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.
Unlearning the Fear 