Hey,
Ok so the first installment, instead of doing a whole post, which most certainly would be very very very long I am going to try and seperate each one into a certain kind of subject/issue or whatever. This first one- The Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

So when I went to the doctors back along she put through a referal to the counsellor for some CBT for me. I finally got the phone call through a few weeks ago and I had the first appointment two weeks ago.

I was so nervous and in such a state all morning because the appointment wasn't until 2.30 in the afternoon. But I went in on my bike and managed to keep myself busy until the time came.

First of all she went through the confidentiality thing and told me that if I told her I was going to hurt myself or anyone else in anyway whatsoever, for example self harm or suicide she would have to tell my doctor immediately.

Next she went through a load of questions, she told me that I could read them through and tick them myself or she would read them out and I would answer. They were questions that gave her some idea of my 'emotional state' lots of questions about how I had been feeling and how often, like 'Have you felt feelings of guilt or shame?' all within the last two weeks, and the answers would be like yes, no, and then less than 25% of the time, between 25% and 50%, between 50% and 75% or between 75% and 100%.

After that we started talking about what I would like to get out of the therapy and what I would like to talk about or attempt to improve,help or solve. I said that my eating is the main thing but after thinking about it more I realised that perhaps it wasn't. Later on during the appointment I decided that it would be better to tackle perhaps the anxiety side of things and the depression side of things because I believe these are the things at the root of my eating problems, and can relate back to them.

We continued to talk just about all sorts of things, I talked quite a bit about mum and we realised that was something I needed to talk about and work out a bit more and we talked about negative feelings, patterns of thoughts, worrying and over thinking things.

She did more talking than me but she said as we have more appointments the talking will be more from me and less from her apart from the last ten minutes or so where she will reflect on the appointment and discuss possible options or tasks to work on between the appointments.

Most CBT sessions and therapist are very structured and routine but she said that with her they are not, although we will start off with an intial 'how are we feeling', recap any 'homework tasks' and then we can continue something we discussed last time or start on something new. Basically there will be no set program and it's up to me what we do or don't talk about, which I thought was pretty good.

She asked quite a few questions about my weight which made me feel a bit touchy but I realised that she needed to ask those questions in order to help me.

My next appointment is this Tuesday so about two days away, I'm a little nervous again but nowhere near as bad as I was first time. I guess as time goes on I will get more comfortable with it. I know it sounds really judgemental or whatever but the lady is young and she seem's kind of 'with it' so I was able to open up to her, which is what I was totally scared of, not liking her and it being a total waste of time but it turned out to be ok in the end.

So yeh, roll on tuesday I guess.

xxx