Therapy session number 3.

Total panic.

I knew that today would be scary, my stomach was in a knot since last night. Today the therapy session was at 4pm so I had all day to think about it. Tried to avoid it.

First thing was going through my homework from last time. Looking at my mood-sheet to see that nothing out of the ordinary was happening (such as going manic or too depressed) Then we started with Maria showing me a photo of a shrew mouse. I panicked completely, a full blown anxiety attack. I had to say from 1-100 how bad I felt. At first I was at 100. Then I stayed looking at the photo, for ages. The panic subsided and eventually I was down at 40. Then she brought up a new photo. Same reaction. Stayed with it, until it was at 40. The photos of the african elephant shrew were so much easier. They are not brown, and they have this super long snout, but the back bodies are rat-like. Very scary. I stayed in photos and eventually we started to watch a movie. Same panic at first, but not full blown attack. My body so tense and hard to breath, I've cried and cried for an hour. The movie got easier to look at, and I was down at 40 after about ten full times of watching it. I have homework to do again. This time, filling in a form for every day. And watching the same movie as we did in therapy here at home, every day. Until it goes down to about 20. Then another movie, and yet another movie. So a lot of time will be spent watching these movies until next time, which is on monday. This is the movie I've seen about ten times today. Or maybe fifteen. Hard to tell when so scared. I was very very proud of myself today. I did the first really awful thing towards being okay.