My experience with anxiety (Part 2)

My Talking Therapies experience (Part 2)

As you know from my last post, I attended group sessions with Talking Therapies for my anxiety. This post is going to be a continuation of my Talking Therapies experience. I hope that reading to my experience helps those who suffer with anxiety. I just want to say that you aren't alone. I am here to listen to you just like your families and friends and I can suggest the best possible thing to do. If you think that you may have anxiety, please talk to someone like your parents, friends and your GP. For those who know someone who suffers with anxiety or depression this may help you to gain an understanding of how they maybe feeling and it could help you to learn and understand about this sensitive topic. You maybe able to help someone with anxiety by reading this and showing them my experience.

I hope that you enjoy reading about my experience.

Session 4 & 5: Noticing and challenging unhelpful thoughts

In these sessions, I was able to learn about noticing and dealing with unhelpful thoughts. I felt less stressed in this session because I felt more confident and comfortable to talk about my thoughts in professional people as well as others who suffer with the same mental health problem as what I do.

In the first session, I learnt about errors that we have with our thoughts. Here is a list of thought errors that people with anxiety and depression have:

• Negative filter - This is when we pick out a negative feature and focus on that without letting anything positive have an effect on it. This is a bit like wearing sunglasses when it is raining - looking at the world from a negative view point.
• Catastrophising - This is when you believe that a disaster is always around the corner and predicting that the worst will happen.
• Magnification and minimisation - This is when you exaggerate the importance of negative events and underestimating the importance of positive events.
• Emotional reasoning - This is when you think that what you are feeling must be true about yourself.
• Mind-reading or jumping to conclusions - This is when you assume that others are thinking the worst of you and reacting to what you believe they are thinking. Ignoring the facts that might indicate otherwise.
• Labelling - This is when you call yourself unhelpful names such as 'stupid' or 'useless' and thinking that this amounts to who you are.
• Black and white thinking - This is when you see things as completely one way or the other, ignoring the grey area and other possibilities in-between.
• Unrealistic expectations - This is when you think about how you 'should' and 'ought' to be and placing unrealistic expectations on yourself.
• Self-blame - This is when you are thinking that everything is your fault and ignoring any other contributing factors.

From recognising my unhelpful thoughts I learned that these are errors of thinking and therefore I challenged my thoughts and tried my best to correct them into a more balanced thought. By learning to correct these errors in my thinking helped me to develop a more balanced view of myself, in my future, others and the world around me. This is because it helped me to acknowledge the practical problems that occur, however it is the way I viewed these problems that impacted on my mood.

Also in the first session, I learned how I could make thing better for myself. These are the steps that I was taught:

Step 1: To identify my unhelpful thoughts - Idenifying my thoughts was extremely difficult at first because they are automatic and sometimes I wasn't aware of having them; especially as I was thinking them for a long time. However, by questionning and considering those thoughts, they were biased and unrealistic of myself. If you have been having negative thoughts of yourself and your life, first you should identify your thoughts before doing the next step.

You can do this by listing these thoughts down in a thought diary.

Step 2: To challenge my unhelpful thoughts - Once I identified my thoughts, I began to look at them in more detail and assess how realistic or helpful they were.

I did this by selecting one of my thoughts. Then I gathered factural evidence that supports my thought and found information that does not support that thought. I found this difficult the first time I did this but thought of it objectively.

Step 3: To recognise my thought - This is when I had to think of a alternative thought to replace my original one. I learned that a good balanced thought combines evidence that supports that thought and doesn't support that thought. If you look at a thought diary, you will have two columns; one is evidence for it and another will be evidence against it.

Once, I had a more balanced thought, I rated how much I believed it and then compared it with my original thought. It resulted in me believing in the balanced thought more than the negative one. Then, I analysed the rates for both thoughts and thoughts about how I was feeling after arriving to my balanced thought. I happened to feel happier than I was before I came to this balanced thought and felt more positive about myself.

I filled in a thought diary of my own before the next session.

In session 5, I learned other techniques that help to challenge unhelpful thinking. This is what we spoke about as a group.

a.) Thought stopping - When you notice you are having unhelpful thoughts or you feel overwhelmed with negative thinking, shout 'STOP' out loud or say it in your head. You can also flick yourself with an elastic band. This is because it provides the means of stopping those thoughts instantly and it gives you a break in that thought process to then question yourself and stop these thoughts from becoming out of control.
b.) Cost-benefit analysis - This is when you question yourself asking how useful are these negative thoughts. We can assess how useful our negative thoughts are by using a cost-benefit analysis. You have to write the benefits and the cost of that thought and then you have weigh up the costs and the benefits as a percentage at the end. Then you have to assess how useful are the thoughts you are having are.
c.) How responsible am I? - Sometimes our negative thoughts are focused on events that took place in the past or situations that we remember in a bad light. Think of all the different factors that contribute to this thought and other explanations that may be involved. Then allocate an amount of pie chart to each factor ivolved, and whatever segment is left is your amount of responsibility.
d.) Continuum - This is useful when looking for grey areas in black and white thinking. If a thought occurred, such as "I am bad" draw a contiuum with 0% at one end and 100% at the other, think about who the most 'bad' person could be, then the least 'bad' and put their names in at 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% and put yourself where you would fit in.

Session 6

Unfortunately, I couldn't make it to this session but in this last session, I would have focused on maintaining my wellbeing.

If this helps you or you or someone needs help with anxiety or depression, feel free to email me on natasha-stratton@hotmail.co.uk and I will respond to your messsages as soon as I possibly can. I am here to help those who are feeling low or those who suffer with anxiety or you think you may have anxiety.