Sabotaging ones therapy.

[JMA]

I am currently about to have my 9th CBT session this week. If I am honest, it's really not going very well, and I am fairly sure this is down to me. As, despite wanting to make things work this time, I still seem to approach the sessions like I did with my homework when I was at school.

i.e: leave it till the night before.

There is a part of my brain that is screaming at me that this is my last chance really to make a go of this, and yet I can get caught up in the minutiae of doing anything else, rather than focus on what I should be doing for my CBT. To the point where I am apologetically handing over my homework, which I am in the mindset that I am doing for her rather than myself, to my therapist.

Avoidance has been my main mechanism to deal with anxiety and it's related symptoms, and I am well aware that has really not worked out for me. I'm now 35, and have not worked in years/live at home/lost friends etc, so really not in a good place. Yet I seem unable to actually focus on what I should be, and make an attempt to fix things.

I really do wonder exactly how hard I need to hit the floor before I stop sabotaging myself, and actually make an effort 100% of the time to sort my life out. The problem being as time goes on, the task in hand just gets seemingly more impossible.

Bum

[Nat2015]

Sorry to hear things are difficult due to motivation issues. I see a psychotherapist and he is always getting me to focus on the things I want (as opposed to what I don't want) and the reasons why I'm doing things like exposure etc. It helped a lot over Xmas as I had a severe panic and depressive episode becoming housebound again for a time and was very demotivated and feeling hopeless. After a few weeks I was able to refocus on those goals and get a plan going. For me personally, I find that I have to set my own goals and exposure or my motivation to do something is just non existent. I have an overall main goal that I'm aiming for (to basically be fully independent and mobile again) and lots of smaller goals that I am working on in the meantime to get there.

I'm in a similar boat to you in that I haven't been able to work for a number of years now and have also lost friends etc. I'm also a similar age (37) It's not nice having such a limited life, but I try and remind myself very very frequently that this is the reason I am doing the exposure tasks so that I can have some kind of life again. I've lost most of my thirties to panic and I made the decision over Xmas that I was going to do everything in my power to get better and make a significant difference this year to feeling more normal again.

Motivation, or lack of, can be so hard but I found repeatedly focusing on the reasons for doing stuff (and for me sometimes that has to be very very often) it made a dent in the resistance to exposure tasks and eventually its helped keep my motivation up.

Just my 2 cents.

Hope things inprove for you soon.

[JMA]

Thanks for the reply Nat. It's just so frustrating when part of my brain knows what needs to be done, but is usurped by the other part that seems happy to just stick it's head in the sand.

[MyNameIsTerry]

I was the same JMA. I got into a pattern of doing things the night before when I should have been doing them from the day after the last session. I think anxiety is very good at undermining self confidence and you come up with a load of good goals and then it makes you afraid to follow them up when out of the session.

My OCD was terrible for this as it would run my days so much that anything outside of the expected routine would be a real struggle to add in. I still have this problem now and it holds me back.