CBT Week 5

I’m so bad at keeping on top of this writing, I write everything down in my notebook but am so bad at getting round to typing things up!! So this is from my fifth session which was actually a few weeks ago now!

This weeks session was 2 weeks after my last session as I had double booked myself. During the past 2 weeks I had begun to notice my mind becoming more ‘chatty’ and louder. I had also stopped taking my medication (sertraline), I think this was partly because I was unsure if they were working and I think part of me thought that with the CBT I didn’t really need to take them. I am also really bad at remembering to take medication every day. J also had started to notice that I was getting worse. I decided this past week that I would restart my medication. I’ve started by taking 1/2 my usual dose as I did when I first started taking them to try to avoid most of the side affects. I have had a headache for a few days but it is manageable with some paracetamol I know it’s going to take a few weeks to have any kind of affect. We discussed this in my session and my counsellor was pleased that I have a plan (I have a reminder app on my phone that I’m going to use).

So we started by talking about the behaviour experiments that I was to do over the past couple of weeks. The first one I did was to think of snatching a biscuit from H. I set it up – I sat next to H while he had his biscuit and I brought into my head the thought of snatching it off him. I gave my belief – why would I think it if I didn’t want to do it? – a rating of 95% and then the alternative – they’re just thoughts – a rating of 0%. When I was doing the experiment I wasn’t in a great mood, I was thinking to myself ‘what’s the point’ and was convincing myself that doing the experiments was a waste of time because they could only work for individual situations and wouldn’t help me. I did the behaviour experiment and H was fine, nothing bad happened. I learned from this that ‘thoughts are thoughts’ they don’t mean anything until I attach meaning to them. It was hard to tell myself this with the mood that I was in but I wrote down my thoughts around it anyway. We spoke about this in my session and we talked about how it’s normal to have ‘bad days’ when you’re learning something new. It’s normal to sometimes have doubts and maybe take a step back before taking more steps forward. I have been making progress, my belief ratings have been going down and hopefully my medication will help when it starts to take affect.

I did another behaviour experiment, this one was based around harm coming to H’s favourite soft toy. Normally in this situation I wouldn’t even hold his toy, I would distract myself and mentally recall where knives or scissors are. I sat with H at bedtime and I held his soft toy. I invited the thought into my head and kept it there while we had a story and a cuddle. I felt awful for thinking it but nothing happened. I gave H his toy and he went off to sleep. This again shows that theyre just thoughts not actions and I gave them the power to cause this upset. I felt like this was a bit of a turning point for me. I’m actually starting to believe that what im doing is helping. My anxiety scores and my belief ratings are going down.

We also spoke in this session about safety behaviours that I could potentially be using. telling myself in a ritualistic way that its going to be ok when I have these thoughts, or gently tapping my wrist to distract myself. These little things I need to be really aware of so that they do not become a ritual and also so that I’m not suing them as a safety behaviour. I’ve found that it is so easy to neutralise my thoughts because I’m so used to doing it and it is a habit I need to try and stop to overcome this. I need to learn to accept my thoughts as they are and allow them to play out in my mind without affecting the rest of my day.

Over the next couple of weeks I have a few behaviour experiments planned which I hope will help show me that my anxiety is decreasing. I’m going to try and write a blog post between now and my next session which is 3 weeks away. That give me lots of time to fit in all my behaviour experiments I have planned! I’m hoping to also fit in some writing about how I’m feeling day to day.