As it's recently been mental health awareness week and I've been increasingly enjoying my psychology lessons, I thought I'd start a new series on my blog all about anxiety, stress and panic attacks all throughout May and June during exam weeks. Today, I'll be starting off with my personal experience with cognitive behavioural therapy which I had between September - December 2016.
For those who don't know, cognitive behavioural therapy or CBT as it's more commonly known is a type of talking treatment that focuses on how your thoughts, beliefs and attitudes affect your feelings and behaviour. Cognitive behaviour therapy teaches you coping skills for dealing with different problems.
I was referred to have CBT due to my anxiety and panic attacks. I used to have a very negative view of many things, and occasionally still do, I'd feel bad about school work that I didn't get a good enough grade on, feel bad if I fell behind on revision and consider myself as a failure. I'd beat myself up about being turned down for jobs I'd applied for. I'd beat myself up about people not liking me for who I am even though I consider myself to be a really nice and caring person. Over time, this wore me down and I ended up being extremely anxious most of the time, at school and out which led to my panic attacks. In CBT, you and your therapist would challenge these thoughts by balancing them out and seeing if they really are worth worrying about. I found this part of the therapy really useful and it really opened my eyes to whether my worries really were worries or not - and ironically most of my worries were just stupid little things.
CBT requires a lot of personal work outside of the therapy session which I think is where I fell behind and which is what probably what caused me not to get the maximum out of my therapy. Due to all the school work and revision I had, I seemed to prioritise that first and sometimes ended up not completing the work I had to do for the next session. If you are to take CBT, definitely try to do your work above all before the next session, as it will definitely help you to get the maximum out of our therapy.
Having CBT has taught me loads of techniques that I use still today, like weighing up worries to see whether they are actually worth worrying about, however it has taught me techniques that I don't particularly use as I don't find them as useful like breathing exercises. But every type of anxiety isn't going to be treated by the same therapy.
I hope this has been helpful and feel free to ask me any other questions about my experience,
Daisy x
