"Social anxiety bought on by the menopause"

I found all social situations difficult. I found conversations at work difficult and had lost the confidence to be able to carry out my job properly. I thought this was mainly due to brain fog caused by menopause. HRT did help with this but I was still left with crippling social anxiety.

My doctor referred me to Inclusion service. I completed the group therapy session which were helpful in making me feel less alone and stupid for feel anxious. We were advised about the different types of therapy and I chose cognitive therapy as I felt I just needed my brain retraining. I was referred to a therapist (Anne)

Over the next 20plus weeks she listened to me, asked me thought provoking questions and challenged me.

I was provided with information and systems to look at why I felt the way I did and how to help me analyse and possibly change that. Everything was explained to me and we talked about everything in great depth. My therapist is an amazing listener and always made sure I understood fully everything that she showed me. I was also set homework. lol. Challenges to practice or try out things we had talked about. My relationship with my therapist gave me the confidence to try every challenge she set me. Every challenge was talked about in detail. How I felt about it, what did I think was going to happen and why. The week after the challenge we talked about how I had actually felt and looked at the differences.

Every week I was sent a questionnaire to assess my mood and anxiety levels. This was helpful to the therapist but also to me as it helped me reflect on how I had been feeling. At the beginning of each session my therapist checked how I had been feeling that week. Had the any occasions where I had been able to practice the behaviours and challenges we had talked about? Had anything upset me, set back on my progress. We talked about occasions I had in the future, how I felt about them and why and my therapist would encourage me to use the skills she was advising me about when at these occasions. After these occasions we talked about how they had gone.

I have so much to thank this service, my therapist, for. I have my life back. I have been given so much advice and help, that I have been able to use to find myself again, to pass on to other people too. My words here will probably not give a good enough example of how life changing good therapy was for me. I understand that it may not be for everyone and a lot can depend on finding a therapist that you connect with. I was lucky that that happened with my first therapist.