CBT - Week 2

Today is Monday, and you know what that means….

A 9am therapy session!!

So I huffed and puffed my way up the massive hill to the hospital (can’t believe how unfit I am!)

We talked about how my week was which was not very good.

When I described some things that happen sometimes, A said this may be dissociation. I don’t really know what that means, will have to come back to that at a later date.

Then we looked at negative thoughts. In my mood diary this week I had written down some negative thoughts, and we talked about them, and how they are not actually true, but are just thoughts/feelings.

We looked at Cognitive Distortions, and for “homework” I’ve got to look at my own distorted thoughts and look at which distortions I “use”.

I thought it might be useful for readers for me to type out the different types, so here goes!

1. All or nothing thinking

2. Overgeneralisation

3. Mental filter

4. Disqualifying the positive

5. Jumping to conclusions

6. Mind reading

7. The fortune teller error

8. Magnification/catastophising

9. Minimisation

10. Emotional reasoning

11. Should statements

12. Labelling and mislabelling

13. Personalisation

There’s quite a few so I’m not going to write about them all now, but I will look at each one individually and write a post about each one over time.

Next week the real fun begins. We are going to start on “trauma work”, which is going to be dealing with the abusive relationship with the ex. That is going to be difficult. The way A described it was that it is like a laundry cupboard which is overflowing and bursting open. So we are going to take everything out, look at it, fold it up and put it back in the cupboard. We cannot erase the past or the memories that come with it, but we can deal with them. And that should be enough to be helpful.

I have got two psychometric tests to do this week, one called “psychological well being post traumatic changes questionnaire” and one called “Impact of event scale”.

The first one has statements such as “I like myself” and “My life has meaning” and you have to number it from 1 – 5, considering how you feel now and how you have changed as a result of the trauma:

5 = much more so now

4 = a bit more so now

3 = I feel he same about this as before

2 = A bit less so now

1 = much less so now

I haven’t filled it in yet, but I have a feeling that a lot of them will be “1 = much less so now”.

The second one is statements which are rated 0 – 4. These statements include: ” Any reminder brought back feelings about it”, “my feelings about it were kind of numb” and “I felt watchful and on guard”.

0 = Not a bit

1 = A little bit

2 = moderately

3 = quite a bit

4 = Extremely

These types of tests make me see just how much of an impact this relationship has had on me.

I might post more about these when I have done them, but I am not ready to do them tonight.

After this session I was feeling quite positive, and I feel like things are going to change in the future – yay!

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