My 1st meeting with the brain doctor I was a nervous wreck before I walked in thinking about all the things I might need to say. Where do I start? What do I say? What will she ask? What if I don’t have an answer? What if I cry? I don’t want to cry in front of a stranger. To say the least I was an anxious stress ball.
I was limited to two choices of counselors based on my time allowance
and I chose the one who I thought would be a better fit. Walking into
my first session I didn’t know what to expect and I was out of breath
trying to get there on time. The brain doctor is about an hour away with
all the subway transfers. I walked into the office and was greeted
warmly by the receptionist who offered me a choice of drinks. I decided
to have a coffee with milk and sugar. This was a nice added benefit.
Shortly after I was ushered into a small room where we began
introductions and I began to talk about myself and what I wanted out of
this.
Her first suggestion was to monitor my mood each day. Start a journal and make notes or draw a line to show how I am feeling. The biggest point the doctor made was that I needed to notice the difference between being tired and being in a low mood. I told her I would do my best to work through that and monitor how I felt and around what time I noticed my mood drop. After the session, I went to straight to the stationary store and bought my self a journal. It happens to be a color therapy one, so I can choose to color it in if I want as well.
As I mentioned previously I am trying to find Mocha. One way to do that
is to watch my moods and what triggers her into hiding. She hides and
all her friends come and take over. One of the biggest tipping points
for me is being an over thinker. I spend too much time worrying about
what has happened and shit that hasn’t happened. The biggest quest is
learning to live in the present and enjoying life.
At the second session we decided that it would be best figure out how we could measure self-love. I decided that it will take a while to get the bad thoughts out so if there are two days in one week where i have no bad thoughts then I am doing well. It also means I’m starting to view myself neutrally or positively. Another way to measure this is to feel comfortable in an outfit I like.
The second outcome of our session was that I needed a way to de-stress. I’m excellent at holding stress in and it manifests negatively in my mind and my actions for the rest of the day. So we tried to figure out a few ways to de-stress from a situation:
- walk away
- take a deep breath
- talk to others
For the first month my meetings were every two weeks. I’ve slowly started to spread them out and I will write a few more entries about the following brain doctor visits. Finding Mocha isn’t easy, but each step helps.