CBT Take Two

Source: http://www.cbt-psychotherapy-ltd.com

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.

 

 

Taming my Thoughts

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.

Relationship Anxiety in Check!

Source: http://www.bretells.com

A few days ago I blogged about feeling unappreciated in my relationship. My partner’s very busy and I’ve been down this road before, given five years of my life to someone who never put me first. Anyways, things are better now. It’s honestly so hard to disentangle your thoughts and experiences. It’s hard not to let negative experiences from the past colour your view and determine your perspective. But it’s not fair–to you or the person you’re seeing.

I honestly had visions of my life spent at home in quiet misery and solitude feeling unloved despite having a lover. I thought he’d always put work first, and art first, and now I recognize I was wrong. I need to have a bit more faith and a bit more trust. This is a busy time, but it doesn’t mean he’s prioritizing his life based on his desires–that he’d rather work, or paint, or print than be with me. Faced with organizing a grand opening in the very near future, and displaying his art at a major art show in the very near future, it’s sort of understandable that he has to devote a good deal of time to his work right now.

He still makes me feel special, valued and important, and he has told me many times that he’s trying to set up his business so that when he has a family he won’t need to work so hard. The bad part is I’ve heard this all before from someone else who ended up breaking my heart. It took me a long time to realize it wasn’t just the ‘now’–this was his personality and who he’d always be–a workaholic.

But this time it’s different. I believe him, and it’s so liberating to actually feel close to someone and to trust them and want to support them rather than battle it out, rather than feel neglected and angry and resentful. I sometimes am passive aggressive because I’m trying not to feel angry or hurt or resentful, but these emotions are strong and they seep through. It’s different this time though. I feel good about us, and about him, and there is no anger in my heart. I’ve opened my eyes to what is there, and let go of my fear.

I recently talked to someone close to me about this and she has a different perspective than me. It’s interesting, I think it’s very idealistic but she seems happy. She seems to think if you’re going to spend your life with someone, your relationship better well be near perfect. There are so many people out there, and if you want it to work, to be with this person forever, you have to be cut-throat in your search, on the same page in most ways, and super compatible, whatever that means to you. So, she likely thinks I should move on.

Funny thing is, something she said really struck me. She recently got married and describes her relationship as feeling like it’s the two of them, on the same side, against all the crap out there in the world. She wants to support him, even though he also works late hours, because he always puts her first, always makes her feel appreciated, wanted, loved. She said you shouldn’t feel like you’re fighting against your partner, but that you’re both in it together, supporting each other, through a not-so-easy life.

Well, perhaps she said all this with a different intention, but it made me realize that that’s what I want. I want to feel like I’m on a team with someone, not against them. I want to feel supported, loved, cared for and I want to provide these same feelings to someone else. I want to support him and care for him, not add to his current stress.

I do believe him when he says this is not what he wants for himself or his life–to put work first. I also know how much I care about him, and to me, that’s worth fighting for. I don’t care how many other people there are out there. People are complicated, multi-dimensional, changing–they’re not checklists or commodities you can size up and discard. When you find someone you connect with and you care about, who makes you feel cared for and appreciated, it is rare and not worth letting go of on a whim.

My Own Worst Enemy

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.

Mending Fences

Source: pwoodford.net

Sometimes things can happen between you and a friend, or a family member, that causes a wall to be erected between you. Sometimes it’s a disagreement, someone’s actions, disappointment, self-protection–there are so many reasons we sometimes feel the need to pull away, to weaken or sever the ties that have formed between us.

I have a couple of these situations right now that are unresolved and sort of weighing on my soul and to a lesser extent, my conscience. I think sometimes I idealize my relationships with others. I want my friendships to be honest and real and true and sometimes this alienates me from other people.

I had a friend many years ago who had social anxiety and I believe, for this reason, would often flake out on me. She would say she was coming to a dinner or party or event I had invited her to, and she would spend hours on the phone with me the night before asking tons of questions about who was coming, what I was wearing, did she know everyone etc etc and then the next day, sometimes an hour before the event, she would let me know that she had gotten sick. I put up with this for a long time because I truly empathized and sympathised with her situation. I too suffer from social anxiety and I’m sure I have appeared selfish and flaky on many occasions. The thing is though, I had hoped that after a few years of friendship she could open up to me and be honest with me. I finally confronted her and she became very angry and defensive. Maybe I was wrong, and selfish and I wasn’t being understanding enough. I would not disagree with this conclusion. Nevertheless, I felt I couldn’t truly be friends with her, because there would always be this thing between us–this level of misunderstanding and distrust and….untruth. I know, it’s not fair to force someone to disclose things about themselves that they’re not ready for. At the same time, I couldn’t change the way I felt.

I think it’s this idealization of friendship that for me has been a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I have a handful of amazing friends in my life. I can tell them anything and I don’t feel judged, I know they truly care about me, respect me, trust me and strive to understand me, as I do them. On the other hand, these friends are rare gems, and it’s not often you can develop these types of friendships. To expect such an ideal means that I often end up alienating myself from others and I become incapable of developing friendships with many people. This isn’t a goal of mine in and of itself, but I do believe in the awesome power of having a good supportive social network, and being so all or nothing can prevent this from developing. Having an all or nothing approach to friendships can be a major obstacle to building a diverse social network and can mean you miss out on a lot of amazing experiences. Not everyone has to ‘truly’ understand you or know you or feel able to fully open up to you to be a great friend, to be someone  you have a great time with, someone you learn from, someone who is there for you and you for them.

I guess I need to move away from this all or nothing approach if I want to sustain some of my friendships. It’s a struggle though. I truly believe that trust is crucial in relationships, including friendships, and if I feel that someone doesn’t have my best interests at heart, I don’t feel I can truly be friends with them.

Recently, a friend of mine acted in exactly this way. She met my partner for the first time and by objective accounts, was very flirty with him and displayed a great deal of attention-seeking behaviour. After this one encounter I questioned my friendship with her. I can’t be friends with a girl who acts like that, it’s exactly the type of thing that I can’t stand. I tried to let it go but she ended up confronting me, thinking something was wrong, which it was. I explained to her how I felt, and why, and she became extremely defensive. She said she couldn’t believe I thought that about her, she felt betrayed by me, she was ‘shell shocked’. She was just trying to make my partner feel welcome into our group. Now, I don’t actually believe her–I can’t based on her actions and the things she said. At the same time, I don’t think she really had bad intentions, like she was trying to break us up. Maybe she felt left out, and maybe she wasn’t used to not being the centre of attention. I’m not trying to paint her as a villain, as I don’t believe she intended to act the way she did. But that doesn’t change the fact that she did. And this makes me lose trust in her and our friendship.

A mutual friend (who is far closer friends with my friend than she is with me) told me that she doesn’t believe my friend had negative intentions at all, but she has actually spoken to her about the same thing on numerous occasions–that she is very flirty and attention-seeking in ways that are inappropriate. So, she doesn’t have bad intentions she just doesn’t seem to be aware of what she’s doing.

I can understand that, rationally, but right now, I can’t really change how I feel, as much as I might want to.