This was originally posted to my blog, Diabetes Odyssey.
To start off, my day two of therapy was supposed to be this past Friday. I ended up cancelling because I woke up nauseous and achy. The three days leading up to this day had been spent out in public with physical activities and social interaction all day each day. I think my poor mind, body, and feelings just couldn’t handle another day. You see, I’m used to being home, alone, not doing much, every single day.
In order to be able to get to my group therapy session I had to ride up with my husband on his way to work and be dropped off at the mall. I had to hang out at the mall for several hours before it was time for my appointment. Yay, another long day of being forced to be in public, around people.
GAH!!! I actually felt on the verge of a panic attack half the day. This whole facing your problems in order to fix them is not working with my social anxiety. I feel it’s just making it worse.
So at therapy we all sat in our circle and talked about our weekend. When my turn came up (I was the second one to talk) I started by explaining why I missed Friday. Then I told my story about just about having a panic attack on Saturday over a 2.5 inch gap between my wall and desk.
“I can’t deal with this. No, no, no, no,no. It needs to be flush with the wall. It’s going to drive me insane! I can’t have it like this! It needs to be flush with the wall!”
Yeah, I’m that crazy.
I talked a bit more about my depression, self-loathing, self-hatred, diabetes woes…blah, blah, blah.
Another patient shared how much he could understand what I’m going through because he is also a diabetic (type 2, I think) and has struggled a lot to get and stay in control.
The therapists (there are three) all agreed I need to work on not being so hard on myself. I beat myself up too much, apparently.
After talk time, we went to art time. I brought my same picture with me to continue coloring. I found a corner to sit in all by myself and sat there coloring, not socializing, for all but the last five minutes of the hour. I was listening to the therapist chat with a patient and another therapist. She was talking about how Windows 10 had forced itself onto her mother’s laptop. I perked up and told her my story about how Windows 10 had done the same thing to me even though I had repeatedly told it to F-off.
The therapy ended with a little pow-pow on how we felt about today, what we plan to do for ourselves tonight, and when we will return again.