Posted by Mike on 21/4/2008, 10:49 pm

Hi, I’ve been on two workshops now and things are going quite well. I’ve improved tremendously, in a few weeks I’ll be having my first appointment with a psychologist to help me stay on track and keep pushing things forward with the CBT! I’m about to take the plunge and leave the comfort zone of my shop job for the first time ever, for a more populated working environment that no doubt has facilities catering for more than one person at a time, which will mean I’ll be frequently going (or trying to) when someone I know is in the room :S But I’m starting to see everything as less of a problem and more of a challenge now, things are going well. BUT… I’m encountering a small problem. The friends and family I’ve told just don’t get it. No matter how articulate I am in explaining it, their understanding seems to be nothing more than a confused sympathy that is directly related to how distressed I am while explaining it. There’s no problem with my parents, who are very sympathetic (because I was very distressed when telling them) but they clearly don’t understand. My father has the delusion it’s a genetically inherited trait and I’ll grow out of it in time anyway. He says he had a similar problem at my age and it just went. Though when listening to him talk about it I’m not sure it’s that similar. The problem I’m finding is in the friends I’ve told. The first one, L was very sympathetic to begin with, but recently I keep hearing the same phrase come out of her mouth an awful lot “your just over thinking it.” and then there’s J. I told him recently, he has a very similar problem, he can rarely use a urinal and has a generally very shy bladder, but he’s never seen it as a problem and so can’t understand why I’d let it effect me as it does at all, instead preferring to believe I’m using it as an excuse to not move forward in life out of idleness. I’m finding this really frustrating. Particularly with L whom I see a lot of and I drag her out to pubs and bars specifically so I can peal off every 10-15mins to de-sense. If they understood better they’d be more instrumental in helping overcome the problem I’m sure, but how to make them understand better? Any advice? I’ve been elaborating on something from the “script”. “You’re afraid of spiders right? Well imagine having to pick up 6-7 a day. And imagine every time you left the house you knew you were probably gonna have to pick one up, but you didn’t know how big or hairy it was gonna be? And if your friends ask you out to a club you don’t know, that’s another 1-2 big hairy spiders (if your not drinking). Spider can’t hurt you, things scarred of you, can’t even think nothing to rationally be afraid of in a spider, but your scared of it anyway aren’t you. And if you going out to a new club meant picking up some nasty ones that might be real big and REAL hairy, you might not go out to that club, you might make an excuse and stay in. You might start doing that with a lot of things… “ That’s what I’ve been going with, as well as a lot of other stuff explaining what happened in life to bring me to that mindset, physically how it works… I don’t know what else I can say to make them understand I’m not simply over thinking it, it’s not a trivial problem. Anybody got any different experiences or advice? Sorry the post is so long.

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