Week Two

So, I've now had my second CBT session. This one involved reviewing my last session, then looking at some of the 'situations' I recorded as homework. I was also asked to fill in another form like the one I filled out last week, which was very similar to the one I filled out when I first saw the 'Gateway Worker' who assessed me as needing CBT. I scored lower on this form this week, which indicates I coped better this week, I think.

I presented a lot of issues last week, as you'll know if you read my previous entries. So this time my therapist was trying to help me narrow things down and prioritise and to identify the things that will respond best to the CBT approach. We also discussed those things CBT can't address, and things I need to take concrete action about too, like my financial difficulties.

We settled on my low self-esteem and my requirment to be more assertive as the two biggest priorities, whilst acknowledging the interconnectedness of my issues.


We discussed target setting, using the 'SMART' target model. I came out of the session with one target, which (paraphrasing) is that by session 11 I will be being firm enough with 30% of the people who 'drop-in' on me during working hours to tell them when I don't have time to see them there and then and manipulate the communication in the encounter so that they have to go away and come back at an agreed appointment time.

My therapist is on holiday for two weeks now, so he has asked me to come up with some more SMART targets for myself and to keep recording my 'Situations', though he has given me a different form to use this time which asks me to also record how I behaved in order to cope with the situation.

The other thing my therapist did this session was to talk to me about 'Books on Prescription'. I feel this is so important a topic that I am going to make a separate entry about it.