I promised to tell about the first group therapy session yesterday. So here goes.

I was sitting in the bus, on my way to the clinic, and getting nervous. Heart beating faster. Shortness of breath. Stressed head. But I got it under control. It didn’t get too bad. My first therapy sessions have helped me to identify the situations where I get anxiety, and to deal with them. Recognise the automatic negative thoughts and replace them with alternative realistic thoughts.

Negative automatic thought: I can’t do this, it’s going to be too hard, they’ll all hate me.
Realistic thought: I have done hard things before. It’s going to be fine, we all have the same problems and we’re there to help each other.

You get the gist. That’s one of the best things I have gotten from the first therapy sessions. Being conscious about what’s happening and having tools to change the processes in my head. Not letting fear rule me.

Got to the clinic. Went to the waiting room. All the chairs were taken. Just outside the room there were two chairs, one of them taken by another guy. I sat down beside him and stared down the hallway. Waiting. Only had to wait for a minute though. I made sure not to arrive too early. That’s what we call “security behaviour”. Staring down the hall is security behaviour too. Sort of… defensive reactions. Things we use to cope. The most extreme form of security behaviour is complete avoidance. If I had stayed home and not gone to the group therapy that would have been the ultimate security behaviour, avoiding the situation. A mild form of security behaviour could be to not look someone in the eye when you talk to them. Or bringing someone with you when you go somewhere. Or having a cell phone with you always. Security behaviour isn’t really wrong, unless it starts interfering with your life. For example if you can’t go anywhere without bringing someone with you. That’s obviously a problem.

Here endeth the lesson about security behaviour. Fascinating eh?

So our therapist arrives to get us. Signe is her name. Older than my old therapist. I have seen her before. I have had two preliminary meetings with her. One before the first therapy sessions. And one before these group sessions.

She led us all into the meeting room. Chairs in a circle. For some reason that strikes me as scary.

A guy is already sitting in the room. Nicolai. He is the co-therapist. Although for this first meeting he is only taking notes. After each session we will get the written highlights mailed to us so we can study them at home, when we have more time and privacy to think about things.

Signe calls him Jonas at first. He corrects it. They haven’t met each other before. Not exactly the best start to a session. Having our two therapists out of sync.

There are 6 of us. 4 women and one guy + me. The women are older than me. They seem like fairly typical middleaged family mothers. The guy is the same age as me. And funnily enough he is called Lasse too. What a coincidence. When we go around the circle and introduce ourselves I say my full name, like everyone else. And Signe asks me if I’m ever called Linno. Or Lasse Linno. I say no, and wonder why she asked. Had she heard about some freak called Lasse Linno? But she was just trying to see if I had a nickname I could use so we could avoid confusion between the Lasses.

Signe is standing by the wall. There’s a blackboard. Only it’s not black, it’s the white sort where you write with a felt pen or so. Is that still called a blackboard?

She tells us about different kind of phobias. Writes a list. Social phobia, which we all have. Agoraphobia. General anxiety. Panic attacks. Single phobias etc. We go around the circle and see what other phobias fit us. Almost all of us have the single phobia “fear of heights”. I have that. I also get a check by “depression” although I have that pretty beat.

After all that Signe draws a form on the blackboard. The good old one. Goes sort of like this:

Situation – Symptoms/feelings – Negative automatic thoughts / Disaster thoughts – Security behaviour

I have worked a lot with that already. You fill it in. The situation. What were you feelings and symptoms? Typically I would have the heartbeat, breathing harder, sweating, stressed mind. Negative automatic thoughts are often about what other people think of me. Judging me. That was the same with the others. Almost everyone said something about being afraid of being judged by others. Feeling like you’re different or strange or inferior. And security behaviour, well I think I have covered that. What do you do in the situation etc.

So we go around the circle and fill in a situation for every person. We had the choice of either picking our morning or when we sat in the waiting room. So the fears we talked about were the fears connected to going to this therapy.

It’s a two hour session. That’s one of the hard parts for me. Being in a room with strangers for that long. The bright side is that because we are 6 people sharing the spotlight it means that I’m not in focus for as long as I am in one hour of single therapy.

We get a 10 minute break in the middle. I go to the bathroom and then outside to get some fresh air. And stretch the legs. I’m not good at sitting still for that long.

When I filled out the form on the blackboard one of my negative thoughts was “I can’t do this, I can’t get through it”. I have been in one of these group sessions before and I felt so completely horrible. And I never came back, didn’t go to any more sessions. That must be a couple of years ago. I’m much stronger now. But you still have that doubt. Can I make it this time? One of the other women had the same negative thoughts. Signe wanted to explore that further.

So I had to do that. Explore those thoughts on the blackboard. That was hard too. Getting more focus than everyone else. But this is what it’s all about of course. Dealing with your feelings and learning. So I can’t complain.

It all went by pretty fast really. The two hours. It was draining and hard, but also a good experience. Finding out that I can do this. I can get through it and I will learn things I can use.

I couldn’t really relate much to the other people though. Like I said, the women seemed like normal family mothers. People with normal lives. And the other Lasse told about how it was hard to talk about social phobia with his “guy mates”. I think I’m the only one who doesn’t have mates or normal family or anything. The only one who is really isolated like I am. And it seemed like it was easier for them all to talk in the group. But of course I don’t know what is going on inside them, I’m sure it’s not really easy.

I did okay mostly, when I had to talk. That last bit where I had to dig a little deeper and see why I was thinking that I couldn’t make it, that was hard and I stumbled a little over my words. And I did worry every time we had to go around the circle and talk. I always sit and worry about my turn. When the person next to you is talking and you know you’re next. That’s when you start feeling the panic. “What am I going to say? What am I going to say? WHAT AM I GOING TO SAY?!?”. But then when you do get the turn it isn’t really that bad.

Therapists seemed nice. Other people seemed nice. And now I have tried it. I have been there, seen the people, talked in front of them. Now the uncertainty of the new situation is gone. Familiarity can start to settle in. I don’t think it will get easy exactly, but it will start to get better.

So here’s to hoping it will help. It’s kind of nice to see that social phobia is such a normal thing. That I’m not a complete freak. I don’t remember the numbers but Signe were telling us about how many people suffered from some form of phobia. And it was a pretty big number. So we’re not alone.

It’s different for everyone though. The people in the group, it’s not like we have experienced the same things and have the exact same fears. I’m not really allowed to talk about the other people of course. But even though one person has it one way and another has it another way, it’s still rooted in the same basic stuff. The social phobia, the way our minds are working. On a basic level that’s still the same. And I guess it’s the same for a lot of people. Like people who are “just” afraid of spiders or heights or dogs or whatever. On the basic level it’s probably not so different. The difference is that you can live a pretty normal life even if you’re scared of spiders. But if you’re afraid of other people then it sort of complicates things.

Hmm, maybe I should be Spiderman, living among spiders.

Yes… That’s all. I’m sorry if this is a bit boring. If it’s too long or too technical about the therapy or the phobia stuff. But it’s good for me to get it written down. It gets sorted out in my head too. My blog is my therapist. I hope Signe won’t be upset that I’m seeing other people.

Thank you for listening.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 10th, 2005 at 22:11 and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.