Wednesday 18 June 2014

Agoraphobia, social anxiety and depression.

A while ago, after Tsuki was born but before I was pregnant with Kaison, I finally managed to get some therapy. It was my long awaited CBT, I was excited and nervous.
I arrived at the appointment (fraught and nervous after having to drive to and park at a place I didnt know), David was with me but I told him I would go in alone.
The lady infront of me listened to me tell her my problems, the things I wanted to achieve with the help of this fabulous, long awaited therapy. She looked at me with a face that resonated with you`ll be lucky.
At the next few appointments we did some pretty drawings of flowers with anxiety symptoms on the petals and talked through some coping mechanisms that could help me to go to the shop across the road. Appointments began to get cancelled or moved around. I was losing the will, this wasnt helping. This woman, who had told me I had agoraphobia, social anxiety and depression, this woman wasnt helping me. All she was doing was attempting to stick a bandaid onto a broken leg.
She convinced me to go to a group meeting, that she was setting up especially for 'women like me'. On arrival there was only one other woman, and she only came once, the group was quickly stopped.
At this point I quit therapy, it wasnt helping.
I finally relented after Kaison was born and I was worried about PND again (it was awful after Tsuki) to get myself onto anti-depressants. So now my anger issues and some of the depression are gone, I have sorted myself out of the Agoraphobia. But the social anxiety remains. I want so badly to have a group of friends, people who I could call up and just have a chat with. Or could come shopping with me when David doesnt want to be dragged from shop to shop listening to me tell him that everything is horrible and nothing is designed to fit my enormous arse. But I just....cant. I look at baby groups constantly and think about going but then I get the sweats and palpitations and I freak out. I got over it with leaving the house. I managed to go food shopping. I even took the kids with me! But talking to other mothers is so terrifying that it literally leaves me gasping for air at the thought of it.
Im trying to find myself a little job. Something that involves talking with people. I can talk to people like that, if there is a purpose for our interaction other than social. Hopefully that will get me used to social interaction again and I can begin to build a social circle for myself.

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