CBT Week 2

I wrote this post a few weeks ago (after my second session) but again I was unable to upload until now. I’ve just had my 4th session so my 3rd and 4th sessions will be uploaded soon.

My second CBT session was exactly 2 weeks after my last one, hopefully they will be each week but with working shifts this isn’t always possible!

We began the session by recapping what we had talked about at my first session and I said about how I had been writing things down for the past week or so and had decided that I wanted to focus more on my intrusive thoughts rather than the low self worth that I was feeling. We discussed what I had written down around during the last 2 weeks and I came to the realisation (with the help of my therapist) that the low self worth is a cycle and once you get stuck in that cycle it is really hard to break out of it. We also discussed about how from what I was saying it showed how self critical I and and how this feeds into my low self worth. This is definitely something that I want to work on and am seeking to improve.

We moved onto my intrusive thoughts next & what I had written down over the past couple of weeks. Throughout a typical week I have horrible intrusive thoughts almost every day and I almost always react to them in some way or another. One of the first things we talked about was how normal intrusive thoughts are. The fact that most people have intrusive thoughts but that most people do not need to react to them.

We talked about a particular thought and my emotional and physical response to it. The thought was about me harming H unintentionally. Disgust & fear we’re the overriding emotions I initially felt led by the beliefs about the thoughts I have: – what if I act on them – they’re not normal – they make me a bad mum – I must want to act on them – people will think I’m unsafe for H. The physical reaction as a result of the fear would be shaking, nausea & changes in my breathing. I would then take steps to ensure the thought couldn’t/wouldn’t happen (behaviours). Then throughout the day my feelings of disgust would liner contributing towards a low mood and continuing feeling of disgust.

We finished up the session by discussing a new set of aims as I had changed the focus of my sessions. My new aims are to not react to my intrusive thoughts, to stop feeling anxious over doing things with H & to improve my mood. These things are linked and I hope will lead into each other. I have filled out the obsessive compulsive inventory and I am going to do some more research into intrusive thoughts and why I have the types of thoughts that I do. I’m feeling really positive about today’s session & I hope that continues.