Discovering CBT

Wendy Favorito, living with arthritis

For some reason I don't know if it was that shift  in life in terms of going from University and  entering the workforce but I just found that  my pain was really um overbearing and really  overwhelming in my thinking processes and I I  enhance that I probably had a degree of depression  at that time I was really fortunate I had a family  friend who was a GP and in talking to her about  how I was feeling she suggested that I meet with  a psychiatrist so up until that point my pain  management had really consisted of pain medication  and there had been no attention given to my emotional and psychological well-being and how I  was coping with that that lifetime of living with  severe pain so I met with a psychiatrist which in itself was quite a big thing because I think  sometimes there's that stigma around psychiatry and it's one of the best things that I've ever  done and through this doctor he discussed with  me the idea of using cognitive behaviour therapy. I have to say it was one of the most challenging  experiences that I'd ever been through because  for me the idea of CBT is that it taught me to  challenge my negative thought processes and the  subsequent behaviours that I was carrying out as a  result of that negative thinking I found that CBT  wasn't um once I learned it wasn't a difficult  tool or skill to then apply beyond the treatment  sessions and I know this sounds funny but it  really set me free so the example that really  sticks with me is that before I learned CBT I felt  that because my joints were so sore and so swollen  I felt that when I went into public that people  were looking at me and it skewed my thinking so  much that it had a two-fold effect I withdrew  socially but when I did go out I covered up  as much as I could so in summer I always  wore long sleeves and long pants to cover  my joints as much as possible and through  the process of learning CBT it challenged  my thinking about I guess the reality of were  people really looking at me and if they were  looking at me what were the consequences  of that I stopped covering myself up and I felt  more confident to go in public and I resumed  socializing and I felt like I got my life back.

Learning CBT

Wendy Favorito, living with arthritis

It didn't take me long to learn at all I think my number of appointments with the specialist was less than 10 and I practiced between each appointment he gave me set exercises to do  so for example one of my big challenges was going  out in public and in particular catching a bus I  felt that for some reason about being in a closed  space on a bus I felt that everyone was staring  at my joints and I could see that I was disabled  and so he would ask me to deliberately catch a bus  and to not cover my joints up and to think about  the thought processes I was experiencing at that  time and were people really looking at me and did it really matter if they did notice that  I had a disability and so he got me to practice  the skills in everyday functional tasks.