12 • MY LAST COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY SESSION

It’s sad but true…everything must come to an end. Thursday was my last Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) session with my therapist Sophia, and I felt so sad saying bye to her for the last time. I’ve been seeing her every other Thursday morning for the past few months, and I’m going to miss her so much. She is such a nice person, and as the time went on, I felt more and more comfortable around her.

I’m so thankful she entered my life when she did, and I’ll never forget her, she helped me so much! I started thinking about trying CBT last year, and at first I put it off, but it was strange because CBT kept popping up in books I was reading, and when my Dr randomly mentioned it without me saying anything, I decided it was a sign and so I then made it my goal to ring them up and book a session.

After a few months wait, I received a letter saying I would be seeing Sophia… that moment, I knew it was destiny. Of all the names in the universe, for her to be named Sophia, it just felt like destiny, and made me smile so hard! This was going to be a connection from one Sophie to another lol

I’ve found Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to be fantastically helpful, it is a lot of hard work, and in a way I find it very similar to meditation in that you have to slot it into your daily routine and become very self aware of your bad habits etc., but in a good way. You have to write and analysis your thoughts and feelings, and just like when you finish a piece of Art, you have to critique yourself. You’re not trying to pick out your faults to beat yourself up, but to understand them, and come up with solutions and new ways of thinking that you than practice over and over again to build new positive habits.

When I walked out of there on Thursday I actually had tears forming in my eyes but I forced them back in, only because I didn’t want to get on the bus with red eyes lol In a way it is nice I guess that I felt like that way about Sophia, shows how important she was to me, and we may meet again, you never know! One of her final words of advice was that she has seen an increase in my confidence and that I myself have been responsible for my improvements, accepting my femininity, accepting who I really am and in starting to face my social anxiety head on, so I need to make sure I always remember that.

As much as other people can try to guide you, you’re the only one who has the power to change.