more CBT but also Friends as Therapists

As usual an emotionally charged week. More therapy and another GP appointment. Better start in chronological order I guess. Thursday in Therapy day. Now been seeing Mr T. for 5 weeks and I am now embarking on the actually therapy stage as opposed to what has so far been evaluation of my emotional issues, their root, the reasons for my feeling the way I feel. So I now have tasks which Mr T. wants me to do:

1-     Do a food diary. Sounds obvious, but I have to be ruthlessly honest and more importantly tie in with emotional state of mind and mood diary (task 2 – see below). Idea being to see in writing the correlation of over eating and comfort eating and its triggers. End goal being, of course, to get rid of those triggers and therefore break the cycle of feeling crap, eating, feeling even more crap for having eaten and therefore comfort eating more etc…

2-     Thoughts Diary: This form has been around for about 30 years apparently and the idea is as follows: every hour, you have to write down what you did in that hour (rough summary: cooking, driving, exercising etc) and then allocating a mark out of 10 for: Connectivity with self or others during that hour, Achievement for that hour (could be exercising or healthy eating) and Pleasure felt during that hour. For each of those you give a rating out of 10 with 10/10 being the most connected, achieved etc and 0 being no connection etc…. and the possibility of rating a negative number if really bad

3-     Rewarding myself: every time I go to the exercise I need to reward myself, not with food obviously, by treating myself to magazine or painting my nails or something else which I feel will make me happy

4-     Worry diary: never done this before and the premise is as follows: if I have a worry, I mustn’t let it get on top of me but I jot down what worries me and at specific times in the day I sit down, look at this worry diary and expand on those worries and classify them as “something I can do about it” and “nothing I can do about it. So I can do something about my weight but I can’t change the weather for example

So this is what I have been doing and it is a real eye opener as to the realisation of how much I do which actually derives no pleasure and achieves nothing at all such as being glued to the TV for hours on end.

As usual session was very hard but nevertheless felt good and felt as though I am finally achieving something.

On the exercise front I have been a good girl this week: Zumba, boxercise, long walk. And on the eating from I have been super good, replacing things such as vinaigrette with yogurt dressing etc… and I believe that the pounds are now beginning to fall off.

Couple more things: GP appointment on Monday - to renew antidepressants – was emotional (as usual) but he is so supportive and did say he believes that I can achieve the end goal of being of sane body and sane mind. However, I have pledge to lose a minimum of 4 kg (his wish) and up to 8kg (my wish) by the next time I see him in 2 months.

Lastly I am indebted to my friends for being so supportive and letting me bore them to tears. A big special thank you to the two girls to whom I was able to pour my heart out at Café Nero this morning. Thank you girls.

Friends really are a lifeline.

And as the therapy progresses I hope to see this blog becoming far more positive.

x