed now. My answer was 'no.' Having said my thoughts out loud, they suddenly didn't seem so bad anymore. Of course I couldn't perform my job properly, battling ongoing sickness, anaemia, and consecutive infections; lacking support and alienation was only going to magnify my illness and make it impossible to face my already high pressured work load. I felt sorry for me as I looked back and the more I think about it, the more I'm determined to not allow myself to feel that level of shame and inferiority again.

This week, I've learned that bad experiences will make you more sensitive to the things going on around you and subsequent criticism and negativity will automatically flick on bad feelings or defence mechanisms, but time and support are great healers.