My First Therapy Session

My therapy session was very intense. We talked about at lot of things I did not want to talk about. But, first and foremost, we attempted to address my anxiety and depression. It appears as though, I’ve always had anxiety. I’ve always been worried about everything. I just thought that was normal. Apparently not.

anxiety

I worry about things that are out of my control. For example: someone breaking into my house, my house catching on fire, my house blowing up, someone breaking into my car, the list goes on… And I have no reason to worry about these things because they’ve never happened to me personally. Now that my daughter is here, my anxiety has intensified. I worry about her constantly. She is at daycare while I work and I think about her all day. She is in good care. I would never leave her with someone that I didn’t think was capable of taking care of her, but I still worry. It literally consumes my day. What if she bumps her head? What if they let a stranger in and take her?

All the “what if’s” in the world, I can guarantee you I’ve thought of.

How do I fix worrying about things I cannot control? Two things my therapist told me, stop watching the news, and stop following news related posts on Facebook and Twitter. I find myself drawn to and over thinking news related posts. While your average person can just watch the news or read a post and brush it off, I can’t. The story that is breaking new about an inmate that got loose from prison two days ago…I sleep very lightly until he is caught. Because I know for a 100% fact he/she is coming to my house to kill me. I just know it.

Sounds really fucking stupid, right? I can’t help it. That’s the way I think. I keep thinking about it and replaying scenarios that could happen in my head. So, to fix this, I have to eliminate the source I cannot control which is the news and social media posts. Sounds simple. Like, why in the hell did I need to go see a therapist to tell me that? I don’t know. I just did. As soon as I left therapy, I deleted and unfollowed all news related people on all social media. I instantly felt better. One day later, I still feel good about it. I felt like I was constantly reading and researching to see the latest negative thing that happened in my town. Now, I don’t have to do that. It feels nice.

The other thing my therapist told me to do was exercise. I have ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS struggled with my weight, self image, body image, self confidence, etc. I’ve struggled to maintain my weight and maintain a religious exercise program. Hopefully all that is changing because I have signed up for CrossFit. I start this upcoming Monday. According to her, the hormone that controls anxiety is called cortisol. Obviously mine is elevated since I have high anxiety. A good, hardcore, sweat dripping off me workout, will lower the cortisol. What better than CrossFit? Lord help me that I actually live through it.

So, this is where I’m at for the moment. Hoping for better days.