Source: health.india.com
Anxiety overtakes me,
Therapy:
Coming to an end.
A safety net
I fell back on
When panic struck my core,
Life overwhelmed me.
Now this is it.
My own two feet can’t
Buckle anymore.
I have no safety nets
To fall back on,
No conversations–
Comforting, enlightening;
Helping me cope.
Instead I have some tools
I’ll try to use
When mildly overwhelmed
But somewhat functional.
Sometimes I think
What I need now
Is a friend.
I previously posted about my CBT Fail–basically that I walked out on my social anxiety CBT group and never went back. Well I had a minor meltdown and started crying so I felt that I didn’t really want to go back there. Well, one of the therapists was super nice and is now doing individual therapy with me.
I’ve seen a lot of therapists in my lifetime. I once saw a psychiatrist for six months. I talked and talked. He asked some questions. Never really said much. Then after six months he told me I was dead inside. He told me the process of watching my mother die (she fought cancer for four years until she died in 2003) made me dead inside.
So, you can imagine how I feel about therapy.
Well, this feels different. First off it’s a CBT approach which I like. It’s less about going into my past, or subconscious and trying to figure out the source of all my problems and issues. It’s more about now–about my thoughts right now and how I can do things, take small steps, to improve my life. It’s very goal-oriented and I like that. It focuses you and helps create positive change almost immediately. I’ve already developed two goals for this week and I’m well on my way to completing one of them.
It’s definitely a start. Yesterday was my first session so I’ll have to see how it goes, but it seems promising and feels good.
Sometimes I can get caught up in trying to understand the origins of why I do things, or feel things. I try to figure out how I got here, why I’m so down sometimes, why I panic, feel anxious, feel unstable. I realize though the origin isn’t important. It won’t help me to figure out where to go from here. It seems counter-intuitive. I always thought if I figured out what caused me to be/feel/think this way (albeit it the ‘what’ in this scenario is actually a multitude of factors) I would be able to figure out how to deal with it, address it, undo it. But now I’m taking a different approach. Really doesn’t matter how I got here. What matters is where I want to go, and how to get there.
Source: essentialhealth.com
I haven’t written in a while about how things are going in the world of Depression/Anxiety/CBT. Well, CBT is off the table, I seem to have failed in that respect, or it failed me I’m not quite sure. I couldn’t take it anymore so I stopped. I’m going into individual counselling which I think will be more helpful for me. It seems my depression has overtaken my anxiety and it’s what I need to battle first and foremost. I spend a lot of time thinking about my life and what I’m doing with it and maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe I need to do more and think less. I don’t know why I feel this way and I hate feeling this way. I go home after work (which I find draining in a killing-my-soul sort of way) and park myself in front of my TV while randomly looking stuff up on the internet. Trying to find something new to do, something meaningful to engage in.
I joined Tai Chi and quit after the first class. It was weird because I really enjoyed the first class, but the second time I went it was far too clique-y for me and I felt like I never wanted to go back again. So I didn’t. This seems to be my current pattern: avoid at all costs anything that makes you feel bad. Well that was a waste of $150. I gave the card to a friend though I’m not sure she’s going to take the classes either.
Even writing this I hate the way I sound. So whiny and obnoxious. My life is so tough, I’m a privileged North American adult yet I can’t seem to find any joy in my privilege or my life. I hate this fight. I blame myself, then wonder if it’s ‘me’ or something outside of my control going on inside my head. Just feels again like this isn’t ‘ME’ whatever this is. I don’t take anything in my life for granted and I know that I’m lucky to be employed, able-bodied, capable, to have different opportunities if I seek them. So then what exactly is my problem? I don’t know.
I volunteer my time toward causes I care about. It’s partly a solution at times–it alleviates some of the guilt and self-hatred associated with feeling so down and complaining despite the knowledge that others out there are suffering too, in different ways, and perhaps they too can’t help themselves. I’m supposed to realize, I guess, that my suffering isn’t as bad, objectively, as that of other people. I guess that’s what I try to tell myself, it’s the old comparison and chastisement–your life isn’t as bad as that person’s, you shouldn’t complain, you should help them.
Well, tell that to whatever the hell is going on inside my mind.
Source: http://www.thelifecloud.net
I feel like I’m slowly learning to tame my thoughts, to question them, to test them, to tease out the truth.
As part of my social anxiety group we were taught to fill out thought records. Basically you write down the situation you’re in, your moods and how strongly you felt them, and then the automatic thoughts you had in your mind at the time. Then you choose the ‘hot thought’–the one that carries the most power and is the most intense. You then write evidence that supports this hot thought, and evidence that counters this hot thought. When you’re done writing down all the evidence, you write a balanced sentence that incorporates the evidence from both sides.
