I’m on my way to tutor two students and I just want to curl up and cry. How can someone who is working for free in the NHS two days a week, paying to train at a university one day a week, and still working freelance, have to contend with such inadequate services when claiming Universal Credit? I am so stressed and demoralised by this process that doesn’t seem to understand that my self-employed work is a mixture of self-employed and PAYE income.
This week has been largely positive. On clinical placement, I attended a full art therapy group and I’m getting used to the environment as time goes on. I’m realising more about my difficulties and learning to be more open about how I am experiencing things, as well as communicating my needs. I have told the people at the job centre that I cannot be put through the ordeal of another appointment whereby I need to provide documentation again only to potentially be told that I am not “gainfully” self-employed again after over seven years of surviving on my income, this being only the second time I’m claiming and previously my claim was only open one or two months from my memory. All I need is a few months of support and the way I’m being treated is so demeaning and depersonalised.
Work on Thursdays feels long and intense, even with a cancellation yesterday. Fridays fly by but end late, and it’s dark and depressing. I’m looking forward to not having this ridiculous 45-minute bus journey for a one-hour lesson, followed by a half an hour walk between students because it’s the most efficient way… but we move. I’m trying to remain positive, exercising regularly and keeping to a routine more or less, doing art-making and studying academic texts for my course. Saying no to socialising with course-mates when it feels like too much.
I have a lot of plans this weekend, also connected to my training and potential work project, and last weekend I just had the one plan, where I saw the revamped Battersea Power Station for the first time, so I’m unsure what it’s going to feel like this weekend when I really just want to curl up with my textbooks all weekend. The week feels like it was bookended with shit quite frankly, with a filling of emotional turmoil, also still having an ongoing battle with Yodel for managing to deliver two different packages to the wrong address, which was a Christmas present. I will never shop at eBay again as they have been awful to get a refund from.
Watching: The Simpsons, TOWIE, Big Boys
Reading: Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker (audiobook), A Matter of Security: The Application of Attachment Theory to Forensic Psychotherapy by Friedemann Pfäfflin, Fearless 2 by Francine Pascal
Podcasts: This Jungian Life, What Now? with Trevor Noah
Music: AURORA, Weezer
Again, if you’re able to share or donate to my crowdfund as I train to become an Art Psychotherapist, or buy some books, please do!
Poet on page and stage. Creator of She Grrrowls. Facilitator. Writer. 