The kitchen is closed: night 2
I have given up eating between 11pm and 7am for Lent.
Night 2 of going cold turkey then. I made it through once again quite well. I got up at 1am to go to the loo and afterwards managed to take the first door on the right (back to the bedroom) instead of the second (into the office to check emails/read feeds/search YouTube for the video for that song that was so popular when I was fourteen and that I absolutely must watch now).
I have to say I was particularly tired last night and fell asleep at around 10pm, which of course helped. When I got up this morning my mood kept swinging from a feeling of achievement to one that instead made me say 'bugger - it looks like I will have to relinquish yet another certainty about myself that I have been convinced I would never succeed in changing'.
To make it all worse, I know that I will eventually have to agree with Dr B. that he was right all along, and if you have ever seen his 'That's right; I was' face, you will understand that I'd sooner go hammer thumbtacks under my fingernails.
I had the very same moodswings after I had a few CBT sessions in early 2004. That's Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, not the painful fetish that the acronym can also stand for.
At risk of oversimplifying, CBT consists in analysing your behaviour, finding patterns, and ultimately figuring out that there are several other options apart from the one that is not being too good for us. To do that you have to be very alert to all the triggers in order to see the thunderstorm coming and whip up the umbrella before getting too soaked.
CBT can give impressive results in a very short time, but in more complex cases cannot replace psychotherapy - the long and painful process to acquire that umbrella in the first place.
I hope this description is not too far off the mark. That's how I understood it and it worked for me.
Anyways. As I told my Cognitive Behavioural Therapist at the time, right after a particularly cathartic moment:
Damn. I used to wallow in the conviction that things could not be changed and bask in the very despair that was ruining me. Now I cannot do it any longer. I cannot seem to fool myself. It does not work any more. YOU HAVE BROKEN IT!
He was very well aware that I was in fact very pleased with the breakthrough (it turned out in fact to be a watershed moment that cast light onto myself and allowed me to move further), and he joined me with a broad and pleased smile.
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