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.

Where I am right now - CBT take two

It's been almost a year since I last wrote in this blog, I moved house to Reading and started my new job as a student finance and admissions advisor at a FE college. I was really busy, and being so busy made me tired and seemed to use up all of my brain, my job is totally different to the library work I had done before and required learning loads of new processes from scratch. Everything was pretty good, living with my boyfriend is really awesome, my new job is hard work but enjoyable, I have a better online network.

But, there are bad things. I have a daily commute of nearly 4 hours, and my job is pretty stressful. Two things that make my mental health worse? Stress and tiredness. I moved away from London just as I was starting to know people and find fun things to do, and Reading is much quieter and more conservative than London, no queer club nights for example. I've made a few friends and done some dating, some of that went pretty badly, and one good friend I made moved away.

Essentially, I've been backsliding socially, and not noticing because I was happy spending time with my boyfriend, and having alone time when he's out on dates. But the last three or four weeks, for no real reason I can tell, depression just settled on me - I felt bad about myself, I had no interest in anything, getting tickets to see Against Me! made me happy for about 5 minutes. In a way this may have been a good thing, it made me realise how much I was getting back to how I was before CBT, I'd stopped even trying to meet new people and be social, despite still being lonely and wanting friends. And when I was put in social situations? Back to freaking out, including an anxiety attack in a poly-related situation that I think was much more about my anxiety than poly stuff.

So, back to the doctor, and back to CBT. I was pretty wary when offered it by the mental health team, because of already having done it, but apparently it can often take more than one lot to have a real effect. I've been really lucky, again, in hardly having to wait any time at all from being referred by my doctor to having my introductory session, which was yesterday.

My depression has finally started to lift, and I wasn't feeling too nervous before the session, but basically it was horrible and I cried nearly the whole way through. I know a lot of people have problems with CBT because of the emphasis on changing thoughts, a lot of people feel that CBT blames them for not trying hard enough not to be ill, and basically that is how I felt. I was already feeling silly and embaressed about having let myself get back in a situation where I'm not managing my anxiety. I was also struggling to explain why I feel the way I do, my therapist kept asking WHY I feel like nobody likes me, and I KNOW the way I feel isn't rational, but telling me it isn't rational doesn't change it.

These are things that I'm more able to preocess with a bit of time to think, but there wan another thing I had an isue with in the session, when I mentioned not being straight my therapist said 'Oh you're not straight? But I thought you have a boyfriend?' Now I've had people say basically those exact words to me before, but it was the way she said it, it sounded accusatory, and I basically snapped 'I'm bisexual' at her. Later in the session she was asking why I think I'm so different from everyone else, that there are pleanty of other bisexual feminists, I felt like she was accusing me of trying to invoke some kind of special snowflake status. Maybe my personality is the reason I struggle to connect with most people, but of all the people I've met and know IRL I can only thingk of one bisexual poly feminist, incidentally she's one of my very few offline friends. And of course I'm not going to tell her about being polyamorous now, because I don't feel safe to, but that's going to affect my sessions quite a lot because one of the ways I'm generally ok to meet people is through internet dating.

The more I write and think about this the more annoyed I am. Last night I was upset, my instinct was to just quit therapy, call them up and say I'd changed my mind. Then my instinct was to second guess myself, assume it's all my fault that it went badly and I just have to try harder. Now, with a bit of time to reflect I don't know what to do.

