went to session 4 out 5 on my stress buster coarse last night its a bit of a shame that the numbers have droped as the weeks have gone on we were down to 15 last night which for some strange reason made me depressed guess it was the thought that the first two weeks there were so many people there i thought thank god its not just me all these people are ill just like me, to thinking last night those people that turned up for the first two weeks really werent il and just needed a couple of classes to confirm that, when im in class my mind often wonders to see if anybody is as anxious as me i see them all smiling and chatting in the half time break and i think why are u here you dont look anxious or derpressed. last night we looked at avoidence and how we dont tacle problems as they come at us and leave them build up and up. following a good chat on avoidence we looked at exposure techniques and how we can gradually work are way back into society taking little steps at first and building on them , putting our fears in a sort of ranking order so my hardest one would be getting on a plane and mt easiest having dinner at my grans , and in the middle would be something like a 4 hour train journey , so we expose ourself to the fear gradually tackling the easier things in our list first and then working our way up to the hardest the course encourages you to stay in the moment for at least 30 mins if your feeling uncomfortable so for instance we go shopping at asda on a saturday it busy we feel the anxiety build and we leave straight away jump in the car and go home not only are we gunna feel a failure when we get home but its gunna be even harder going back to asda the next day so we bottle it and food shop over the internet this in the short term is helping our anxiety but in the long term doing us no favours at all. we covered a subject very familar to me and that was safety behaviours examples the bottle of water carried around with u at all times the diazepam in the pocket , a fav of mine when im super anxious avoiding eye contact or pretending to be on me mobile walking through a street when im actually talking to nobody just to avoid speaking to someone that is coming my way, they used the diazepam as an example and how we can start to let go of the things that make us feel safe so for instance your going fo a long walk with your partner the first week you give the diazepam to him to look after in his pocket, the second week u leave them in the car same for the third week but then on the fourth week u leave them at home, and say by the sixth week you through them in the bin , the brown paper bag or the chewing gum are great things to have on us when we are feeling anxious but they are not helping us get over our anxiety only masking it.
i did get the chance to have a quick one to one with one of the ladies at half time about myself being able to do a few more things than i could a few weeks ago even sitting in the class has become easier over the weeks, i told her how i had been able to play golf on saturday on the coarse with a couple of friends and that id built up to the by just hitting a few balls up at my local park i getting the thought into my head if i can do it hear theres no reason why i cant do it down at my local gold club i did admit that this has been aided by lorazepam and she asked am i at the point where i could do my gold drug free i had to say im a million miles away from that at the moment but its a start.
there was a lot packed into last nights session alot of it is just slides on a projector taken from the book but they tend to go into each subject in a bit more detail and even if i only take a few things or tools to beat my anxiety out of the evening its worth the trip also it gives me confidence that i can sit in a room with people i dont no for 2 hours
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