Excited and scared

[mrsukyankee]

I just had my last moment in my office yesterday evening.  I've been a school counsellor for the past sixteen years.  I've been doing some extra training and decided this year to finally take the plunge - I'm now going to be a private therapist.  The counselling team at my school is excited as we're low on CBT therapists (cognitive-behavioural therapy) and I already had my first private therapy session with a student (not one I've worked with in the past).  I'm so excited about the challenge but also nervous about not having a set salary.  So anyway - if anyone has questions about therapy, please feel free to ask (not in US so can't answer anything about paying for it).  I can't diagnose but I could always give you ideas on how to start working on anxiety (as that is my specialty).

[snickers]

Exciting!

[wise_rita]

I didn't know this! Cool, congrats! Good luck on the new gig. You'll do great.

[Yankees21]

Congrats! Good for you for taking that step.

[dulcemariamar]

Congrats! I have pretty bad anxiety about flying and I have six flights this summer. Do you have any suggestions on how to work on it? My Lo is still pretty little but I really want to work on it before she gets older and can pick up on it. TIA

[elenetxu]

Congratulations! That's thrilling news. If you ever expand down my way, let me know! I've got a DH with serious anxiety and would love an English speaking therapist to help me help him

[daisybuchannan]

That's wonderful!

[Deleted]

What do you tell your type A students that struggle with test anxiety? You know the type - those that are prepared, know the information but literally wig during testing because of the fear of failure? Do you have any advice besides deep breathing, regular exercise and a good nights sleep?

ETA: Also Congratulations! 

[kaybee85]

Congratulations and good luck with this next step

[mrsukyankee]

Jun 23, 2013 7:23:12 GMT -5 dulcemariamar said:

Congrats! I have pretty bad anxiety about flying and I have six flights this summer. Do you have any suggestions on how to work on it? My Lo is still pretty little but I really want to work on it before she gets older and can pick up on it. TIA

Anxiety is definitely something to work on, though you don't have too much time to work on it (I usually take at least 6 session).  What I would start off by doing are relaxation visualisations.  My favourite one is this: take a few deep breathes, breathing from your diaphragm (your stomach goes in and out), now imagine that your body is filled up with anxious air which has a bad colour and the outside world is filled with calm air which is a lovely calming colour.  As you breathe out, imagine the bad colour going into a balloon, filling it up.  As you breathe in, imagine yourself filling up with the cool, calming colour.  Keep going until you can feel your body relaxed and filled with the calm colour.  Imagine tying off the balloon and letting it go, floating away.

Now - once you are good at this, start imagining you are going to the airport...if you start feeling anxious, stop and do the breathing exercise.  Once relaxed, go back to imagining this again.  Do all the steps of the flight through, stopping whenever you feel anxious and do deep breathing.  Don't do the entire flight in one fell swoop - spread this out over a period of time.  If you can get your brain to relax while doing it, it will relax better when you are actually going on the flight.  This is not the entire sequence, but in the time you have, it should help.  Good luck!

[mrsukyankee]

Jun 23, 2013 9:03:16 GMT -5 hungrycaterpillar said:

What do you tell your type A students that struggle with test anxiety? You know the type - those that are prepared, know the information but literally wig during testing because of the fear of failure? Do you have any advice besides deep breathing, regular exercise and a good nights sleep?

ETA: Also Congratulations! 

We work on the deep breathing exercises I showed just above.  We then work through doing relaxation exercises in small steps - applying them before their fav homework, then less fav homework, then the homework of the subject they do the worst in.  We then apply the relaxation to the pre-class ritual, then to quizzes, and then on to tests.  This is done over about 6-8 weeks usually and the kids come out in a much better state.  We keep practicing this over time and we also go over good test taking tips (including, don't stop at any question that seems tough, skip it and move on to those you definitely know - come back to the tough ones at the end so they don't influence your test as much as normal).

[mrsukyankee]

Jun 23, 2013 8:23:04 GMT -5 mekiakoo said:

Good luck! So you're still working at the school too?

Nope, I took the big leap and quit my job at the school.  This is why it's so scary!  So I'll be going to school for myself 1-2x a week (depending on the programme), working at the university 1 day a week and doing as much private practice work as I can around this.

Thanks all for the encouragement!