The first real challenge

As I was coming to the end of CBT my therapist told me the real test of how well I was doing would be the anxiety I had when I was not seeing her any more, and not on meds any more, and seeing how I dealt with that. That test has now come and I don't think I'm doing very well.
The last couple of months have been really busy for me, I was offered a job in Oxford so started the process of finding somewhere to live in Reading with my boyfriend. We found an amazing flat, but the day before we were due to move in were told by the estate agents that the previous tenants were refusing to move out, and there was nothing the estate agents could do to make them. This led to three weeks of my boyfriend and I living in his room, in a shared house with six other guys, not ideal. The day after this I started my new job, which included a two hour commute each way. All of these things were not suited to making me less anxious, nor was the fact I'd not been able to get to the doctor so was basically going off my anti-depressants on my own.
After a week and a half or so of having no time to myself I started to get anxious, disliking being in the communal kitchen, not being able to settle to anything and wanting to be on my own. Stupidly I didn't recognise the signs, I knew I was anxious but I didn't think what that meant, and I didn't do anything about it. Surprisingly enough this made me more anxious, my boyfriend noticed, and I ended up kicking him out of his room so I could have a few hours to myself in his room, and we started spending less time on the communal kitchen generally, which helped.
Three weeks late we finally got into the flat, though there were still numerous issues with getting my stuff in, getting the furniture the landlady had left behind taken away, and after over a week in the flat we still have had no cleaning done, no repairs, only one set of keys and no bed. Still, we're not longer living in one room, and I am a lot happier now I've got all of my stuff, having access to my books and comics is especially making me happier.
However, I have still been anxious, and while I'm sure all the stress is not helping I don't think it's the only thing that is making me anxious. Another problem is adjusting to living with someone, which is very different from living in a shared house and spending a lot of time with someone. I went from having nearly every evening totally on my own, to really only having my commute on my own, and that doesn't count really, as of course I'm surrounded my loads of people on the train and bus. I've always known I'm an introvert, and like to be alone to recharge after social situations, but now I can't. Now I'm basically in a social situation all of the time, even if it's just my boyfriend and I. It's low-level, but it is taking it's toll.
Things came to a head last night. At the weekend by boyfriend had been due to go out with a friend, meaning I would have had the house to myself for the evening, but he got cancelled on and I didn't. I've been feeling odd for a few days, not quite the happier self I've been since CBT and meds. I've been irritable and strange feeling, but again didn't recognise it at what is must have been - an anxious introvert not getting enough alone time.
Instead of having a fun night out I was irritable and moody, and no matter how hard I tried not to be I kept slipping back to being in a bad mood. Obviously, this did not make for a fun boyfriend, who got annoyed, which just made me feel worse. Cut to leaving early from the burlesque night, after I had gone and had a little cry in the toilets, and feeling like shit on the journey home. It wasn't a full-on anxiety attack, but it was close. I basically refused to talk about it last night, which was maybe not sensible, but I also knew attempting to do anything other than take a diazepam and go to sleep would just make me a hysterical mess.
I'm ok this morning, I slept really badly and I'm exhausted and sad, but I can deal with that. My boyfriend has yet again been awesome, and I think we're ok, and I have a big bar of chocolate to eat, and a raft of work to distract me, plus I am going to get the house to myself this evening. I feel bad essentially kicking my boyfriend out of his own house, but I also am a lot nicer to live with when I've had a decent amount of alone time.
Though I didn't have a full-blown anxiety attack, I also basically forgot most of the stuff I learned in CBT. I haven't kept an eye out for the signs of anxiety, I didn't talk myself out of it, and trying to pretend it's not happening. I need to do more preventative stuff, such as making a concerted effort to have enough time on my own each week, but also I really need to do much better when I am in a situation that is making me anxious, even if that is just leaving the situation and calming down, rather than trying to pretend I'm fine, when I'm really not. Last night I failed the test, but not totally, now I just need to remind myself it could have been a lot worse, and up my self-care. I will be ok, but only if I am gentler with myself, and pay more attention to the way I am feeling.

Self-care and me.

I've been reading things about self-care recently, as I've been preparing myself to deal with my anxiety without therapy or medication, which I do feel ready for, but only because I feel like I have good support structures in place. A lot of those structures come from CBT, I am able to recognise when I am getting anxious, and the ways my thought-patterns are affected, and I have coping-strategies for once I am enxious, in case I am not able to prevent the anxiety before it develops.
Self-care seems to be talked about in two different ways, by professionals, and by people practicing it. This is what NHS Choices has to say about self-care, but a lot of what is mentioned is not really what I think of as self-care, as it is often day-to-day stuff, eating well, exercise etc, which I do try to do, but what I really think of as self-care is what I do when I feel my anxiety coming on or am having a really bad day.
For example, I find it really different to read the news, I often find it overwhelming, depressing and frustrating. Though my anxiety is mostly social I do sometimes get the endless worrying over events, feeling that I cannot do anything about them, and then feeling worse because I feel so powerless, I become paralyzed by worry. There are several ways to deal with this - I don't read the paper, especially something like the Sun, Daily Mail or Metro. I will back off Twitter if I feel I need to, for example EverydaySexism is an amazing, inspiring project, but sometimes is just too much. This post of the 60 happiest dogs on the internet can seriously help too, if I need cheering up.
Another good thing for my anxiety is colouring. Most sites about self-care will mention yoga or meditation of some sort, I find meditation either boring or not helpful, sitting with nothing to do makes it too easy for my mind to fixate on whatever is worrying me, making the anxiety worse. However, colouring in can be used in a therapeutic manner, it is a fairly simple, repetitive task, that requires just enough attention for me to think about what colour to use next, not that I am an awful person or everyone is just pretending to like me. My mum bought me a few colouring books for Christmas, I spent the other day avoiding Twitter and colouring in ladies in pretty Victorian dresses, and felt so much calmer afterwards.
I also find taking care of myself, as in literally doing nice things to my body, to be very helpful. I imagine masturbation would be an obvious thing, I like to put on face masks, do my make-up even if I'm not going to leave the house, or paint my nails pretty colours. Olivia Singer, a writer for XoJane and XoVain, writes a lot about beauty as self-care, and I am so on board with it. I do also find buying pretty things makes me feel good, but self-care can look like an excuse to be totally selfish, whereas an at-home facial is free and makes me feel cared for.
The official sites that talk about self-care are useful, but seem to talk about looking after yourself as a duty and a necessity, I tend to think of emergency self-care as more of a luxury. I don't need to spend an hour giving myself glittery pink nails, but if I'm doing that instead of being upset at the treatment of women in society I'm doing better. Especially if afterwards I'm feeling well enough to start being angry rather than upset, and to donate to a women's charity or sign a petition.

