Everyone was all skin and sweat and alcohol, staying up late to enjoy the pink nights in the heat. It had been a while since I was last in therapy. Generally, I was doing well. I could pay my phone bill and always had plans for the weekend. I stayed alert for the first signs of trouble though. Past therapy had taught me to be aware of my body, to stay calm and detect rumblings of big feelings before they were swarmed up. ‘Like a Jedi,’ my old therapist would say.

A few things were going on: conflict with a housemate, work stress, some other things. Nothing traumatic. But my jaw was a little tighter and my mind a little fuller, so I found a private therapist. This was the right decision, I knew. This was what being a responsible adult was: attending to yourself, not letting your emotions overflow and cascade onto other people.

She had piercing eyes that barely blinked and wore shoes a size too small. Each session I had, she would whisk me into her office, sit down and stare directly at me until I began speaking. In our third session, we came to the mutual decision that we were not a good fit. And it was fine. I understood it was fairly normal to try a few therapists before finding the right one. They’re only human and so am I; not all humans gel together.

I was hopeful when I found a second therapist: a man, friendly, great memory and attention to detail. Our sessions ran into the autumn. I’d travel there straight after work, arriving early. He had no reception, so instead of waiting on the dark street where men lingered, I waited in a nearby pub. We were several sessions deep when he said that a different modality of therapy would be more helpful for me. He didn’t offer this modality though. I’d have to go somewhere else.

So, I went somewhere else, less enthusiastic now. The original stressors that prompted me to seek therapy were compounding and multiplying into brand new stressors. I was still a Therapy Believer though. It had helped me before, so it could help me again.

With the third therapist, I started to notice something happening. I began sessions in January, fresh and ready to take on the new year, to get back on track. By now, my jaw was in a constant state of tension. My dentist was shocked at the state of my inner cheeks, bitten and inflamed.

Within the first thirty minutes of meeting her, after she’d asked some basic questions, this therapist told me I was traumatised. I was taken aback. It was a bit premature, surely, to be assuming that. Like many adults, I carry a bit of childhood trauma with me, but I wasn’t there to talk about that. I hadn’t talked about that. All we had talked about were very real, concrete things going on in my life — not in my head. It seemed she did not agree that these things were objectively stressful, but rather subjectively stressful to me due to my ‘trauma’. This is interesting, as the current stressors just so happened to involve men. It felt as though this was implausible to her, that I must have something in my history underpinning my perception of these events.

She had a soft voice and welcoming presence. The sessions took place in her house and her office would smell of whatever her family had eaten for dinner. She lived near to me; it took five minutes to walk there. It’s hard to describe sessions with this therapist without exposing private moments, but what I can say is this: many times I described the facts of what men in my life were doing. She responded with skepticism each time. Once, I told her I believed something I’d experienced was misogyny and she scoffed and shook her head. I kept going back to her because I was open to being wrong and willing to learn. But eventually, I had to tell her these sessions weren’t helping and in fact, they were making me angry.

She explained that this can sometimes happen when people with trauma histories are not ready for therapy.

This assertion was utterly impossible for me to combat. If I had said, ‘I’ve not experienced trauma,’ that would have been a lie. But it seemed that would be the only way she’d believe anything I said. Maybe I could have tried, ‘These current issues are not relevant to my past trauma,’ but that sounds like something a traumatised person would say, doesn’t it? This therapist made it clear. Whatever I told her – no matter how fact-based, no matter how clearly steeped in misogyny — was not reliable information and should be treated with scrutiny.

These sessions were incredibly confusing. Although I lay out the dynamic clearly now, it was not clear to me at the time. I was still a Therapy Believer. Somewhere on some level, I felt she was getting things wrong, but I also had no framework for myself or my life that didn’t involve me having Mental Illness or needing Help. I trusted her over myself.

