Anxiety in Therapy

There are a lot of things that make me anxious: crowded places, crowds in general, loud noises, sudden movements, people invading my personal space, people touching me and especially the smell of spearmint to name a few things. And I have a tendency to try and avoid most of these things, which can kind of hinder me living the life I want to live, and to be completely transparent…I’m tired of living this way.

For those of you who follow me up here, you know that I have started seeing a new therapist. Well, this guy doesn’t mind pushing my buttons. He wants me to be anxious. He wants me to start facing some of the things that make me anxious so that I can start to conquer some of my anxiety. It’s kind of like exposure therapy I guess. But to use his own analogy…we’re starting in the shallow end and we’re gonna slowly move toward the deep end.

So therapy has been emotionally draining lately. During each session at some point we do something to cause anxiety in me and then we work towards accepting that anxiety and the thoughts and memories and other things that come with it. Yesterday, I really stretched myself…I allowed him to sit beside me…which is a major personal space violation to me…especially seeing as I’ve only known him a few weeks at this point. But I did it anyways…because I’m tired of living with all this anxiety and fear. He gave me the option of just moving his chair a little closer or sitting beside me and I decided to go for the tougher option and allow him to sit beside me…it was hard but I did it. And then we talked about what all went through my mind and did some kind of exercise that I won’t explain here, that kind of helped me deal with the thoughts that I was having.

You see, there is a part of me that dreads going to therapy because I know that I’m gonna have to face some difficult anxiety while there. (And trust me, I'm taking my anti-anxiety meds before I get there.) But there is a part of me that looks forward to going as well, because I know that the more I go, the closer I am to living the life I was to live. But I do get anxious just thinking about going to therapy. I am trying to be brave, because like I said earlier…I’m tired of living this way. I’m determined to live the life I want to live. I want to go back to school and earn that masters degree, I want to become a therapist myself one day and maybe even have a family one day. Who knows what God has in store for me? But for now, I’m just going to continue to work as hard as I can in therapy.

Love, Randi