Positive proof

Last week something that I had been suspected would happen soon did - I officially have one session of therapy left. In other words, I have officially made enough progress that my therapist and I no longer thing that I need weekly Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to manage my social anxiety. I will have one more session, in 5 weeks time, to see how I am managing my anxiety on my own and make sure that I am doing ok. I'm still taking anti-depressants and have a written list of trigger warnings and ways that I can try to prevent my anxiety becoming worse in bad situations, but other than that I will be managing my anxiety on my own.
This is obviously a really good step for me, I've known I've been doing well for some time, and that I have the skills in place to hopefully carry on doing well, but it is still a big step. I liked having someone to make plans for conversations or social situations I would be finding myself in, and I liked having homework, I work well when under instruction and now I am going to have to try to motivate myself to carry on trying to make new friends and leave the house for social situations. However, I still have this blog, which I hope will be enough inspiration to push myself, until eventually I don't need to try to be sociable, I will just do it.
The next step is stopping my anti-depressants, something I will obviously need to talk to my doctor about. Luckily I have been really really lucky with my doctor, she is really good, she listens to me and has given me really good advice, so I know that she will take into account how well therapy has been going, and how much better I feel I am managing at the moment.
I don't think this will be the last time mental illness will affect me in my life, it's already the second documented, treated time, and I'm only 26. However, I am lucky that my body reacts well to medications and that I have had really good doctors and therapists so far. If, or when, I have a recurrence of anxiety or depression, or a first occurrence of something else, hopefully with good treatment I will be able to recover in the way I am now.

Reaching the end

This blog was supposed to be a way for me to chart and reflect on my journey through Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. However, despite a really productive start I quickly stopped writing. Now I am reaching the end of CBT, I have had 10 sessions, and am scheduled to have 2 more, I expect my therapist to tell me she thinks I won't need any more after that.
The last few months have been hard work, it always seems to be be the really hard sessions, the ones where I end up crying in the therapist's office, that made the biggest difference. I used to swing between blaming myself for all of my problems and thinking nothing was ever my fault. Realising that it would be easier for me to make friends if I would actually bother to talk to people more than once, and just just assume most people are boring, was not a great moment. However, CBT is all about breaking unhelpful thought patterns, and that is one one I am working really hard on, and it does seem to be working.
Over the last few months I have talked a lot about the things that make me anxious and sad, but I have also done exercises to get me talking to people. With my therapist I've rehearsed what to say and do in certain situations, it feels a bit silly, but it really works, I'm at the point where the embarrassment of doing something is not longer worse than the fear of doing it.One task involved speaking to one of my therapist's colleagues, just about normal stuff, two 20-something women in a room, oh yeah, and it was on camera. It was terrifying, but afterwards, realising the other person didn't find me awkward, didn't think I seemed like and awful person, didn't even know I had anxiety problems, was amazing. I was not upset that there wasn't time to watch the video though.
I'm even starting to make friends, lunch with one person, and we're doing it again this week, and a comic book group that went really well. When I get interested I can begin to forget my anxiety, even if I spend the time more keyed-up than I should be, and totally drained afterwards. IO'm making real progress, and think I will be able to carry on making progress without therapy, and, eventually, without anti-depressants.
I'm not going to stop blogging though. Recently I've been reading a lot more non-fiction, my feminism feels reawakened, I'm more angry and less exhausted than I used to be. I've always thought intersectional feminism is the only sort that makes sense, but now I am trying hard to live up to that, and to educate myself. I am especially getting interested in attitudes to mental illness, and disability as a whole, and want to broaden my writing to not just the personal pieces I've done so far on this blog, but more wide-reaching stuff. I want to be an activist, I want to feel like I'm helping people, and myself, like I'm doing something with my life. So, look out for more posts, I already have a couple of ideas, and I'm really excited about them.

Confidence raising through commenting on blogs.