This is a pretty powerful exercise for a number of reasons. First, I’m often not aware of my automatic thoughts, I just feel anxious or depressed or panicked but I’m not sure what exactly I was thinking that led me there. Secondly, the evidence piece is pretty powerful. It’s easy to sometimes think in very concrete and absolute terms when reality might not support your conclusions. For instance, I might think everyone thinks I’m awkward and shy. Well, what’s the evidence? It has to be factual, so it can’t be my perception, it has to be something someone said to me, or something that is not based on my own assumptions or speculations. So, maybe two or three times in the span of my entire life someone told me they think I’m awkward. I then translate that into everyone thinks I’m awkward. The evidence is powerful because it helps you to tease apart your thoughts and fears from what’s actually there.
The idea is not to ignore the negative evidence and pat yourself on the back for the positive–rather, it’s to have a more balanced outlook. So after reviewing the evidence, your final statement might be something like: although a couple of people have told me I’m awkward, I have had a lot of positive feedback from others. Or although in the past I have been in relationships where my trust was betrayed, my current partner has never given me reason to distrust him. Something like that, that captures the evidence and paints a realistic and balanced picture.
The idea is that with time and practice, you won’t need to actually fill out the thought record, instead you’ll just automatically go through this process in your mind. So if I get completely stressed and anxious about something, I can reflect on what I’m thinking, the evidence that supports or contradicts the most intense thought, and then view the situation more realistically, which should lessen my anxiety.
I’m finding this really helpful and I thought I’d share this idea with anyone out there who struggles with feelings that can be overwhelming, overpowering and confusing. I’m still learning how to do this, and I’m sure with time I will get better at it and find it more and more useful. For now though, it’s definitely a great tool to keep in my belt.
Source: http://www.ikea.com
So, as I mentioned in a previous post, I’m taking part in a 12 week cognitive behavioural therapy group for people with social anxiety. This week we did something interesting. It was an exposure exercise where we had to be videotaped for three minutes. We could either tell a story, talk about any topic we wanted, have someone ask us questions as though we were being interviewed, engage in a debate with someone, etc. etc. I chose to recount an event that stood out in my mind as a time when I experienced social anxiety, but was able to advocate for myself and overcome it, in the face of someone pointing out my awkwardness and telling me to be more social.
This was a pretty interesting exercise. Last week we did the recordings and this week we watched them. It was painful. I sunk down in my chair and wrapped my scarf around me, trying to hide in it while at the same time knowing I had to watch and listen to be able to participate in the dialogue afterwards. After watching myself I had to fill out a survey to rate how anxious I seemed in the video, and to rate myself on a number of indicators related to anxiety. I rated myself pretty poorly and criticized myself for a number of things I felt I did poorly–I was looking away and looking down, I didn’t maintain eye contact, I said ‘um’ and ‘like’ a lot, I was fidgeting, etc. etc.
The interesting part, which is actually the point of this whole exercise, is that no one else in the group rated me nearly as badly as I rated myself. I’m talking really nowhere near, almost as though we were watching entirely different videos. And now I know they weren’t just trying to be nice to me, because the same thing happened when I rated a classmate–I thought she did a good job and she seemed pretty confident, she didn’t stutter, she was focused and articulate and even compensated for her off-camera partner who had difficulty coming up with questions to ask her. I thought she showed initiative and was very well composed. She, on the other hand, rated herself very poorly, and had a hard time accepting our opinions to the contrary.
This was all pretty eye-opening for me. It’s astounding how critical we can be of ourselves, and what’s worse is that we believe it. Even in the face of evidence to the contrary, we still stick firmly to our beliefs. It’s hard to watch yourself in a video and pat yourself on the back. For some reason, all of the mistakes and criticisms come easily–they seem to be waiting there ready to be noticed. But other people don’t see it that way. Other people aren’t as critical.
It makes me wonder why we do this, why we’re so hard on ourselves. It was really quite baffling to me. It’s completely against my own self-interest to think so negatively about myself, but it comes so easily, readily and harshly. I wouldn’t think such awful things about someone else.
Anyways, this exercise made me realize that the way I see myself isn’t the way other people see me. All the things I hate about myself, that I dwell on, other people either don’t notice, or if they do, certainly not to the extent I notice, or I think they notice.
This also makes me wonder what if? What if instead of focusing on the negatives, I tried to see the positives? What if instead of criticizing myself I accept how I felt, and recognize that what I feel and what others think, or see, are not the same thing? What if I opened myself up to the possibility that my perceptions are not always in tune with other people’s, or with ‘reality’?
