So it’s been a while since I blogged about my mental health…. Not because nothing has been happening, but because there’s been a lot of personal breakthroughs that need to be kept quite private.
Anyhoos…. I’ve FINALLY started 1-1 talking therapy which is CBT based and this week will be my 6th session. And a lot has happened in those 6 weeks that has sent me forwards and at times a little bit backwards… But progress is progress…
My therapist and I have had quite a few breakthroughs and we’ve worked out what the common thread is for each issue I currently have, and each week we slowly dissect said issues and tackle them bit by bit.
Our current area of focus is my anxiety surrounding Boe… Which I’m glad about, because this shit is bonkers. I wrote a blog post about when it first started, which you can read HERE, and it’ll give you an idea of how bad things were from the get-go.
I won’t lie – I had reached the point where I was too scared to do anything. Not just walk to the shops, but giving Boe a bath, making dinner…. Every day activities became too daunting and too worrying, so I just stopped doing them. There would be some days where I’d be brave and we’d go out in the back garden, but even that was a rare event, so poor Boe has spent most of our days just playing around the house apart from when he goes to the Childminder.
The kitchen had become a MAJOR issue. When I first became a mama, I was rocking the shit out of parenthood, making meals from scratch, preparing exciting snacks and all sorts. Slowly those home cooked meals turned into ready meals, pizzas and cook in the bag chicken. But in recent months it became much worse…. The kitchen filled me with such dread that I’d run in for a drink, sometimes I’d manage to stay in there long enough to cook an oven pizza… But the lovely family meals I’d been preparing were long gone. Boe’s favourite space at the sink was a distant memory as I’d find other things for him to do in other rooms…
Guaranteed if our neighbours heard me shouting it was over the kitchen and it’s dangers, or it’d be fueled by the anxiety that room brought. Most of those dangers were fabricated by my own mind and the chances of anything happening were always pretty slim, but when you have anxiety, even the far fetched seems far too real.
Anyway, another area of extreme anxiety is bath time. Mainly with Boe.
I’m pretty scared of water anyway (even though I love sitting on the beach), and every time I have a bath I’m scared shitless of slipping over and dying while I’m getting out ?
So add the usual water anxieties to bath time with a baby / toddler, and, well that just doesn’t happen at all. I’ve bathed Boe twice since he was born because it fills me with such dread and horror 🙁
During my therapy we discuss 2 sides of a coin in certain situations – emotions, physical reactions, thought processes and behavior.
My therapist said that when she views bath time with her little boy, she sees them having fun etc, and she asked me what I saw. Well, no word of a lie, I see a soaking wet floor, Boe slipping and cracking his skull on the sink / edge of the bath / floor and ultimately, death. I see him slipping in the bath and cracking his head on the taps. I see him splashing me so much that my legs get cold and my fibro kicks off and I’m in pain for the rest of the day…. I’m sure you get the idea.
So my therapist told me that my homework was to give Boe a minimum of 2 baths this week, and we worked out a plan to prepare for these baths. Mainly put extra bath mats on the floor to catch the splashes, move the clothes drier out of the bathroom to create more space and calm…. It seems obvious when you think about it, but I’d never really thought about HOW to make the area safer, I’d just avoid doing it, full stop!
I had to nominate my days before I left my appointment – one was to be that same Friday afternoon, with the second day being the following Thursday. Mum would be around that afternoon so I would feel safer and she and Mr Plinky would both be there on the Thursday, if needed.
Come the afternoon, I was filled with dread and my mind had already started to try and find excuses to talk me out of having bath time, but I knew I had to do it.
So we all went upstairs. I grabbed an extra bath mat to put on the floor, moved the clean clothes out and turned the tap on. How was this happening?!
I’d suggested to mum that she stay upstairs and maybe do some ironing just so she’s around, but it was just Boe and me in the bathroom. Once the bath was full, I popped Boe in, sat on a stool next to the edge of the bath and we just played!
Thanks to Headspace and learning how to be mindful, I was able to just let the anxious thoughts pass me by and I was able to stay present…. I didn’t focus on them and let them snowball, I just allowed them to pass through like traffic whilst we were sat at the side of the road (this analogy makes sense when you watch this YouTube clip found HERE)
We splashed, we laughed, we played…. We had an amazing time ?
And I didn’t need my mum for back up at any point, either!
High 5 for me!
I was extremely proud of myself, and I know that even though I’ve still got a long way to go, the progress I’ve made so far from those 6 sessions have been remarkable! I’ve had 1-1 therapy before when I lived in Devon, and although it helped, it was never this groundbreaking with each session ?
So hopefully Thursdays bath time will be just as successful, and then it’ll help me bath Boe on days when no one else is in the house…. Eventually…. Gotta take tiny steps first ?
The year of the Butterfly continues ?
I’ll post more updates soon
Plinks ?
