While I am calm and relaxed today, last week was a bit rough for me.  I currently see an in person therapist for Cognative Based Therapy (CBT) and also a virtual group therapy for Dialect Based Therapy (DBT).  I just started the DBT sessions a few weeks ago and it's been a bit rough for me right out of the gate.  These sessions are to provide coping strategies to help with anxiety.  Along with general anxiety, I also suffer from claustrophia and being involved with a group of people I don't know (even in an online environment) tends to increase my anxiety.  Also, I am the only male in the group (other than one of the faciliators).  This has caused some challenges in my mind as I've grown up in a society where men aren't supposed to show their feelings.  They are supposed to be strong and rugged without showing any kind of distress or fear.  So of course being the only male with an issue in the group also increases my anxiety by making me think there is something seriously wrong with me.  That is obviously my irrational and emotional side as rational me knows that's absolutely not the case.

So during this past week, they were going over a process called IMPROVE which is an accronym for Imagery, Meaning, Prayer, Relaxation, One thing in the Moment, Vacation, and Encourgement.  As they are going through these coping strategies, for some reason my depression creeped out with each one and I had a seriously bad fit.  Bad enough to have take a rescue pill as I could feel my irrational and emotional brain looking for a cutting implement (not for suicidal actions but simply self harm which I have a history of).

The next day, I headed to my in person therapy appointment with a number of things to discuss such as this issue with the virtual therapy as well as a claustrophic issue I had over the weekend that induced a panic attack.  Unfortunately after sitting in the waiting room for about 45 minutes, I was told that an emergency situation had arisen in the office with another patient and they would need to reschedule my appointment.  As I headed down the elevator, waves of depression hit me.  It included feeling of sadness, loneliness, and even the feeling of having no support and no one that cared about me.  These feeling got so intense at one point, I seriously considered jumping off the second floor balcony to end the pain.  Fortunately, I was able to control the urges but it definitely scared me that I had gotten to that point.  I immediately went to see my wife for lunch and was able to take a rescue pill to calm down and had her drive me home.

These situations really just seemed to come all at one time in a series but definitely left me scared of what could have happened.  I'm continuing to evaluate every day on how I can continue to look at what is meaningful and block out these kinds of thoughts.  I'm also looking forward to my next in person therapy session to discuss this in more detail and collaborate on this more.