Group Therapy Week 5

If you’re busy suppressing emotions what effect will it have?! This is something I have done my whole life, but I am trying to connect with myself more and understand why I may be feeling the way I am.

I also shared how I am struggling with procrastination badly at the moment, something which has never effected me so much before. I was told to try and attempt little things each day, rather than everything at once.

I also spoke about how I am trying 10 minutes of meditation each day,  but I do struggle to focus and find myself drifting in my thoughts a lot. The therapist said I can let the thoughts come, but also let them go again, and bring myself back to focus, and the idea is not trying to block and suppress them.

We are also starting to move into the inner child work. Often when we are little, medium size or older, we have another version of ourselves, a younger self that might have experienced some things that weren’t nice, or maybe heard things that weren’t nice, and from time to time the emotions we experienced at the time we revisit now as we get older. If someone wasn’t nice to you when you were little, or not so little, it doesn’t matter what age you are, these emotions keep popping up, the inner child keeps popping up and throwing emotions around, and they keep flying here there and everywhere.

Inner child work can take a while, and can be one of the most important pieces of therapeutic work a person does. In order to accept who we were, what we are, and what happened, we somehow need to comfort our younger self, showing compassion and kindness.

To begin this work, we have been asked to write a letter to our younger selves full of compassion, remembering we didn’t make mistakes, as we only knew what we knew. We reacted the way we reacted because of what we knew at the time. We can look back as adults thinking ‘I should have done this, or should have done that’, but we couldn’t, because we only know what we know now.

Until we give compassion to our inner self, emotionally we will be stuck, and stay on the same roller-coaster.

Group Therapy – Week 2

Parts of group therapy can be difficult, sometimes quite distressing, because you are hearing other people’s stories and their pain coming out, sometimes for the first time in years. Any stories I hear is not something I will go into in any blogs, because the important part of group therapy is the ability to feel safe to share in a safe environment.

I felt much less nervous going to this week’s therapy. I strangely already feel like I have known the group ages, and everyone has already began opening up so much, which shows a feeling of safety.

Today we began with going round each person and explaining what our weeks had been like if it was the weather. Some people had wintry, foggy, drizzly, sunny.

I described my week as towards the end of last week beginning of week, feeling very bleak, like rain with fog, struggling to see ahead. I mentioned that I had a much better day the day before. I was asked why?! I explained I felt like I was getting more support, beginning to understand myself a bit more and why I am feeling the way I am. I’m recognising certain emotions and what has happened in my life, and there being a reason why I am feeling the way I am.

I was then asked if I felt it is okay to feel the way I am. I hesitantly responded yes, but that I had also been punishing myself a lot recently for feeling this way, however I’m trying to be more understanding of myself.

Yesterday I also saw a very dark rain cloud, and a very slight rainbow coming through the clouds, and the rainbow felt like there could be a little bit of hope on the horizon, but that it is hard to see at the moment.

The therapist explained about the fear I may feel of however hard I work, is this going to work?! Life can feel like one thing after another, if it isn’t that, it’s this and how will I deal with all of this?! and if I go back there I will have to feel all these emotions. What will happen to me?! will I be okay?!

We can’t change our pasts or what has happened in our lives, but we can work through the trauma of it. Sometimes painful things do happen and we can’t change that, what we can change is how isolating it feels, and how we experience it.

We also spoke about how much we worry about what people think about us. This is where the compassion focused therapy will come in, learning how to build from within us. Sometimes we all doubt ourselves, and many of the group recognise they are doing this a lot of the time.

Another discussion was emotions, how so many of us are afraid to show emotion, or confront them, yet how unhelpful it is to suppress them. One of the hardest things you go through in therapy is learning to feel, and experiencing what that is like. We need to accept that sometimes we are angry and sometimes we are sad, beyond sad, and we need to be able to sit with it and not berate ourselves or others for it, because the feeling isn’t the problem however awful it makes you feel the other stuff.

