My Experience With CBT and Anxiety

Hey Guys x

Today I want to talk about my experiences of using CBT to treat anxiety.

This past summer I had 12 sessions of CBT to help with my anxiety, and I wanted to write a post about it as soon as it was done, but I decided to wait a few months to see if what I was taught actually helped with the anxiety once the sessions were over.

These are my own personal experiences, it might be different if you want to try it so keep that in mind. Also, my CBT was conducted with a trainee, not an official CBT therapist - I don't know if this would have changed my experience or not.

I'm also not going through week by week, but just a general overview of my 12 weeks.

So to start with, we talked so that she (the therapist) could determine where my anxiety comes from and the thoughts that come into my head that cause me to be anxious. She worked out that I have mainly social and travel anxiety, caused by thoughts of not being good enough or being in some form of danger.

For the next few weeks, we focused on the social side. We talked about my 'safety behaviours', the things that I do to make myself feel safe in a social situation. Then I had to let go of these things and have a conversation with a person that I'd never met before, about a topic of my choosing. We did this a good few times and I think it got easier each time, because I knew more what to expect.

Whenever we did this, she'd get me to write out my thoughts before the conversation began (for example, 'they'll think I'm boring') and then when the conversation finished, she'd email them a small questionnaire to fill out, with questions such as 'did you think Lou was boring?' to show how different my thoughts are to the way that people actually see me, which was really helpful.

Each week she'd have me fill out a questionnaire about how I was feeling the previous week, then we'd discuss these feelings and think about how we could make them better for the next weeks.

The main thing that she tried to do was to change my way of thinking. For example, why do you think that people think this? Do you think this about people? How likely is it that they do feel like this? How does this thought change the way you act around them? etc etc.

We did this pretty much each week, and sometimes she'd give me something to complete for the next week. For example, I have anxiety about being late for something, so we found a situation in which I could practice this. I was meeting a friend at the cinema and went later than I'd planned so I'd be late for the meeting.

By the end of the 12 sessions, I felt like I was equipped to take on anything when I eventually went back to uni (this was in the summer. I finished the sessions in August and started uni in October so there was a lot of time between the CBT and uni) - I thought that. by using certain techniques, I was a changed person and I wouldn't feel anxious around people any more.

However, this wasn't the case.

I went back to uni, and immediately reverted to my safety behaviours and my old actions. As much as I tried, I couldn't stop the thoughts from entering my mind and I couldn't stop the way I reacted because of them.

I tried to think the things that she told me to think, but that didn't stop the anxious thoughts and feelings.

The experiments that we did in her office had no bearing on real-world experiences because I couldn't choose the topic, I couldn't end the conversation if it got a bit much, and I can't give everyone I've ever spoken to a questionnaire asking how they feel about me. It isn't practical or realistic so it felt completely different.

So in all, my CBT experience was positive until I actually had to use these techniques in the real world, where they did nothing for me and I feel the same as I did before I had it. The only difference is that now I can say: 'they don't really think that, it's just a manifestation of your anxiety', but that doesn't really help with the actual anxiety symptoms.

Thank you for reading.

Comment below whether or not you've had CBT for anxiety. Were your experiences successful?

Keep Smiling - Lou xx