A Personal Entry

I told myself I'd use this blog to display and promote my creative side. However, I'm having a day where I feel I need to write stuff down that's a bit more personal to me.....but I'm also not too sure how to put things into words. I'm going to be honest, I generally find this sort of thing incredibly difficult to talk about, but I'm going to give it a shot, as I feel I need to.

This morning I experienced my first ever group counselling session. I've been diagnosed with depression and anxiety, and this group will spend the next six weeks focusing on different areas of both illnesses, along with Cognitive Behavioral Therapies designed to make both easier to cope with on a day-to-day basis. The session today was an introduction to the general meetings, and a look at how the symptoms of anxiety and depression can be broken down into a vicious circle.

The initial analogy used was that of the fire triangle. Basically you have Oxygen, Fuel, and Heat, all of which are connected together (tried to make a diagram with arrows.....it went hideously wrong) If you remove just one of these things, the fire will die. A vicious circle for both anxiety and depression involves Thoughts, Feelings, Body/Physical Effects, and Behavior. These things are again, all connected, and are connected to Triggers. For both illnesses, we looked at examples of each section, listing different things we associated with each. Setting everything out like that helped me to understand the whirlwind of each, and made it easier to look at how to combat, and cope, with each.

I've been asked how I think this morning went, how I feel about it. To be completely honest, I really don't know. I'm struggling to put it into words, other than meh.....it wasn't distressing, it wasn't a magical cure, it just addressed how all of us were feeling and how we processed our situations. I am hoping that over the course of the six weeks I feel some improvement, not only with being able to express myself to people without feeling like I am burdening them with my issues, but also to be able to cope better in day-to-day situations, without the reliance of medication.