Hi, everyone! In my last post I promised that I would write an update on how my exposure therapy is going after I went to the first appointment that I was preparing for. That was last Tuesday, and in typical Sam fashion, I have been procrastinating writing the update since then. However, I set aside some time today to write it and I'm doing my best to follow through.
A little summary of what I'd been doing up until my previous update (10 weeks ago) and my motivations for committing to exposure therapy: At the end of March I found out that in order to get one of my (very essential) prescriptions refilled, I needed to go in for an actual appointment instead of just a telemedicine appointment, which is what I've been doing for my other meds. I very quickly started putting together an exposure therapy plan based on acceptance and commitment therapy. Up until my last update I had been mostly doing sentence exposures for my fears of germs and social situations and watching dashcam videos of car rides and listening to a subliminal audio to work on my horrible motion sickness.
Looking back at what I wrote then, so much has changed in the past 10 weeks.
3 days after the update, I began doing actual car ride exposures. It took me a bit, and a lot of schedule shifting, to figure out when was the best time to do them, but I now get up earlier in the morning so my dad can take me for an exposure before he goes to work (I don't have a drivers license, so I can't do them by myself). These exposures were very difficult at first, and they sometimes still are. However, I am making quite a bit of progress. it would be nice to make progress faster, but I'm still miles ahead (literally) than I was before I started the exposures. Yesterday I made it as far from the house as I ever have during these exposures. About 7 miles out, all the way to the DMV, which is the site of my next scheduled appointment. It can be very frustrating at times when some days I'm able to do a lot more and go a lot farther than others, so this entire process is a lesson in self-forgiveness and understanding that progress is not linear.
I did begin doing other real life exposures as well, though I don't do them quite as much as the car ride ones. They're mostly just things in my everyday life that I would normally avoid, like using a fork that has a stain on it, or not sanitizing my hands before taking some of my meds. I still have to deal with the intrusive thoughts about germs and such, and it would be nice if I didn't, but I don't see that happening, so I'm doing my best to expose myself to situations that cause the intrusive thoughts so that I can learn to keep going even with them, without overwhelming myself so much that I can't function. I'll continue to work on this, but the real test will be when cold season begins next fall.
Onto the appointment. I was understandably very anxious beforehand. My digestive system was freaking out and I felt like I was going to pass out and I kept lashing out at my family from stress (having stress-triggered anger issues is fun). However, I stuck with it, albeit after taking a Vistaril to dampen some of the anxiety, and I made it to the appointment. I conversed with 4 different people, not including my dad, who took me to the appointment, I managed to get all of my points across, and I even used a public bathroom. By the end of the appointment, I'd calmed down enough (likely from relief at getting the appointment done with and from the Vistaril) that we actually stopped at the store on the way home, which is something that I'd only done twice before during the exposure therapy.
It took me a while to recover. I spent most of the rest of Tuesday watching movies, reading fanfiction, and doing whatever I wanted. I skipped the car ride exposure on Wednesday morning to give myself some more time to recover. Even with that, the exposures over the past week have been fairly difficult. Whenever I go through something stressful it unbalances my nervous system and it can take a very long time for it to get back to normal. Fortunately, it seems like things are leveling off now.
Overall, I've made a lot of progress in the 13 weeks since I started exposure therapy. I've been communicating with others more, doing more, balancing my life better. I'm even working on setting some stuff up so that I can watch movies with a friend of mine who lives far away. My progress is especially something to celebrate given that I managed to do all of it while dealing with a recurrence of my chronic headaches, which I get every day and that make functioning near impossible.
As I mentioned earlier, my next appointment is at the DMV on July 11th. I never went down there to get my ID when I turned 18, and I need it in order to do some other life stuff that I've been working on. At this point, I'm not sure if I'll be ready, since its in like 2 1/2 weeks and I'm expecting it to be more stressful than my last appointment (not the least of which because having my ID is going to open up my life to other things that I can and want to do but that are stressful), but it'll be like a month and a half after that before the next available appointment, so I'll probably force myself to go just because I don't feel like waiting that long.
I don't know when I'll post my next exposure therapy update. Perhaps once I've made a bit more progress I'll write a post that goes into detail explaining the things that I've been doing for exposure therapy, how I feel/felt about them, and maybe include links or examples.
In the meantime, if you have any questions about the exposure therapy that you'd like me to answer, feel free to leave them in the comments section and I'll get to them as soon as possible.
Love always,
Sam
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