Eventually, she told me another modality of therapy would work better. She didn’t offer it, so I would have to go somewhere else... Reminder: this was the third therapist I’d tried in under a year. Hundreds of pounds worth of therapy. Hours of my time. Immeasurable emotional energy. I was exhausted, but not so exhausted I couldn’t be furious.

This time, I went to the NHS.

The waitlists and bureaucracy were painful, although not the staff’s fault. GP, waiting, questionnaires, waiting, phone assessment, waiting, in-person assessment, waiting. During my phone assessment, the mental health nurse — that I’d never talked to before or since — asked me within the first five minutes, ‘Have you had any traumatic experiences?’ I stood on the side of the road on my lunch break, where she’d called me with no warning, realising the entire mental health system needs to reforming.

It was hard to remember what I needed support with in the first place. Those original stressors felt so far away now. So much had happened, I felt I needed therapy to process the therapy. I felt harmed. My trust in mental health professionals was waning. By the time the NHS allotted me my fourth therapist, January had rolled around. Again.

He was a man, a handful of years older than me whose cheeks flushed easily, and he dressed in trendy clothes. There is a lot to be said about my time with him — which I will not say now, or maybe ever — but I think it can be summarized with this.

I was clear with what I wanted to work on with him, which was present-day problems, not diving deep into my past. I felt he bypassed my self-identified needs and opinions on my own care, and cajoled me into an endless mission of excavating my old wounds, picking at scabs, retreading the same ground over and over. Nothing was focused on the present. I thought back to what I needed nineteen months ago; a listening ear, some validation… So how did I get here? What had happened? Why did it feel like every time I brought up an issue I was having with a man, I was redirected to my childhood? It was as if being angry at a man was not valid in its own right, if I did not have previous trauma that could explain my emotions.

When I expressed to my therapist that these sessions were not helpful to me, he responded with, ‘Well, I think they have been helpful.’ Upon saying, I don’t want to continue, he told me, ‘You quit when things get hard.’

It would be convenient if he knew me better than I knew myself, as that would mean my criticism could be written off as ‘lacking insight’. It would be convenient if ‘quitting when things get hard’ was a personality trait that I possess, as it would imply his therapeutic methods were not at fault. It would imply my reluctance to continue was a personal failure of mine, that he and his department had nothing to do with.

During my last session with him, I could feel the story in the room growing and taking shape. It was palpable. I am the Client, emotional and wrong, and he is the Therapist, rational and correct. I am not as skilled at interpreting reality as he is. Every feeling, every opinion I have is a symptom. Similar to the third therapist I met with, my feedback about my own care was not viewed as valid or reasonable. I was emotional, I was traumatised, I was mentally ill. Hysterical, maybe...

I am grateful I live in a country with free healthcare. Most of the NHS’s flaws can be chalked up to shoddy government decisions: underfunding, privatisation, the list goes on. Due to this, I find it hard to talk about the harm the NHS has caused me. It’s hard to talk about the harm I’ve experienced from healthcare professionals who join the workforce to help and heal people, and who attempt to do so in a flawed system. I understand how I might be viewed: ungrateful, demanding, spoilt.

But the attitude of my NHS therapist was not unique to him or the NHS. It’s an attitude embedded in all parts of the psychiatric system, public and private, which seeks to individualise mental health. This means when a service-user cites sociopolitical factors, such as misogyny, as a source of their stress, they are seen as unaccountable and disengaged with the therapeutic process.

Before the chain of events catalogued here, I had only ever been described by therapists as thoughtful, insightful and engaged. During this chain of events, that shifted. I believe that’s because I started unapologetically identifying the dynamic that was having the biggest impact on my mental health, and had for years:

‘I am being forced into gender roles and I’m not comfortable with that.’

‘When I tell men how I feel, they make it about themselves.’

‘Men tell me I’m shouting when I am just being direct.’

Instead of indulging in the never-ending quest to ‘heal’ childhood wounds, cannibalising myself through ‘inner work’ like a snake eating its own tail, I wanted a space to explore and name the structural harm that I was experiencing. In other words, I was no longer conceptualising my mental distress within the framework that the psychiatric system provides, which is that distress is individual not collective.

