SOCIAL ANXIETY
I would love to have read a blog like this years ago as it might have helped me get help sooner than I did. It would have saved me so much suffering. My hope is it will encourage someone else to make the scary step of getting help and not suffering when they don’t need to.
Before going to therapy I was painfully shy. I had very low self-esteem, low confidence and I really didn’t like myself. I just felt rubbish, in fact I felt worthless and not good enough so I was in a pretty low place.
I can remember being withdrawn as early as Infant School. I found it hard to talk to others and I always wanted to go home. I do remember making one friend a bit later on which made things better for me but as a whole I didn’t settle in well. I found some of the teachers quite scary.
In Junior School things seemed to get a little bit better as I joined a football team and found this helped me to make friends. But then my parents had to relocate with work so we had to move house. At the new school I felt the odd one out, everyone seemed to have their friends by then so I felt like I didn’t fit in at all.
Seniors wasn’t easy either as I got bullied for a few months which was awful. Some days I would pretend to be ill so I didn’t have to go and could stay at home.
Before I reached out and got therapy my life felt like it was going nowhere. I did have a job that I enjoyed and I got on with people there so that was okay but my social life was non-existent. I did want to go out and have friends but I felt like I couldn’t do relationships or fit in with people. It was such hard work going out as I would worry about what to wear, what to say and I would even worry about my posture or how I held my hands. I would analyse every little thing and try to practice in my mind what I would do and what I would say. In the end it was easier to stay in on my computer.
Previously I tried self-help books and positive affirmations, I tried eating well and exercising but nothing made a big difference so I decided that I needed professional help. The final thing that made me pick up the phone was realising that I was on my own constantly but I didn’t want to go out, there wasn’t a solution I could see. I actually couldn’t do this on my own.
My goal from having therapy was to have self-esteem, confidence and be able to socialise. I also wanted to work on having a relationship, something that wasn’t happening before.
The first therapy session was the assessment session which was quite hard. Firstly, I had to talk to someone and tell them about me which didn’t come easy. I usually try and practice my answers before I speak but couldn’t do this so it was out of my comfort zone. But secondly, it was hard because I saw my life and things I had been through. The questions I was asked made me see a few lightbulbs which was amazing especially as it was in the first hour!
During my therapy journey I learnt so much about myself, I made sense of why I do what I do, I learnt neuroscience of what was going on in my body and I learnt new ways to deal with my emotions. The most important thing for me was knowing my reactions were natural and normal for my circumstances, helping me to understand myself for what felt like the first time ever.
So for me, my therapy journey has been very successful. I think the relationship with my therapist was the most important thing as she was so lovely, kind and empathic to me. I grew to feel safe sharing things with her and I realised that actually I wasn’t a bad person, I was actually quite normal. My behaviours, thoughts and feelings made sense and at some points in my healing I felt pride in myself.
I have gone on to gain confidence and self-esteem and I now have a couple of friends that I feel relaxed with. I haven’t got a relationship yet but I’m working on it. At least going out puts me out there to meet someone, so fingers crossed this will happen soon.
I hope this blog is helpful to someone who feels like I did and I wish you all the best in your healing journey
OVER ACHIEVER
I have always had a voice in my head that is really critical when I don’t achieve my goals. It goes on and on in a big loop and doesn’t let up. Some times all the things it said really got me down. In the past I have spiralled into depression from it.
I do a lot of sports so I would constantly set myself goals. If I didn’t reach the goal this voice would be out. But, if I did reach a goal I didn’t really celebrate it as this voice told me I should have anyway and another goal was put in its place.
This was putting so much pressure on myself and there didn’t seem to be any let up whatever way I went forward so I realised something had to change.
Accessing therapy was hard because I felt like a failure, like I hadn’t achieved my goals in some way. But I tried to look at it as a new challenge and I got myself there. In the first session we looked at why I thought this way, uncovering some negative beliefs that I had been living to. This instantly gave me a lightbulb moment. This got me invested in the therapy process, as these beliefs needed updating fast, they were debilitating my life.
Therapy wasn’t an easy process I’m not going to lie. Some of them were uncomfortable sessions as they contained emotions like sadness and anger. I knew it was worth it though so I kept on going, facing these emotions in a manner that I could handle, knowing they were being released and healed.
