<shit stand-up, laughing> “…and what is the deal with CBT handouts these days?”

I’ve grown to loathe starting my 6 allotted therapy sessions because I know I’ll end up with a veritable library of shitty documents replete with terrible images. The cartoons are often infantilising and the text rivals trite Instagram images for their insightfulness. The end result is a therapy that feels uncaring, condescending and the equivalent of paint by numbers.

All in all, pictures of a stressed clip art egg just really aren’t for me. I’ve ranked my top five most hated CBT handouts.

Some fucking parrot

A document with several poorly rendered* cartoon parrots. “Imagine all your thoughts are coming out of a parrot” What? Why the fuck would that be any use? “This is a parrot that’s been trained to be mean to you”. Er, okay, I have more questions now.

Time wasted: 5 minutes plotting the backstory of how someone trains a parrot to hunt me down and tell me I’m shit.

Wheel of cheese values

This asks you to consider what values are important in your life. Does the C in CBT stand for corporate? Because it feels quite a lot like management wank. “Rate how important parenting is for you”. Well, if you’re a parent, probably pretty fucking important.

Time wasted: 1 minute of taking it seriously, and then putting 5/10 for everything to give yourself something to talk about next session.

Imagining some wise gas cloud

On one occasion, I got given a piece of paper that instructed me to visualise a protective and caring spirit. You can probably picture the face that I was making when I first read it.

Time wasted: the 2 seconds it took me to google Melllvar, the energy being from Futurama.

O worry tree, o worry tree, how anxious are thy branches

Supposedly a tree, with various branches that can help you when you have a worry. Well, let’s have a go. “Can you do anything about this worry? Let go of it”, why thanks, wise tree, I hadn’t thought of that before, what else do you have? “Schedule it” Oh ta, yes, right next to “buy family bag of crisps”, which I imagine is going to help me through this anxious period a bit more.

Time wasted: 5 minutes walking to the local Tesco for crisps.

Working hard or hardly working?

I actually have no idea which therapist gave this to me. It’s the most low res version of a sentence and an image, a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy, which simply says “Mind Full, or Mindful?” and there’s a stick figure walking next to a dog, both with thought bubbles. I literally cannot even describe how hilariously bad this is, was it made on the first Windows? Just picturing the guy running in from the CBT meme making laboratory, “lads, I’ve fucking cracked it!”

Time wasted: 10 minutes trying to work out what the stick figure is thinking about. Is that shoes?

There we go, a magnificent total of 21 minutes and 2 seconds of time not being anxious. Congratulations, you now count as cured! Hurrah for CBT!

*I showed my husband and he said “What the fuck happened to that one?”, pointing to one poor parrot far less detailed than all the rest. Maybe that one got trained by someone really mean.

I have, admittedly, ambivalent feelings about belonging to a mental health community. Partly, the whole idea of making friends with people based on a shared illness, affliction, whatever, just makes me feel like punching a few walls. “Oh wow, you *also* wake up at 4am in a panic about a google result that led you to believe you might have a deadly tumour? Let’s be super best buds!”. I can’t imagine a worst thing to build a friendship on. Like belonging to the world’s shittest justice league*, it just feels like a miserable way to make friends. “Joe? Yeah, I met him while I was off my fucking tits on panic, such a magical day”.

Additionally, there is the sense that mental health sufferers are uniquely positioned to “get” each other, which strikes me as patronising as all shit. You must have this pressured friendship because no one else will understand you but other anxiety-ists**. That shits on all the great people I’m friends with who don’t worry about whether that mole is looking a bit dodge, and perhaps needs to be checked 40 times over the next 24 hours. And cripes, I don’t want to upset any mental health sufferers here, but it’s pretty inward focused. When you’re absorbed in your busy mole checking activities, you’re not always being an attentive friend.

It can end up feeling like you’re being defined by something that is fucking unpleasant, and for me, has pretty much consumed much of my life. I am more than just someone who worries about some weirdly specific things, and don’t need or want anxiety to be my fucking brand (she says, appreciating the irony on a mental health blog). The fact that things got so shit has made me even more determined to claw back areas of my life, activities and personality that aren’t shot to shit by mental health. I can still crack jokes, make questionable film choices and provide lightweight political commentary, and no one has to know a damn thing about my mental health status, online, at least.

In real life, it’s a bit harder to disguise not leaving the house much, so lots of my interactions inevitably end up being framed through that. Anxiety is a bit like a baby***, in that before you go out you have to make sure you’ve got baby wipes, and spare nappies and extra clothes, and toys, and by the time you’ve finished you’ve got a big arse bag with you. Also it whines a lot. Ultimately, I want to maximise the amount of time that aren’t me thinking about my stupid anxious baby. Some silly shared laughs. Friendships that arise from a shared activity. Chats about clothing or which films keanu reeves is most hot in. So no offence, anxiety, but I don’t want to be part of your gang.

*In my vision, Batman has important crime fighting bollocks to do in gotham, but keeps crying into a bag of crisps, and Aquaman has developed a crippling fear of water and won’t stop banging on about it. Get in touch, movie makers.
**What’s our fucking collective noun then? Panickers?
***Please send your complaints about my analogies to my bumhole, who will deal with them in due course.

Today is #Timetotalk, an aim I support broadly in the sense that it’s important for people to be able to talk about their mental health, firstly, in order to help them, and secondly, normalising it in society and reducing stigma.

But… on a personal level? What to say? I haven’t got a neat little recovery story. I’m certainly not going to hold ‘an event’ (“hi friends come to my anxiety party*”). Partly this is a, probably unfair on my part, discomfort with earnest campaign stuff. I’m not into doing heartfelt, inspirational threads… feels a bit like curating my anxiety to be “shareable”, for the one day when people can be bothered to listen (or pretend to listen anyway). Mainly I want to not think about it too much and then take the piss out of myself when it does come up.

So the idea that people are arming themselves with flyers for positive mental health events makes me break out in a cold sweat. I just picture shiny, smiling, competent people**, trying to corral me into being chirpy and sharing my story for the group. I keep being invited to some mental health coffee morning, and I’m like… it sounds helpful on the surface, but anxiety isn’t an identity I really want to bond over. It exists, and I’d prefer it fuck off, rather than do “oh, isn’t it terrible” sort of bollocks over what I assume*** would be a poor biscuit selection.

Essentially this day feels like another pressure, to present the “good face” of anxiety, and I’m exhausted by the lot of it. A friend on twitter expressed it perfectly… a day that feels Not For Us.

*now I’m pondering the most anxious foods
**my first draft contained the words “saviour complex”
***of course I could be wrong, and perhaps I should go just to be the cunt that ate all the good ones