My efforts to make friends through Girlfriend Social were not successful, but I have not been put of. I'm still not ready to start talking to people in real life, but I figure any little step I make is good, and so began commenting on two blogs I read, XOJane and Autostraddle. Between them these sites have, in just a few weeks, expanded my ideas and reignited my interests.
XOJane is the site that has sparked my interest in taking more care of myself, it's the reason I'm not eating sugar, the reason I now actually moisturise everyday (my skin feels so much nicer!) and gave myself a mini-manicure. It's matter-of-fact approach is perfect, real people recommending products they spend their own money on is great, but also the emphasis on self care as something that can improve the way you feel about yourself mentally is really good for me. Also, I often do a thing where I assume I won't like people, that I won't have anything in common with them. With XOJane I find myself wanting to be friends with so many of the writer's, because they are awesome, which has in turn made me think remember that a lot of the ways I think about friendship are informed by my social anxiety, but hopefully my CBT will help with that.
The other awesome thing about XOJane? It's reignited my interest in feminism! And not just feminism, the emphasis on intersectional feminism , so I've been reading posts that have made me want to read about disability rights, I've learned about fat acceptance. I've been more interested in wider things than I have been in ages, maybe this is just the antidepressants talking and I hadn't realised how much I'd been in a rut, but reading people's post, and the amazing comments section, has really had an impact on me.
Autostraddle is having the same effect on me, in different directions. It's a lesbian blog with a very queer feel, very inclusive, and very interesting. It's made me want to read about queer theory again, as well as reminding me how little I know about things like the Civil Rights movement. It's the only place where, when joining, I was able to tick the 'pansexual' box, normally I'm impressed if I can choose 'bisexual' or 'other'. Also, there is an amazing column that is just links to interesting articles, not generally about queerness, but about all sorts of other things, the KKK, child beauty pageants, medical insurance. I've been trying to read a wider variety of fiction and nonfiction, and this column makes it easy.
These two sites have made me feel part of a community, even before I started commenting, and I like commenting, I find it easier to talk to people online, and both sites are so friendly and casual. If I can talk to people easily online, even if it's just saying I liked their article, or that I too can't stand tinned tuna, it's a step closer to be being comfortable talking to people in real life.

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.

A new start.

I've recently started Cognitive Behavioural Therapy due to my social anxiety issues. This was started by me crying at my doctor, a lot, about the fact I have no friends and had a panic attack when I tried to make some. She referred me to my area's mental health service, I then proceeded to cry a lot at the person on the phone, twice. The second time the mental health worker said I was suitable to CBT, and that I had to go to a group induction to IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies) but that I wouldn't need to talk to anyone while I was there. It turned out to be a group question and answer session that I sat through in stony silence, sweating, blushing and trying not to cry. Horrific, but I couldn't leave because then I wouldn't get CBT.
Finally, I came of the waiting list, unsurprisingly the first session consisted a lot of my crying while my nice therapist asked lots of question about my past and social difficulties. Surprisingly, on my second session, about what CBT is, I did not cry at all. Clearly already I am making progress. My first proper session will be in two weeks, and I have homework to do for it, which I am actually finding strangely exciting. Next week I have a doctor's appointment where I have to tell her I haven't been taking the anti-depressants she prescribed because they made me really nauseous, I'm assuming she won't mind though.
So, basically, I seem to be spending half of my life at the doctor's or hospital at the moment, luckily my work don't mind and therapy is one of the things I am not embarrassed about, for some reason. In fact, I am highly motivated about it, though it took me over three years to get to the point something had to be done, if I had kept on the way I had been going I could have easily ended up house-bound.
I don't know if my lack of friends is responsible for my social anxiety or my social anxiety is the reason for my lack of friends. Both possibly. The upshot is that I started falling out of contact with people after uni, even those friends I was living with, not helped by a pretty major bout of depression where I wanted everyone else around me to feel as bad as I did. They didn't, but a lot of them did stop being friends with me. I met my boyfriend, stopped socialising with anyone else, and forgot how to talk to new people. Possibly the fact I was, and am, so happy with my boyfriend, made me feel like I didn't need anyone else.
I carried on without friends, not really minding, for a while, though it was lonely, I missed talking to girls. In the last year I have minded more and more, and I have tried to talk to people, but been too scared and embarrassed to. Some days almost everything seems too scary. I ran out of a dance class I'd been longing to go to after two minutes, crying, hyperventilating and slightly hyspterical. Nothing has ever activated my flight or fight responce so much, the adrenaline was horrible and I was sent home from worl the next day because I was still a total wreck. So I went to the doctor.
And now I'm here. I'm not very good at talking to people, especially strangers, especially groups, but I can write. So, I will write how I'm feeling and how my therapy is going but also I will write about my quest to find people to socialise with, online or offline. It'll be one of those dating blogs, but with more introspection.