(PART 1) Imagine a Spanish Phillip Schofield...

I can genuinely say that i've been contemplating how on earth to start this blog for the last 3 weeks... since the end of my last therapy session. I've been wondering whether to even write anything on my experience and if I was going to write a post, (which yes I am) then why? And I guess that reason is to just acknowledge that it has helped. It's helped a fucking whole lot.

I guess, if it hadn't I wouldn't really feel the need but you know, as everyone is saying, we need to start speaking up more about these things...

When I was starting therapy, I was slightly embarrassed of it. I thought people would think, "oh god has it got that bad?", but in the last 3 months, I've realised how many of the closest people around me have even had therapy, how many people would probably have therapy in their lifetime and that it isn't something to be embarrassed about at all. In fact, I think it's fucking brave to be able to go. I just want anyone that might be reading this and is contemplating having therapy for one reason or another, to just do it. Even if it doesn't help (it most likely will) in the long run then at least you can say you tried.

To start off,  I want to quote a section of Bella Mackie's book Jog On because for anyone who doesn't really know or understand Anxiety Disorder, then I think she explains it quite well. "Because the worries you have on an idle Sunday evening do not constitute an anxiety disorder. And that's no bad thing! Feeling anxious from time to time is totally normal, we all worry about a host of things every day - jobs, relationships, money...But anxiety disorder is a different beast. And while i'm happy to see it being talked about more with less embarrassment, sometimes I think the term has been diluted somewhat. It's not a competition - if someone says they have anxious thoughts then you must respect that and listen to them, but I also think the word is thrown around too freely at times." She goes on to say "I guess what i'm trying to say is that anxiety is complex, messy and dark. It's not just panic attacks or a fear of crowded places - but relentless obsessions, terrible thoughts, exhausting compulsions, physical malaise and a deep sadness as a result...Anxiety doesn't go away, it controls your life. It stays with you at parties, at work, when you're with your loved ones on holiday, when you're safe in your bed. It affects your day-to-day life in a way that normal worries won't. 

So anyway, I'm going to tell you what happened in my sessions but i'm going to split this post into two or you'll be here all bloody day reading and as much as I know you love me, I wouldn't make you do that! I also promise that what follows won't be as much of a soppy and depressing blog as it may sound like from this intro (LOL) but yeah here it goes!...

For the last 3 months a whole lot has changed in my life. I feel like I have genuinely turned my whole being inside out, upside down, shaken it up and then shaken it that little bit more. It's been fucking intense, but i'm the happiest I think I've ever been with who I am as a person because of it. I've opened up more than ever, started living in the present, started meditating, started a new gym programme, come out of a horrifically toxic relationship, let go of people that aren't good for me, started a new job, made a plan to move into London and undergone 3 months of bi-weekly Cognitive Behavioural Therapy sessions.

It wasn't any one moment that I was like, fuck, yeah I need some therapy...I just sort of got progressively worse over the last year and then it came to an almighty shit storm at the very end of last year. Anxious and worrying thoughts became a daily routine, the feeling of impending doom worsened, I struggled to sleep, I had panic attacks, my mind often went blank midway in conversation with people, my short-term memory was bloody terrible, I had zero self-esteem or any confidence and yeah I was just like righttttttttttt, something's gotta give. I've previously mentioned in other posts that I've been on medication for the last 3 or so years for anxiety, which, ironically, I'm too anxious to come off but I was adamant I wouldn't just up my dose and 'hope for the best'. I needed to try CBT. I had been offered therapy 3 years ago, but when I was told the waiting list was around 6 weeks, I was too lazy to wait and just thought "oh the meds will sort it" and "it'll all be alright" in the end. Which yeah, it was for a while but I needed another option.

My first session was on 23rd February 2019. I was positively shitting myself.

I mean, for an anxious person anyway, turning up somewhere I'd never been, talking to someone I'd never met, about stuff I didn't really want to talk about was shit, it just felt shit. To make matters worse when I was buzzed into the psychiatric ward and was told to wait for my therapist (I'll call him Ronaldo for the sake of this post) in the waiting room, it was the most depressing and eery waiting room I had ever come across. My sessions were always on a Saturday so that didn't help as absolutely no one was around but you would have thought they would have made it look a little more cheery given the bloody circumstances of the unit. It literally had 4 brown sofas in, all facing each other, multiple doors leading off into different directions, notice boards with mental health jibber jabber on them and then it was genuinely completely silent apart from a clock, ticking. I came to realise over the next few times I visited how much I fucking hated that clock, especially because Ronaldo, without failure was always at least 10 to 15 minutes late. For every session. But still, I digress.

Luckily, someone I knew that I confided in about starting therapy had actually had the exact same Therapist and told me not to worry and about how lovely he was, so this eased the nerves slightly. I didn't really know what to expect from my first session, which I guess is what made it so daunting but once Ronaldo came out and called my name (not sure why, as I was the only person in the room) I felt a relief. He was friendly faced, around 5ft 10, well-dressed, a dark-skinned silver fox with a deep Spanish accent. Literally just imagine a Spanish Phillip Schofield! We walked into, yet another depressing consultation room, this one only had two chairs, wallpaper half scraped off the walls, a white board, a desk with Ronaldo's laptop and bits on and then a table next to the chair I was sitting on with nothing on but a box of tissues...

