Seeing a new therapist for my anxiety

Hey guys! One thing I really haven't written about on here yet is about my general anxiety. I guess I was busy blogging about Tourette's and OCD! Anyway I have a lot of generalized anxiety since I do have GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) and lately my anxiety has been getting worse here in college with all the new stress. I worry about a lot of things on an almost constant basis such as my friends, my grades, my family, and my own health and sleep. Lately since i'm in college i've had a lot of anxiety about friends and grades in particular.

I worry and am anxious about if my new friends really do like me and really consider me to be one of their friends. I worry about if they think my tics are annoying or if they wish I would stop but can't say anything to me because they know I have Tourette's. I worry if they will get fed up with my tics and eventually will decide they don't want to put up with it anymore. I worry that they don't view me as they view other people but instead view me as a person with a disorder/disability. Even though I really have no proof that they think these things and these thoughts just come from my own head I still worry about them a lot. I also worry that they don't think I'm mature enough or interesting enough and will eventually decide they just don't like my personality.

I also worry about my grades and homework and studying. Sometimes just doing my homework causes so much anxiety that I avoid doing it and just surf the internet or working on the documentary or being on facebook. I know, that's really bad. I do it eventually, but I don't spend as much time on it as I could have and I don't try as hard as I know I could. I know I could be studying harder and doing more work but its just too anxiety provoking for me. Even though I'm at a very prestigious college and am getting pretty decent grades, I know I am capable of even more but I just don't want to push myself that far right now because of my anxiety.

All of this anxiety makes me feel really tense all the time. Sometimes I feel like I can't breathe very well because my throat is so tight and the muscles around my throat, face, and neck are so tight. I clench my jaw really tight as well which I'm not sure if this is a tic or a result of my anxiety. I've also been having a lot of trouble sleeping lately because of my anxiety. I don't want to try to fall asleep because the process of falling asleep causes so much anxiety for me so I stay up until 12 or 12:30 just avoiding turning off the lights and putting my lap top away. Then once I do start trying to sleep my tics get really bad from being anxious, I worry that I am bothering other people in the dorm, I worry that I won't get enough sleep and that i'll be tired the next day, I trash in my bed and can't stop my brain from thinking in circles about things that make me anxious because there is nothing to do except lie there. It takes me between 2 and 3 hours to actually go to sleep and then once I am asleep I have these awful nightmares. Luckily I usually stay asleep until the morning though.

Then the next day i'm tired and take a nap but when I take a nap I don't have any anxiety about sleeping. I really enjoy the nap but never am able to enjoy sleeping at night.

So anyway the point of all this really was to say that I'm going to be seeing a new therapist/counselor here at my college specifically for my anxiety. I'm actually kind of excited. I haven't had great luck with therapists in the past and I've really only had three therapists that i've actually liked. Well for most people that might sound like a lot but for someone like me who has seen more therapists in their life that they can count that's not very good. Well maybe I actually can count....lets see...I think i've seen 14 therapists in some form or another throughout my life! Wow that's really a lot. I guess I didn't realize I've seen that many therapists in my life. I'm going to have to do a whole different blog post now on all the different therapists i've seen and what I liked about that/didn't like/etc.

Anyway each time I see a new therapist I have high hopes that I'm really going to like them and connect with them and they're really going to understand me like no one else ever has. Maybe I get my hopes up too high really. I haven't had that therapist yet who has changed my life and even though I don't think this new therapist is going to change my life or anything, I am just hoping that she will be someone who will help me lessen all this anxiety i'm dealing with and maybe as an extra bonus she will really understand me and at least be someone I can talk to openly and give me some positive feedback when i'm talking to her. I hope she's nice and I hope she will be able to understand all this stuff I deal with on a level that my peers and parents can't understand.

I'm still seeing a therapist off campus for my OCD but I only see her once a month now on a maintenance program just to make sure i'm maintaining the gains i've made with my exposure therapy but right now i'm not pushing forward with my OCD because in my opinion my OCD is pretty under control right now for the situation i'm in here at college. I know i'll have to do more work with exposure therapy in the future but right now i'm just focusing on college.

I see the new therapist here on campus for the first time this Thursday at 9am. I even am getting up at like 8:30 to go see her so that tells you something. I don't get up at that time of the morning in college like ever but i'm willing to do it for this. I will let you guys know how it goes with her and I will probably do a post about all the various therapists i've had and my experiences with them. Wow that will be a long post. Maybe i'll break it up into a part 1, part 2 kind of thing.