282 - A weekend of massive exposures (14-15/10/2017)

This past weekend has been one continuous series of exposures, and I feel quite proud about my progress in socializing.

After several days of shopping and running errands, the weekend arrived. Saturday evening was a friend's 27th birthday, and she had invited everyone as early as a whole month early, through a FB event. As I was struggling a lot with my mental health, especially cptsd and depression, I wasn't sure I could attend it and had told her that it was too early for me to even guess. 



During this month, she checked with me 3 times, and on first 2 occasions I said I'd try my best, but that I couldn't promis anything and that I'd let her know closer to the date. Although I hate that I sometimes cannot commit and often had to cancel participations due to my mental health status, I don't feel ashamed about it anymore and have come to accept the sinuous recovery path as an integral part of it, especially as I've also been learning coping mechanisms in parallel and that I hadn't confirmed much of them - til this weekend.

My wife had gone alone to this friend and other friends' parties before, and I had seldom managed to go with her. With 16 months of CBT, and an improved mental health, I told my friend that I would indeed come, and kept to my promise. 

I asked one of our mutual friends to drive us, as the birthday girl (and her boyfriend) live in a whole different city, and that trains and local buses there are seldom and finish much earlier than the party. This in itself has always been a difficult aspect of my mental health and self-worth, so already a victory in asking for help more often than I used to. 

Upon arrival, I saw very few faces of people I'd met before, and as the group grew from a dozen to about 30 people at the height of the party, I didn't experience any panic, although I had a lot of anxiety and stress.

Guests came and went, throughout the evening, some leaving early, others remaining even after we left (at past 0:15). 

The party lasted over 6 hours, and although it was disorganized and not all food was okay, and that I had eaten much less than I needed for a proper dinner, the party itself went much better than I had envisioned and feared. In the fact that I didn't cancel on last minute was a massive change in my avoidant behaviour and a personal victory.

The first hour or so was quite difficult, as I felt my anxiety mounting to dangerous levels and I thought I'd face a panic attack. It didn't occur, and I coped by moving from the garden to the kitchen, to the living room, back and forth.

After many struggles to get involved in discussions, I managed to jump into a conversation when the topic of arachnophobia came up, and later in the kitchen, offer our host my help (she refused) and talked with the 2 guys who were helping her ; even if it was a short and small-talk, it was another personal victory. 

Later, once everyone came into the living room as the garden became too chilli for them, we talked a bit with the new singer that our friend's boyfriend and his band had hired, and after that, my wife had complimented one of the guests there, and as I jumped into that conversation, ended up actively taking part of the topic, as we found out we shared the mutual interests of science-fiction, fantasy and psychological stories in movies. Another person overheard us, and joined-in after a while. This entire conversation, which probably lasted a good hour, this second person had called her own boyfriend to come as well, as the topics widened and we found more of them to share with her and him. 

We decided we'd try to meet one day and go for a photo-hiking next Spring, to share our mutual passion for butterflies and moths.

This was just before this couple went to sleep, and about half an hour before we all started to get ready to leave. This last half hour, I was too tired to continue interacting, and had started to mingle, but remaining mostly quiet. 

There were quite a few personal victories that I'll summarize here for Saturday, before I talk about Sunday : 

• No panic!
• Small-talk with a few news faces
• Full hour talk with 2 new people - flowing discussion and fully automated exposure, not feeling it as an exercise. Which is the goal in my current and final stage in my CBT.
• Being separated from my wife quite often during the evening, each doing our own mingling. 

Issues I had :

• High anxiety made me go to the restroom 6 times
• First hour very difficult, managing almost no interaction 
• Didn't manage to mingle enough with the people that I already knew, thus missing on them.

Update: 

6 months ago, I had went to another birthday party. I knew about half of the people, and it was a small gathering. I had barely reacted to questions from those that I hadn't met before, but didn't tend to volunteer anything forward by myself. This time around, with a much bigger party, I did a lot better than 6 months ago, and I'm quite proud of it, despite the issues and room for further progress. 

Also, there was an incident where I accidentally ate something with cheese, as we had assumed the party food would be fully vegan (as our hosts are like us, vegans). However, in the past, this would have triggered a lot of problems, including anger over the fact I wasn't told anything. Here, I just had one bite, and stopped as I realized, and put it down. I spoke about it, but calmly and left it be. 

Sunday, my wife's cousin, and one of his friends, came to visit us. I'd never met the friend, but had no difficulty interacting with him and had 0 anxiety!!! We just had small discussions, EVEN when we were left alone in the living-room, and this is a first for me. I used to wait for others to come back and re-engage conversations, but this time we just continued naturally on and off, until my wife and her cousin came back from the kitchen. 

After they left to walk around the city and contacted my wife to know if I'd be okay if they invited one of their friends over for dinner (to which we had also invited a local friend of our own), I didn't freak out. Instead, I expressed that I wasn't very keen on the idea of another new person to meet and feed, but to give me a minute to ponder. I thought about it, and although I was quite exhausted, had decided to extend the invitation and was open to her arrival.

Later, our local friend, and my wife's cousin and his friend came back, but the friend I had extended the invitation to didn't come as she hadn't responded to the cousin's message. 

We had a lovely dinner (which we prepared whilst everyone was still out) and continued talking throughout the evening, very naturally. They remained a few hours, and we had some birthday gift exchanges as well. 

I had offered to accompany them to the airport with local buses, but they said they'd be okay and I just gave them the information on the lines. As it turned out, it was a good call, as I'm quite exhausted today and need to take things easily, and rest. 

All in all, this weekend was a massive series of exposures, meetings lots of new faces and interacting a bit, or a lot, with several ; 4 to be precise. I did so with an automated level of exposure, not feeling the weight of an exercise with these 4 people,  and although I felt the rest of it quite challenging and experienced difficulties maintaining my strength due to constant movements, and a lot of noise during Saturday's party, it was still a huge series of victories and proof that with patience, support and working in CBT have brought me to this point where I can attend parties, with the hope to improve on my issues further, continuing to work my exposures, even after I'll be done with CBT for social phobia in 3 weeks. 

There is hope, you'll need patience, a proper therapist in most cases, a lot of personal work, and support from family and/or friends, and the mental health community at large can remind you that you're not alone and that fighting and powering through struggles can bring you much farther than you can imagine. Stick with it, it's really worth it ! 

Recovery and healing are possible, especially from phobias. They might be less than 100% in many cases, but that doesn't mean that you cannot get to a point where life is a lot more bearable and functional, because these are more than possible.