I did not know whether to laugh or cry when Rich posted this.
Today, CWF is proud to announce the launch of a brand new project launching this September, Anxiety Leeds.
This new self help group will be open to everyone who suffers from panic attacks, anxiety or any other related mental health difficulties and will provide peer led discussions and support for anyone who chooses to attend.
The group’s first meeting will take place in September 2013 and will be monthly, with a view to increase this is the service is popular. More details and a mailing list for updates can be found on their website. Anyone with experience of working with anxiety related issues or training in the area is also welcome to volunteer as a meeting coordinator. Please contact us for further details about this.
We would like to thank Leeds Mind and Leeds City Council for their support of the project.
Earlier this year I started sessions at Leeds Counselling, and having recently terminated them, I thought I would write about my experiences. I’ve kept a detailed diary of my thoughts while using the service, but as there is a certain level of confidentially associated with counselling services, I’ll only discuss some general ideas here.
I think I did ten sessions in total, and then terminated the service for a number of reasons, but mainly because I didn’t feel we were making any progress.
When I started the sessions, I was told that she hoped we would be able to make some progress early on – nothing major, but we should expect to see something after three sessions. As this deadline was reached the estimates increased, and increased again, and I still don’t feel like any sign of progress had been made. Perhaps counselling just takes a long time, but I feel it was rather misleading if this is the case.
Having spoken to a number of counsellors, it seems clear that nobody in the field of counselling really knows what it is. That is to say, if you compare it to a field like CBT, which is quite specific and has methodology and a clear expectation of results, counselling seems very fuzzy and nobody can really define it very accurately.
I didn’t feel there was a strong knowledge of mental health. For example, I had to explain a lot of the techniques and ideas behind CBT. Obviously I’m not expecting them to be CBT experts, but you would expect people who work in mental health, particularly people who tend to deal with clients who have previously done CBT and then being referred, so have a basic knowledge of the subject.
I also found it incredibly similar to Scientology. This could be because Scientology copied many of its features to give it a feeling of legitimacy, or for some other reason, but the principles behind Scientology and counselling bare a very strong resemblance.
Leeds Counselling charge me £47 per session, meaning I have invested over £500 in their service once you include the initial screening. That is a worthwhile investment of my time and money if it was having a positive impact on my health, but as I didn’t seem to, it doesn’t seem worthwhile.
April is unfortunately suicide month. It’s the month when more people kill themselves than any other. It’s generally believed this is because the lighter days and better weather provide people will the motivation to to do it – ironically, what keeps people alive in the depths of depression is that they’re too depressed to kill themselves.
It’s timely then that the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) recently published a report claiming that suicide is now the biggest killer of young men – causing more depths than road accidents, murders and HIV combined.
Full coverage can be found in Metro.
This report echoes the issues already raised in our Men’s Issues awareness campaign. 75% of suicides are male, partly due to the stigma that surrounds men getting help for mental health issues – only 17% of men in need of help will seek it, compared to 29% of women.
Last week, one of my friends posted on Facebook about the depression she had been suffering from. I found it rather inspiring and so have been meaning to post an update on my own mental health issues with anxiety. Her command of the English language allowed her to put it very eloquently. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for me, so here is a rambling mess about the whole situation.
Of course, now you’re thinking, “Chris, surely you can’t have any problems – you’re my hero, the person I idolised most in the world, the closest thing we have to a human archetype.” You’re right of course, but clearly in order to achieve that I need to possess some characteristic that makes me more relatable so that the rest of you mere mortals can identify to me. It was a choice between this, or changing my name to Chris Every-Man ;).
I’ve just taken my first beta blocker. It’s a new type of medication I’m trying, after SSRIs proved to be ineffective for me. I’m now experiencing quite a wide range of side effects. None of which are listed in the list of side effects in the booklet. They’re almost certainly not caused by the medication. But that’s one of the odd things about the placebo effect, it has its good side and its bad side.
Actually, as I continue to work through my issues, I often feel like I’m learning loads about what anxiety is, and nothing about how to control it!
I also sometimes feel like the anxiety itself is also undervalued. For example, any therapist you speak to will describe it as difficulties and feeling uncomfortable. I don’t classify anxiety attacks as uncomfortable, I classify them as painful. In the same way, I would if I cut myself – it, in itself, is what I want to avoid, not just the consequences I am worrying about that are causing the anxiety in the first place.
Still, that’s just my 2p, and that’s worth a lot less than when I was a kid and you were 20% of the way to a Fredo with that. The moral of the story, it does very gradually get better. Here is some anecdotal evidence (you know, the singular form of data). So, as Professor Farnsworth would say, “keep your chin up.”
“OW! My chin!”