Tuesday 12 March 2013

CBT session 1

I had my first proper session of CBT last friday, after a couple of introductory sessions. I'd been looking forward to it because I'm really interested by the whole idea of CBT and I like psychology generally, I loved reading Freud and Jung at uni. I'm feeling a bit more comfortable with my therapist now, though it still seems odd how young she is, she's so nice and calm and together, while I don't feel like that about myself at all.
So, the session was great. We went through the 5 Aspects, using this worksheet, which I had done about two different situations as homework. The sheets are quite useful because they make me think about my reactions to situations, which is the whole point of them, and I am beginning to see the persistent negative or unhelpful thoughts that are such a big part of anxiety and depression. I knew I had them, obviously, but looking at them almost from an outsider's point of view is good. It feel like taking a step back, and I think that is the whole idea of the worksheets. I am a person who will endlessly analyse their actions, at least here I feel like I might be doing so in a productive way, rather than going round in circles, especially looking over the sheets with my therapist and adding to them as we talked about the situations.
The other thing we did was work together on a more general sheet with examples of situations that made me uncomfortable, and my reactions to them. We ended up talking quite a lot about body language, and also the conflict between not wanting to be noticed vs wearing almost aggressively noticeable clothing and hair, something I did more when I was younger. Also, we talked about 'safety behaviours', which are apparently something I do all the time. I hide behind a book, I clean my glasses when I don't need to, I hunch in a corner, all the way up to lying about being ill so I can go home, all the things I do in an effort to feel more comfortable. Clearly, some of them are more problematic than others.
The best thing about that one hour session was how interesting everything was. I tend to get stuck in a rut, read the same type of book, watch the same sort of things on tv, now I want to go and read about psychology, and mental health, and all sort of different things. It's so good to go into a therapy session feeling ok, and come out feeling really good.

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