Today, I again met with the psychologist and it was quite a good and productive visit.
We touched on 3 subjects. The 1st was the negative belief that I had about myself, the 2nd was the mood chart that I kept and the 3rd was my anxiety about a social gathering happening tomorrow (Friday 4th June)
Negative belief
We talked about how I perceive myself and also how it is in reality. I often (about 99% of the time) think of myself as a failure and a worthless person. We went over what makes a person worthless and worthwhile (in more detail than last time).
We talked more about what makes someone a good person. We kind of did a brain storming session about this. I will include a document that shows the negative and positive cycles.
Negative & Positive Cycles
Mood chart
This mood chart was purely to see how my depression fluctuates throughout the course of the week. When I did this last week, I put my mood for the whole day without taking into account what I was doing during the day. This last week, it was more detailed. I could see from what I was doing whether it was affecting my mood in a positive or negative way. I surprised myself as there were times that my mood was better doing certain activities than others. I found that going out amongst people brought my mood down.
Social Anxiety
We talked about an activity that I am going to tomorrow and how that is affecting me. I am quite apprehensive about going as I don’t really do social situations anymore. We talked about the reasons why this may be. I worry about making a fool of myself and then having to face these people again. This stems from secondary school. I was in a school swimming gala and was doing the backstroke. I got really bad cramp and started to go under the water. The life guard had to come and pull me out. I was made fun of and teased by children at school because of this. I think that this is my worst fear in social situations. The cost is too great. At the moment, there is a 10% reluctance to do this and a 90% cost of my worst fear happening. Usually it is a 90% reluctance and a 10% cost when my mood is low.
E (My psychologist) suggested that we do an experiment and see how other people are getting on and see if they make a fool of themselves. The logical part of me is telling me that these people won’t do that, but as I say – the cost to my self esteem is so high. It really is a leap of faith.
E also gave me a notebook to record the things that I do that reinforce the positive things about me.
The logical part of me today has won over my depressive part. Long may it continue.
I will post again after the activity and give the results of the experiment.