Therapy

Without knowing what you're being offered it's hard to advise, do you have to go for a particular type of therapy/counselling? Can you not just talk more generally and start exploring the roots of your anxiety? In my experience as a counsellor, many people come and not know what they want to talk about and don't really know why they're there, only that they need help and it can take a few sessions before we find out anything useful. Most people don't come in and say I want to talk about x y and z, its a slow process of getting them to trust the therapist/counsellor and to open up, 4 to 6 weeks is quite normal before you really find out why someone's there. It's a frustrating process, but that is part of the process.

It is interesting to hear the perspective of someone on the other side. 

I'm not sure it's a particular therapy, she hasn't said a name.

At first she wanted to recreate the physical feeling of anxiety like tight chest when I'm not anxious to try and teach my brain that it's ok. But this made no sense to me because my issue isn't that I think I can't breathe, I know I can, I just dislike the feeling. I also know that feeling anxious doesn't mean the thing I'm worrying about will happen, I can rationalise that. I just can't completely switch off from it because I also know that sometimes it does.

She seemed to accept my reluctance with the strategy and moved on to what does work. The only thing that ever works is distraction but I can't decide when I'm going to be distracted and it's certainly not a consistent strategy. She talked about when it's better I'm in work and multi tasking so maybe the distraction needs to be 2 levels. But I'm too exhausted at weekends etc to keep that up and I don't know anything that works well as a distraction at home unless I'm hyper fixated. She told me to think about it but when I see her again my answer is still going to be I don't know and then no progress is being made.

As far as the root causes of my anxiety go, I'm anxious about so many different things, I wouldn't know where to start or what the root actually is.

I am aware that there is some past stuff that I think probably needs dealing with and I mentioned that in my first session but I didn't feel able to tell her what it is. I don't know how I'd manage to talk about it and work on it in therapy if I can't even tell her about it.

Therapy is hard!

Therapy is hard work and important work too and you often feel worse before you feel better.

If I were your therapist I'd be asking you to talk about the last time you felt anxious, maybe it was coming to this appt? I'd be wathing your body language and mirroring it, this not only shows that I'm actively listening, but I'm able to feel where in the body you hold anxiety. Everybody holds it differently, some grit thier teeth, others cuddle their bodies protectively and maybe even curl up. I'd ask you about your posture and to concentrate on the feeling and how its effecting your body, I'd then ask you to slowly get out of that postion and ask you to tell me how it feels. We'd be talking about that specific instance of anxiety and your reactions to it where the anxiety comes from, is there a voice/s of critical people in your past that are telling you things, like everyone is on the bus is looking at you and thinking how stupid you are and explore this. I'd definately take the approach of starting on the outside and working inward, developing coping strategies along the way. I wouldn't be putting any pressure on you to tell me of the big stuff, you need to build confidence in yourself, the theraputic process and me before that.

I do think art therapy is brilliant, people think you need to be able to draw and paint, but you don't, if anything I think its an advantage not to be able too. The therapist shouldn't be interpreting what you create for you, its a way into your world. I've used this before, but its worth repeating, its came up in my training, we're given a picture, of a house, with lots of flowers in the garden and a bright sunny day. When asked what we thought, most people said what a beautiful day and what a lovely happy pictrure it was, what they'd failed to see was a small weeping face at an upstairs window, this was a picture of a hay fever sufferers nightmare.

I can see how it'd be a positive but I'm just not sure that's how my brain works. I guess I could be proved wrong but I'm really not a visual person and I wonder whether that's a bit of a block.

I struggled at first, because my first session she gave me oil pastels and a blank sheet of paper and said “Go” lol. I ended up making this ugly arching line across the page made of a rainbow of different cold colors, and while it wasn’t very pleasant to look at, it gave us a lot to talk about and it did feel good to make.

Later she gave me specific tasks like “make me a paper maché mask,” but usually it was just “hey I’ve got these cool ____, would you like to make something with them?”

But yeah, if you’re uncomfortable with the idea of art, no big deal. Just something to think about since it’s a totally different approach than the typical forms of therapy.

I struggled at first, because my first session she gave me oil pastels and a blank sheet of paper and said “Go” lol. I ended up making this ugly arching line across the page made of a rainbow of different cold colors, and while it wasn’t very pleasant to look at, it gave us a lot to talk about and it did feel good to make.

Later she gave me specific tasks like “make me a paper maché mask,” but usually it was just “hey I’ve got these cool ____, would you like to make something with them?”

But yeah, if you’re uncomfortable with the idea of art, no big deal. Just something to think about since it’s a totally different approach than the typical forms of therapy.

I can see how it'd be a positive but I'm just not sure that's how my brain works. I guess I could be proved wrong but I'm really not a visual person and I wonder whether that's a bit of a block.