Kyle is a 42-year-old man who has a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. He was referred to Personal Wellbeing following a community order for a sexual offence, whilst he was not taking his medication.
His Probation Practitioner described Kyle as “…very suspicious of new people” and stated that his biggest struggle is being out in the community due to his paranoia and body dysmorphia. It became apparent during his initial assessment that he has little self-confidence and esteem, choosing to think of himself very negatively.
Over the weeks we have completed work around:
- Positive attributes
- Positive character traits – challenging character traits
- Challenging negative beliefs
- Strength’s spotlight
- Values and attitudes
- Positive affirmations
- Self-kindness and self-compassion.
The most amazing breakthrough came from the focused self-kindness work. Kyle was given ‘homework’ to write a letter to himself that was self-compassionate and kind. He had always struggled with thoughts that he has no value. He brought his homework to our next session, and he had written the most beautiful, compassionate letter to himself. This piece of work really did highlight the weeks of hard work that he has put into his interventions, including weekly ‘homework’s’ that he takes time to complete and is shy but happy to share with his PWB Practitioner.
The next piece of work for Kyle to now start to do is based on him engaging in his local community (within conditions set by his Probation Practitioner) so that he can start to begin to form new relationships and trust that people will be drawn to him for being himself. This is very gentle work and will take some time, but he is starting to see himself as a more multi-faceted person.
His offence was directly linked to him not taking his medication, this has now been rectified via intravenous injections to prevent this from reoccurring. He has been supported to remain engaged with his CPN and his psychiatric team to ensure his stabilisation.
