The CBT course I am doing...well, actually I haven't been doing. Truth is I haven't done it since before Christmas and need to get back to doing again. Always full of good intention. I do have to realise that it would be extremely stupid not. When I look at where I am and I have been compared to where I was then its obviously helped. That was a course I found an anxiety-related forum. A forum I was familiar with and had actually frequented for a number of years but at that time less so and now not for a few. That though was where they were promoting it and I was intrigued because they were usually dead against that sort of thing. So I had a look, talked to the author via email and was convinced enough to pay for it. If it never gets me to full recover then I can at lest look back and say its the only thing I have ever bought in relation to self help which has actually helped and paid for itself.
There was a girl I was talking to at the time and I can't remember how I got to talking to her but after many exchanges it turned out she lived where I had been brought up. Small world. And in the course for further exchanges she told me of an administrator from that site who has also used the course and was finding it helpful. She suggested I contact her so I did. And she was very friendly and told me that she had only been doing it a few weeks but had already seen big changes. Now given how bad my memory is and the fact this was a couple of years ago my paraphrasing may have more artistic license than most of what I write but one thing stuck in my head. She said that it wouldn't sound like much to other people but after weeks of working with the books for the first time she got on a bus and went to the nursery to pick up her child. It was something she had been longing to do for a good time and of course brought her great joy. I fully understood what she meant. At the time my son was at nursery and it was not even far enough to justify a bus yet I could not even walk halfway there nevermind pick him up. Also a bus was totally out the question. That "trapped" situation again. Once on the bus no way off until the next stop and the longer that took the longer in panic and the further the distance to get back home to safety. It was something that stuck with me. I think mainly its the impatience and marking my progress by someone else's progress: OK I am improving but I can't go on a bus.
On Tuesday night my wife came in from work and with a look of glee asked if I fancied a bus ride from Halfway (about 4 miles away) the following day. Instinctive answers fire from suggestions of any kind of public transport: No. And then starts the inner turmoil. The fight between knowing I would be pushing things to quickly which would therefore set me back and the need to push myself forward. Setbacks. My wife has been really helpful over this time but has also been in her own way the cause of some of these setbacks because as much as she wants to help she does not want to know how to help and instead thinks she knows herself how best to deal with it. These have happened at times like getting in Mental Health Services which I knew was a mistake but agreed against my better judgement. Being left stranded at Strathclyde park with no way to get home for a long period despite being told it was a quick drop off and we would not even need to get out the car. I could go on but won't. It just happens. Its guilt. I know its hard for her and know it will be harder if she feels she is having to do everything and in her mind I am not even making the effort to try to improve. And that is not the case. The CBT course has taught me to use my better judgement. Put simply if the fire is a ruse and I put myself into the fire and come out of it still believing I am still burning rather than staying long enough to see I am not before leaving them that burn remains and is relived every time after. Or maybe that wasn't simply. Anyway its guilt on my part that I always feel. That look of disappointment fills my head with this little damp ridden flat and the kids growing up and all the bad things that could be so much better if I could just go out and work and make money like most people. So there is always a compromise of my own doing. I can't leave it at a flat NO and nor can I jump up, click my heels and yee-ha a YES.
My main concern was obviously that I had not been on a bus for over a decade and it was something I feared doing. After much thought that night I suggested rather than me take the kids to school alone in the morning that she come with me and once dropped off we could go to the bus stop outside the school and get it to the bus depot which was about a mile away just to get me used to being on a bus again. She agreed. And if that went OK I would go that bus journey later that day. And in the course of this short novella I have forgotten to explain what that main bus journey was all about. The car needed MOTed and so had to be dropped off before a bus back. We then did that trip after walking the kids to school and then to the bus stop and the wait and the rising panic and then on the bus and a sort of calming and then off and then a longer walk home as I felt a bit of relief and more energy having ticked something off the list. I should point out the reason I needed my wife with me was not for support. I read a lot with anxiety disorder that some people can do things with a "support person" but not on their own. I am not one of those and in fact mostly prefer doing things on my own. It wasn't that. It was more a confidence thing over buses. I had not been on buses for god knows how long but knew even back then or sometime I heard inbetween you needed exact change. There was that and the wondering whether I had the right money and how much it would cost and where I actually said I was going to- was there a specific street name I had to recite for the driver to know? Did you have to still press a button to stop the bus? Stupid things once you did it but I just preferred not to have to deal with that the first time around.
And later that day we dropped off the car at the garage and got the bus home. That was I have to admit a hell of a lot harder. The mechanic was not there to begin with so we had to wait, then we had to walk to the bus stop and then we had to wait for the bus. All that wasn't easy. I never expected it to be. But if I am honest I have to say there is a little surprise at how easy it was in comparison to what a great fear it was for many years. Not that long ago I would have laughed at the very suggestion of doing something like that. In fact I nearly did when my wife first suggested it -maybe she wasn't so wrong.
Yesterday we went to pick up the car. That was harder again because first we had a mile walk to the bus stop. It took us time to realise it but that first bus journey of a mile cost £3.90 and the second of 4 mile cost the same. After discussing it we came to the conclusion that on the first, to the bus depot, the driver thought we said bus station which is in Hamilton and a good bit further so that was the extra cost. How Scottish are we? After looking online we found up to 5 stops was £1.25 and over it was £1.95. We therefore walked a mile in the snow to save £1.40 knowing the number of bus stops in between. It wasn't so much a financial victory but a sort of moral one for being diddled out of money by a driver who didn't listen properly. It was a really nice walk. Snow was on the ground and snow was falling. It got my wife in the mood for walking- suggestions of walking with the kids at the weekends and the like. And both of us were of the same mind: we could have just kept walking. Maybe we could have. Maybe if it was not so important to get me on a bus we would have. Maybe one day we will.
