Hi Circle,

When I started reading this, I thought "this person must be in the UK" and I checked, and sure enough, you are. Do they train your mental health personnel to be confrontational there? I have read posts by several people on PC who have had similar things said to them by their docs.

In your case, the way you describe it, the doc sounds like she was trying to get you to think, and not just trying to be "mean". Nonetheless, I'm not surprised that you're feeling raw.

I think that you are determined and tough to go through this kind of session and to come out of it resolved to take actions for improvement.

Are you scheduled for any psychotherapy in the future? If you are going to be making lots of changes, I would expect you'll need someone to talk to about it.

I imagine you know that you're taking on a lot by starting a benzo taper and stopping smoking while you're feeling bruised and raw and trying to figure out what you do next.

I don't think I could do all that at once. Maybe I could have when I was younger and physically able to do heavy exercise, which was how I handled extreme anxiety then.

Why does the psychiatrist want you to do the benzo taper right away? Just wondering.

You said: To me, that sounds like a roadblock to progress. Could that be your "why"?

I don't know that CBT is necessarily going to help you with learning to let yourself experience painful emotions, though. I probably shouldn't say that. It's just that when we are avoiding feeling, I think a gentler, more coaxing type of therapy is needed..

Learning to experience our scary and uncomfortable feelings can be a bit like the first steps in learning to swim. Finding out that, yes, you can put your head underwater and live through it. It may be unpleasant and feel unnatural at first, but the more often you do it, the easier it will become.

Sometimes we don't know "why" until after we've solved the problem or changed the behavior. At least, I find that's true in my case. It's not very satisfactory for the rational part of the brain.

I'm still feeling worried about you tackling all these changes at once. You are the one who is able to decide if you feel like you can do this, though.

Are you going to keep a "progress diary" for what you're doing? (I need to be doing that myself.) I am trying to slowly lower my benzo dosage, and it would be helpful if I wrote down how it's going.

Two weeks ago I had three very stressful things happen in three days, and I went back to the previous higher dose for a week, and just dropped the dose again a couple of days ago.I should write that down, because I will forget it.

I apologize if I've repeated myself. I can only see a 2" high box that I'm typing in. I scrolled back and re-read, but still.

I hope you'll post more here and let us know how things are going for you.



Jo.