I began to understand how significantly misogyny has played and continues to play a role in the status of my mental health, and named that. Through doing this, I became a ‘difficult’ client. I didn’t realise it, but by identifying misogyny as a huge factor in my wellbeing I was inadvertently diverging from and challenging the mainstream model of mental health.

Interestingly, I found this brought to light a new flavour of misogyny, with my last two therapists in particular.

As a woman who was angry at the way men treated me, who vocalised that anger, who did not present as a timid wallflower in sessions, who has a previous history of engaging in mental health services — I felt I was automatically treated as an unreliable narrator of my own life.

My experiences were questioned rather than believed. My feelings were pathologised rather than normalised. I was constantly encouraged to interrogate my own psyche, when what was going on in my life was actually misogyny. My opinions on my own care, how I wanted to work and what was best for me were ignored.

Therapists are not infallible. They are susceptible to gender bias, societal norms and political ideologies.

I’m positive that the therapists I met joined the profession out of compassion and have provided great care to other clients, but I feel strongly that I was harmed by my experiences with the last two.

In the end, this chain of events consumed two years of my life, and it ended the way it started: the trickle of summer heat, bright skies and late nights. This time I wasn’t alert to the first signs of trouble, I allowed myself to rest. What was trouble anyway? A feeling, a flicker of feeling. I think I'll be okay.

I’m in Berlin and the last time I was here was eight and a half years ago, back when I couldn’t visualise the future very well. There were things about it that appealed to me: stepping onto planes alone, living in cities, earning money from things that I made. But time always felt small and contained, limited to exams, weekends and the next part-time paycheck. The future was hidden and I felt stuck in now-ness, consumed by the immediacy of the present.

I think part of that is being young with feelings of I’m running out of time, so I should focus on the present or I’ve got loads of time, so I should focus on the present. Youth felt so demanding of my attention — begging me to be here, now — which made time feel small. It wasn’t just age though, being hurt clouded my vision too. It shocked me into my own life and pinned me there, boxing me in. I wasn’t able to think outside or beyond it.

But then I started to hurt less and grow older, and it’s like someone took the blinkers off.

Hurt that once crushed me now sits quietly at my side. The pressure to make the most of youth or achieve great things at a young age have melted away. They were burdens I didn’t realise I carried and without them, I can see every nook and cranny of my life. Up, out, sideway, foreward; the years will roll on.

I’ll learn to bake when I’m older, mid-thirties with a house. I’ll return to Berlin in my forties, for the third time, and eat noodles in the park. My fifties will be for swimming. In the sea, cold and unbridled, no makeup and eyelashes crisp with salt. I’ll dry off in the sun and silvery scars will catch the light across my thighs. Decades ago something happened, I won’t remember what.

I turned over in the hotel sheets and stretched my legs out into the chill of the room, planting my feet firmly on the floor one by one, another day is here.

It’s as if my sense of self is being squeezed by a never-ending force, how is it supposed to maintain shape? Eventually it will collapse.

‘She’s insecure.’ Women pay to get their eyelid skin cut off with a scalpel.

‘Be yourself.’ Women prick their cheeks with needles and massage in the blood.

‘Have confidence.’ Women burn their face with chemicals so the first layer of skin peels away.

I can no longer tell if a woman has had filler in her face. I’m not sure if she’s had her buccal fat removed. I don’t know what I’m looking at. It’s become so seamless and integrated, so normal. This is what women look like - or is it? Did she pay thousands? I don’t know. And if she did, I am not allowed to say anything other than ‘I’m happy for her. It’s her choice.’ I’ve acclimatised. This is the new normal. What used to be a 10 is now a 7. We’re all beautiful, but could still use a little work. What am I supposed to look like? What do I look like?

The exhaustion came somewhere between the blepharaplasty and undereye filler. I’m going insane. It’s too much, there is always something else, always someone else.