The Stress Buffet

As part of my ongoing quest to reach mental nirvana, I have recently started attending Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. It's going really well and I'm finding it so interesting getting to the bottom of what has been happening in my brainbox for the past few years.

For the first time I feel really confident that soon I might stop worrying about EVERYTHING, rediscover my sense of adventure and finally find some inner peace. Ommmmmm.

In order to achieve this blissful zen-like state of mind, however, I now have to put my body through something of a mental-health Krypton Factor by attending meditation classes, doing actual exercise (yawn), eating properly (double yawn), going to weekly CBT sessions, and my personal favourite - taking part in a 6 week Stress Control Course (or "Stress Buffet" as I prefer to call it), which started this week.

Now before all you normal people start rolling your eyes like it's some kind of new-age self-help group, it's actually a series of very interesting lectures all about the science of stress, depression and anxiety and how to keep them in check.

It did make me laugh though when an entire room full of people with stress issues were asked to shout out physical symptoms of stress. About ten minutes and two flip-chart pages later, the course leader finally managed to move on to the next part of the talk.

Mr G laughed too, when I came home and proclaimed that my constant itchiness was yet another symptom of my anxiety.

Anyway, it was really good and I'm looking forward to seeing the results soon - although I have started worrying what I'll write about once I have learned to stop "catastrophising"...