Caroline Slack, Mindless Mag
When it started
I was diagnosed with social anxiety about three years ago, up until then I just thought I was shy. I was having issues adjusting to a new work environment, panicking about having to speak to my manager and worrying about how my new colleagues saw me. It wasn’t my first job, and I had been like that in every job, so I just thought it was me. I didn’t know at the time that there was an issue, that it wasn’t normal. What prompted me to get help was the physical symptoms. I had been waking up with the shakes for quite a few months and I was worried that it was the start of diabetes. It made sense since my mum is also diabetic, so I took her advice and spoke to my GP. The conversation didn’t quite go the way I had expected, instead of asking me about my diet and my sugar intake, he asked me about my moods, my feelings, and whether I had thoughts of hurting myself. To say I was surprised would be an understatement! It was due to that discussion that I was diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder and Depression, put on medication, referred to mental health and well-being services as part of the NHS and signed off from work for two weeks.
SilverCloud
During my two weeks off I had regular mental health check-ins with my GP, I was assigned a well-being support worker and I found myself on an app called SilverCloud. The SilverCloud service is an online service which acts like a mood diary so you can keep track of your moods, and events that are happening. I found it useful as I wasn’t quite sure what was triggering my anxiety. A feature that SilverCloud has is that you can choose which things you share with an allocated professional who then looks over what you’ve shared and sends you weekly comments. It was through sharing my mood diary entries that I was asked if I could have social anxiety. My initial thought was “what is that?” So, off to Google, I went. Reading over the symptoms, I remember feeling a sense of understanding wash over me. Situations I had avoided for years because they made me uncomfortable, but I didn’t know why, suddenly it all made sense. After telling the lady on SilverCloud, that maybe she was right I found myself referred to yet another service, Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAMPT).
IAMPT
IAMPT or as it is now known, The NHS Talking Therapies, for anxiety and depression programme, is a service set up to help people access the help they need. In my case, it was determined after another discussion with the mental health and wellbeing service that I would benefit from one-to-one counselling, with a therapist. Due to my triggers being what they were, I was offered the choice of in-person sessions or online sessions given the services secure online messaging service. I chose the latter. Within a week I found myself in my first session. I was allocated a total of eight one-hour long sessions which focused on managing my anxiety and getting myself comfortable doing things that I would have been uncomfortable doing before. Like going shopping on my own, eating in a restaurant on my own and even things as small as wearing a dress in public. It seems like a lot to pack into eight sessions, right? In truth, it was, the technique my therapist introduced me to was something called Exposure Therapy. This involved me making a list of the ten worst situations for me and rating them from one to ten, then working my way down the list from one being the easiest and ten being the hardest. For me number one was shopping on my own, I could do it if I had to, but I wasn’t jumping at the opportunity and number ten was wearing a dress in public. After my eighth, and last session, I took myself into town on a busy Saturday afternoon and sat in my dress and had coffee all on my own with the biggest grin on my face!
The future
If I had to say what therapy did for me, it was to encourage the natural stubbornness within me. Instead of shying away and hiding from situations I think I can’t deal with or things I don’t think I can do, I throw myself into them to prove to myself I can do it. It was difficult at first but the more I do it, the more I experience it, the easier it gets. Am I cured? No, I don’t think so. There are still times when I get nervous and I still find it hard to be in a shop during the Christmas rush, but instead of me finding myself in a panic, now I just feel annoyed that it’s busy which I think is pretty normal. Thanks to the CBT therapy combined with my medication that I still take regularly, I now feel like I can live a decent quality of life. I now feel free to discover who I am as a person without the huge storm cloud hanging over my head.
I share my story in the hopes that it helps others to understand that they’re not alone and help others know that there is help out there and it may only be a phone call away.