Getting an understanding and acceptance that our emotions can influence our mood is powerful, because often emotions can come from nowhere.

At the end of the session we had to think of a time in our lives where someone was really kind to us, and to focus on that feeling. It shows we have an ability to feel compassion. Those defining moments that showed us we are valid, and we matter.

Eventually our brain will go into ‘I know I was cared about’ which helps to begin to build self compassion. We know the feeling does exist within us of being okay being ourselves.

At the end of the session we had to think of

Group Therapy Week 1

Today I started Group Therapy for the first time. Having had therapy including 1-1 counselling and CBT, it’s actually been very stressful and very isolating to say the least. Group therapy is not something I wanted to do before, but there is something about being in a group that is really supportive. You can have so much support around you when suffering from mental health, but when you are inside your own head 24/7 it is tough, and after attending the first session I am pleased to say I am glad I went. This is a 21 week course and I thought it would be good to blog in case other people are considering this type of therapy.

The first thing we did in the group, and what we will do each week, is go round and rate our mood from 0 to 10, some people put themselves at a 7, some 5, two of us were probably the lowest at about a 3, we then said what we would like to get out of the course. My answer was to not be a burden on other people, to take that pressure off, and to find support with people going through similar things.

The first part of this course will be on ‘compassion focused therapy’, and how we need to learn to empathise with ourselves like we do with other people. The therapist started off by saying, which of you would be willing to sit here and call me worthless, selfish and uncaring, thankfully none of us could. She then asked then why is it okay to berate ourselves in this way, and punish ourselves for whatever trauma each person has gone through.

We then talked about the ‘threat system’ the fight, flight or freeze response. Basically anyone who has suffered any type of trauma, may have a heightened threat response. In the threat response you cannot think because it switches off, which is what keeps us safe. When you become anxious, your world becomes much smaller, because you start avoiding things. You get into a state of constant heightened arousal, looking around and sweating The human brain is so complicated it is amazing any of us function at all.

We also for 30 seconds clenched our fists as hard as we could, and we had to notice what was happening. We then shook our hands out. Some people felt their whole body tense up, or made them feel angry. Our muscles cannot be tense and relaxed at the same time. When you are tense, you will clench your fists or feel your jaw go. This then puts you into fight, flight or freeze.

Another system we have is a drive system. When our drive system is in overdrive we are exhausted and you break. The drive system gets you up in the morning, washed and dressed. Some people have high drives and some low drives. A symptom of depression is our drive system shrinks, a system of anxiety is it increases.

We also have a soothing system, which we have in each other, but not to ourselves. The compassion element of this type of therapy includes increasing your soothing system to reduce or inflate the drive and threat system (balance it out).

The aim of compassion focused therapy is to process things that have happened. Trauma memories are categorised in a very different way from ordinary memories, we process our pasts right the way back (inner child) and be kinder to ourselves. When we are kind to others, we get something back ourselves. Oxytocin is released when you give someone a cuddle, it is released when you are kind to someone, it makes you feel good. It is released when stroking a pet or any skin to skin contact. It makes you feel happy, loved and compassionate. Most people offer compassion to others as a transaction. It makes you feel good and it makes them feel better.

When you’ve spent your whole life being mean and harsh on yourself, being compassionate doesn’t come easily. It’s a mindset shift to start being kind to yourself when your immediate response is to criticise or beat yourself up. We can all benefit from cutting ourselves a bit of slack.

Some good quotes to help start the journey about self compassion.

“Self-compassion is simply giving the same kindness to ourselves that we would give to others” – Christopher Germer

“This is a moment of suffering. Suffering is part of life. May I be kind to myself in this moment. May I give myself the compassion I need”. Kristin Neff

Speak to yourself with self compassion on the inside and you will radiate peace on the outside”. Amy Leigh Mercree

“Feeling compassion for ourselves in no way releases us from responsibility for our actions. Rather, it releases us from the self-hatred that prevents us from responding our life with clarity and balance”. – Tara Brach