We began the same way I grew to know that we would begin every session, with answering a set of questions on a questionnaire, about how I had been feeling in the last 7 days and marking certain moods or situations from 1-10. We began to discuss the reasons I was there, my thoughts, worries, symptoms and everything in-between. I was shaking with anxiety, I was blunt and didn't want to give anything away as I was so uncomfortable finally letting my guard down and talking about everything. And then, yep, before I knew it, I was crying. "AH!" I thought, as I realised that's why the tissues are placed so closely. This isn't just me this happens to. I think it was more the nerves than anything I just felt completely overwhelmed, I didn't actually feel upset, just so fucking overwhelmed with every emotion that I didn't know what else to do then cry lol. But, once I had and Ronaldo didn't look that shocked or if anything just reassured me that "this was a place that it's always okay to cry" as he passed me the box of tissues, it just made me a feel a whole lot better.

Ronaldo shortly afterwards got up and dragged the mobile whiteboard a little bit closer to me and wrote "High Sense of Responsibility" in big letters in the middle of it. (Just so you guys know, this first session was mainly understanding why some of us end up with Generalised Anxiety Disorder, which is what I have or other mental illnesses, like Depression, OCD, Social Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder etc.) He went onto explain that as we grow up some of us will develop a high sense of responsibility, if like me, you are a perfectionist, hate letting people down, making mistakes, the list goes on. This load of responsibility we can carry with us to keep other people happy and to be the 'perfect' person means we set ourselves sometimes unrealistic high expectations. We create an 'all or nothing' attitude, like "oh this meeting is going to go so shit and then I will feel like shit, I'm going to lose my job, people will talk about me, they'll think I'm stupid, bla bla bla.", it makes us have an incessant need to control absolutely everything. What other people think about us, how situations will go. Things and circumstances that sometimes you really actually cannot control. I would end up going over and over the different possibilities in my head so that I can 'prepare' myself. Thinking I was mentally helping and protecting myself but if anything I wasn't doing anything but creating a false reality that at the end of it would ultimately always lead to me putting myself down. This ended up and has for a lot of people, telling ourselves over and over again that we're not good enough. It's then this feeling of not being good enough that can lead to multiple situations; such as having an intolerance to uncertainty so avoiding social situations, anxiety and feeling tense (or the impending doom as I like to call it), sleeping problems, low self-confidence and can lead to some of us settling into abusive relationships. This then leads to other physiological side effects, such as skin break outs, low immune system, cardio vascular problems, muscle soreness and IBS.

As humans we are designed to be problem solvers, so that, mixed with a high-sense of responsibility and a need to be perfect, ultimately just leads to a lot of worrying, with "Why" or "What If" questions popping up constantly. I know first hand, that I have been frequently living in the past trying to fix problems in my head from mistakes I had made or trying to mentally "prepare" myself from potential problems that can occur in the future. I have racing thoughts, an inability to rationalise things or live with too much uncertainty. All of this really, just fucking me over in the long run with the adrenaline that these worrying thoughts comes with. See, also as humans we are designed that if there is a threat, we get a burst of adrenaline to ensure we have the energy to run away from any danger in the wild. So, what if your brain is constantly worrying and telling your body that you're in trouble? Well then there's a fuck load of pointless adrenaline just reaping havoc for absolutely no reason whatsoever. But, once it hits, it's sneaky and it's clever and it's really, really bloody good at persuading your brain that there really is something terribly wrong, even when there isn't. What a little shit, hey?!

In Bella Mackie's Jog On she says "The adrenaline that comes with GAD (Generalised Anxiety Disorder) is extraordinary. It's exhausting because your whole body is trying to expend excess adrenaline...At my most anxious I have the energy of a young gazelle. In comes in like a violent wave to the shore, knocking over anything in its wake, and shocking you with its force. You wake up to it rushing in your belly, pushing up your throat, telling you that danger is near. Adrenaline - great in a real crisis, terrible when there's nothing to worry about. It feels too real to be ignored, so you don't. Something must be wrong."

This was a huge eyeopener for me as I finally realised why sometimes I found it so hard to get up in the mornings because when I was sleeping I didn't feel this adrenaline or any anxiety.

With an inability to fix potential or past problems, I then came to realise that especially over the last year or two, instead of focusing on my own issues and problems, I would take on other peoples and then I started to put other people's needs in front of my own, as because for a time being, this made me feel better about myself. 

It was the end of the first session that was the best. Ronaldo was looking at me dead in the eye and was telling me that I was enough, what I have is enough, what I do is enough and what I look like is enough. He said I should be proud of who I was and then he started singing "This is Me" from the film The Greatest Showman and was asking if I had heard it (LOL I just loved him) I said yes and he said "see, be proud of who you are, this is YOU!"

It's fair to say that I learnt a lot in my first session of CBT. I remember, that same evening I went round one of my closest friends houses and all I could say to her was how relieved I felt that there was a reason for this ongoing cycle and a reason as to why I felt the way I had for so long and that it was actually manageable if I put the work in. It was such a huge relief that I just couldn't wait to see what the next sessions taught me. It's also very fair to say that the biggest things I learnt, which had the biggest impact were yet to come...

I'll fill you in on these next week xxx

*Disclaimer* Every persons therapy is different. Based on your Therapist, your symptoms and needs the therapist will cater the sessions for you. I am just putting forward my experience and what happened in my sessions.