Monday, December 1, 2008

Baby Steps

This morning I had an appointment with two counsellors at the hospital so they could assess whether I should attend their next social anxiety group workshop. One of the counsellors, Gary, had been calling me for months, letting me know any time a new group session was starting. My school schedule had always prevented me from going, but the workshop starting in January actually fits with my classes.

There's something about walking into a psychiatric ward that makes you wish things had gone drastically different during the course of your life. Especially unnerving is the ever-so-slight note of condescension in the psychiatrist's voice as they hand you a slew of questionnaires meant to assess your mental/emotional stability. Although I normally enjoy surveys, the titles of these ones didn't quite entice me: "Worry Scale", "Aptitude for Anxiety" and "Depression Assessment" to name a few.

I knew before the appointment that I would be an ideal candidate for their group. If this were a job interview, my "shattered self-esteem, keen eye for scrutiny and constant sense of impending doom" would be listed as assets on my resume. During our meeting, Gary and another counsellor asked me a few questions about why I wanted to take part in the workshop and what I hope to get out of it. I think I answered somewhere along the lines of, "I want to be able to have normal conversations with people without feeling inferior to them, and to actually enjoy life again." 

It was an honest response, and they acted as if the sessions would be a realistic solution to my problems. I'm hopeful that they will be, but can't help being a little skeptical. It's just that I've had anxiety - both social and, by all indications, generalized - for about 8 years. Unfortunately, the social anxiety seems to only have gotten worse within this timeframe. 

Then again, have I really been trying hard enough to remedy myself? I worked through one self-help book, the famous, "Feeling Good" by Dr. David D. Burns. It helped a bit, but by no means brought my anxiety to a manageable level. I decided I needed a treatment that was specifically suited to social anxiety, so I'm currently slogging my way through "Dying of Embarrassment" by a bunch of doctors. It's not a bad book, and simply knowing how many others go through this is comforting in itself. But I still feel something is missing.

I need more than just tools for teaching myself how to function in social situations: I need someone to teach me how to think of myself as a worthwhile person again, to gain the self-confidence that, I feel, has so much to do with why I can't carry on a two-minute conversation with someone without feeling as if I'm saying all the wrong things and coming across as a complete jackass. 

So, if these sessions are the answer, bring them on. If not, I guess I'll be no worse off than I am now.






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