counselling | If By Yes

Tags

acupressure, anxiety, counselling, GAD, generalized anxiety disorder, Perfect Girlfriend, Perfect Husband, pools, swimming

Yesterday was my third session with a new counsellor lady. The shrink at the women’s reproductive mental health unit set me up with her. It sucks to drive an hour into town for a counselling session once a week, and I don’t really enjoy them (how can you, attending something that invariably makes you cry??) but I go because I know it’s good for me. The counsellor is okay. She’s a young graduate student originally from Shanghai, and I’m clearly one of her “practice” patients. She spends a lot of time getting me to rub various parts of my body, supposedly acupressure points, to try and release my tensions and open up my energies or something. I’m willing to try it – with labour approaching, any kind of relaxation technique could be valuable. She spends a lot of time on breathing exercises, too.

I always feel kind of shaky and vulnerable after counselling – being forced to talk about all the stuff you try not to even THINK about kind of messes you up for the day. But she had talked to me about how we can’t change feelings but we can change behaviours, and thus change thoughts, and thus eventually change feelings, so I decided to do what my CBT group leaders would have called an “anxiety exposure” and go to the pool on my own.

It was awesome.

In the recent heat wave that has hit Vancouver, I’ve thought of the pool several times. But I had never gone alone before, and besides, some part of me feels that if I start swimming by myself, Perfect Husband won’t take me any more (he tolerates swimming but doesn’t really enjoy it) and I love swimming with him. But the pool was deserted and swimming and thinking, swimming and thinking, then pulling out The World According to Garp and reading on the steps in the cool water was definitely a good way to recover from the counselling session.

I’ll go again today. Perfect Husband is very proud of me.

My friends are planning a baby shower for me on July 25th, which I’m looking forward to, but here’s a shot of me, many months ago, receiving a massive care package from Perfect Girlfriend: