Fears and loves

I've been pretty influenced by the Mental Illness Happy Hour recently, and I especially love the fears and loves that are read out each episode, so I thought I would do my own.

Fears:

I'm afraid people are only pretending to like me.

I'm afraid of heights, especially when I'm inside, I'm always scared I'm going to jump off even though I don't want to.

I'm afraid of having panic attacks.

I'm afraid of other people touching or putting their hands near my eyes. I'm so scared that somehow my glasses are going to break and the glass will go in my eyes.

I'm afraid I'll never find a really fulfilling job that I won't get bored of after a year.

I'm afraid my little brother won't ever be able to connect with people or be happy, and I'm afraid he will never get a diagnosis but will just be written off as 'naughty'.

I'm afraid I'll always have social anxiety, and always struggle in social situations.

Loves:

I love watching the crows playing outside of my work.

I love sitting on the sofa with a blanket, a cup of tea, and good tv.

I love that I can't even get in my mum's front door before my little sisters are hugging me.

I love watching videos of animals being friends with different types of animals.

I love Reece's Peanut Butter Cups.

I love self-care, as a concept, and the little individual acts of it I do to look after myself.

I love the blank, exhausted high that you get after dancing for ages at a gig, feeling totally connected to the music and the other people around.

I love drinking wine and chatting with my boyfriend.

I love goats.

I love that I know so many awesome queer people.

Therapy Take Three

After my disasterous experience at CBT that I wrote about in my last post I called Talking Therapies and asked to change therapists. It was writing the post, and laying my thoughts out, that helped me see how really unhappy I had been with the therapist, I don't know if I would have had the courage otherwise. I spoke to a receptionist then got a call back from a manager, who was really nice, I was able to give the real reasons I felt I needed a different therapist, something I often find hard, lying about feeling ill to get out of something is preferable to telling the truth and saying my anxiety is playing up. The manager was very nice, and basically said that if I didn't feel comfortable with my therapist I needed a new one, and that was all it took.
I've had three sessions with my new therapist now, and it's so much better! She's really nice, and totally unshockable. My notes already mentioned my being bisexual, and during the second session, when we were going through a timeline of my life, the fact I'm in an open relationship came up, she barely reacted to this, just asked if I date other people as well as my boyfriend doing so. Last session I ended up talking a bit with her about biphobia and biearasure, and how the affect me, which was awesome.
The main thing that I am liking about my new therapist is that she thinks CBT shouldn't totally ignore childhood/past issues. We spent a whole session just talking through a timeline of my life and seeing everything laid out, in order, made a couple of patterns really obvious. I have always had problems keeping friends, and I've been abandoned by a lot of friends. There have been a few big occasions where I have felt unnoticed and uncared for when really emotionally hurting, for example when I was being bullied by my sister and my dad and step-mum did nothing. I've always been the sensible oldest child, this has led to taking on a caring role at a young age, and not talking about my mental illness because of not wanting to upset people. All of this does seem to work together with being a shy quiet person to be a perfect recipe for social anxiety.
I hadn't been feeling that optimistic about doing CBT for the second time, especially after having had a bad experience with a therapist, but I'm feeling a lot happier about it now. I've been feeling like this could be good for me, I like my new therapist, and I know from past experience that a combination of meds and therapy is good for me, so hopefully things will carry on being good.