I might be a lot happier. I certainly would be a lot nicer to myself, and a lot more realistic in my perceptions.
Source: mashable.com
Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Makes a lot of sense. The problem is that habits and patterns can become so ingrained, it’s hard to see a way out, a different way of living or being. I think this is the source of a lot of my sadness, frustration, anxiety, depression, and general feelings of hopelessness. I get caught up in feeling like my actions are futile and my emotions are uncontrollable and this leads to the same catastrophic conclusion–there’s no point. There’s no point, no hope, no escape from these horrible feelings.
I’m trying to change. I’m in a twelve-week cognitive behavioural therapy program for people with social anxiety. I’m learning new skills that hopefully will help me, and I’m trying to change my perception. As part of this group, we were asked to purchase the book Mind over Mood, and we’ve been assigned a few chapters so far. What I’m gathering from all of this is the power of my own thoughts to determine the situation, my mood, my reaction.
Someone once said to me ‘jealousy is a distortion of reality’. I thought that was pretty profound. I’ve fallen ‘victim’ to feelings of jealousy many a time in my life. I even read an entire book called ‘Romantic Jealousy’ to try to figure out what the hell was wrong with me. Well, somehow, none of that helped as much as that one phrase. That’s exactly what my jealousy most often was–a distortion of reality by my mind. I’d take a situation and have so many automatic thoughts about it–all negative–that I wound up feeling jealous, enraged and mostly, quite hopeless.
I think this is the crux of the problem. I have so many automatic negative thoughts that swarm my mind I’m not even aware of them. I take them as truths. As facts. As ‘reality’. When really, they are perceptions, interpretations, ideas I have conjured, not facts I have witnessed or absorbed.
The main focus of the last few sessions of my CBT group was learning how to fill out a thought record. Basically, you think of a time you experienced a very strong mood or emotion (we’ve just started doing this, but really you should fill out a thought record right after/during an emotionally charged event). The thought record contains a description of the situation you were in, the moods you experienced with a rating of how strongly you experienced them, the automatic thoughts that came to mind, and then evidence for and against each of these automatic thoughts. The idea is that after compiling the evidence for and against, you can form either an alternative view of the situation, or a more balanced view of the situation that takes into account all of the evidence (rather than focusing on our negative perceptions/interpretations which we are apt to do).
This is different from positive thinking or rationalization in the sense that you are not trying to convince yourself of something positive or dismiss what you’re feeling–you’re actually trying to find facts that both support and counter your thoughts in order to have a more accurate or balanced view. This is just my summary based on reading the relevant chapters in the book. To learn more I recommend either getting the book or consulting Google. Anyways, the idea is that after filling out thought records 20-50 or so times, this way of thinking will become a lot more automatic and you won’t even need to write things down–you will have learned a more adaptive and beneficial way of thinking about your situation.
I can see the merit in this approach and I guess for me it’s just a matter of doing it–of actually filling out the thought records and exploring those automatic thoughts that pop into my mind. It’s pretty awful what lurks there and quite disturbing when you actually stop to take a look. There’s a part of me that very strongly doubts and hates myself. I see myself as an annoying burden to my family and friends, I see the negative side to things as much as possible. Someone’s tone or a look on someone’s face always signals disgust, repulsion, dislike–that person hates me. But how do I know these things? I don’t. And thinking of actual evidence, in terms of facts, like what someone actually said to me, really helps to shed light on this.
It just makes me wonder why do I have so many negative automatic thoughts? People are so weird. Our brains are so weird. What’s the adaptive advantage of catastrophizing and being so negative? There really isn’t one. But I guess that’s besides the point. What matters is that I start to gain awareness of my thoughts, to eventually have more balanced thoughts and not feel so awful and distressed by various situations.
Like now. I’m in a relationship with someone I really like, and I already feel myself falling into awful old patterns, out of fear. I’m sort of mentally pushing him away, convincing myself he doesn’t care about me, doesn’t make time for me, is too different from me. In reality, I really like him, to a point where I think it sort of scares me. But I find myself spiraling into negative thoughts and negative self thoughts. I compare myself to him and feel crappy. Why do I do these things? I really like him and he makes me happy yet that terrifies me.
I’m still working on sorting all this out but I’m hoping that by managing to understand my thoughts, to be aware of them and to try to look at the actual evidence that either supports or disproves my thoughts, I will learn a more adaptive way of thinking so that I can not only cope with these emotions, but actually enjoy my life, and allow myself to fully experience it.
Unlearning the Fear 