I learnt so much about myself, I grew to understand what I did and why I did it. It was a relief to make sense of things as it gave me so much hope for making the changes I needed.
What did surprise me from my therapy journey was a lot of it came from my childhood, I hadn’t put that together before. I had been so busy criticising myself I didn’t think about why.
I now think of therapy so differently, I think of it as a way to be a winner and I hope me sharing my journey in this blog invites you to think this way too.
PANIC ATTACKS/ANXIETY ATTACKS
When I was at college I had a really bad panic attack during an imagery exercise. I felt overwhelming fear and I just had to get up and run out of the room. There were chairs and tables in the way of my exit so I had to get around them and when I got to the door I struggled to be able to open the handle. Once I was out of the room I sat on the floor in the corridor and hyperventilated. My breathing was fast and heavy, my heart was pounding and I couldn’t think straight.
When I calmed down a little I realised that everyone in the class had witnessed my behaviour and I felt very ashamed of myself. I worried they would all think I was crazy and they would judge me. How could I ever face them again!
This panic attack was the first of many. I went on to panic about having a panic attack! When I went to college again I would be really frightened if I felt my breathing change or my heart beat faster. Even being warm when I was there would worry me. I started to sit near the door whenever I could, so the exit would be easier to reach, and I checked the way the door opened, so that I wouldn’t have trouble opening it like I had before.
It didn’t seem to stop there as the panic attacks got worse and in more and more places. I had one in the cinema, on an aeroplane, basically anywhere people were and where it might be difficult to get out.
I started to feel my life was getting smaller and smaller as I stopped going to worrying places. Not only that, it didn’t stop there because I started having them anywhere my heart pounded or my breathing changed. It felt like my life was closing in.
What made me feel worse was I felt I was spoiling things for my family because I was very avoidant of going places. It was time to sort this out.
I accessed therapy for this, and on my journey of being a therapist myself, I have studied this area of work passionately.
I can honestly say that I have only had one panic attack in the last 8 years. The one I had was when my dad died so I feel that one was justified and I am okay with that. I know how to have a panic attack, I always will. I just don’t choose to have them. I have got the ingredients down to a tee and I used to call myself “The Queen of panic attacks”
Mother and daughter Family therapy
A few years ago I found myself in a situation where I had to move back home with my mum. I had been away to university and couldn’t afford to pay for anywhere to live whilst I looked for a job. I thought it would be a good solution to my money situation and I thought it would be nice to be with my mum again after living in student accommodation for the past 3 years.
It may have been a good idea on a practical level but emotionally it didn’t go as I had hoped for. It didn’t take long before I started to feel resentful and upset for what seemed little things. Mum had a new partner and he was very nice, he made me welcome and there isn’t anything I can say he did wrong.
But me and mum started to argue and I found myself feeling very anxious and tense all the time. I got a skin rash back, couldn’t sleep well and felt generally unwell. One day we had a blazing row over something so small that we decided we needed help as we did want to have a good relationship with each other and it seemed such a waste that we couldn’t.
We didn’t know how therapy would go but we got booked in and started the process. We started off talking about the present day and what had upset one of us, then we would look at the causes and where the emotional reactions stemmed from.
It did make sense that it went back to domestic violence from my father many years ago. Although my mum had been the safe parent she hadn’t felt safe to me as she couldn’t stop my dads behaviours. There were resentments there as well such as why she didn’t leave him sooner. Not only these issues we unearthed other emotions and feelings I hadn’t realised were there, such as feeling unsafe living with a man I didn’t know well.
My mum had her own perspectives on what we went through all those years ago and listening to her got me to see how hard it had been for her. I realised she had kept me safe on many levels I hadn’t realised about.
We did do a lot work because we worked on healing our own individual traumas, even the ones that weren’t impacting on our relationship. That was very important to me as I could see at University the traumas hadn’t really been triggered there. It wasn’t that they weren’t there, it was they weren’t triggered there. Thats a whole different ball game. I wanted them healed for good, not just laying dormant.
I can honestly say that I love my mum to bits, I have got my own place now which is appropriate for my age and time of life but we make sure we spend lots of quality time together. I wouldn’t want to miss out on this because of our trauma in our histories. I think our therapy journey has brought us closer together and I am so grateful we did it.