A.M.A.A. - Ask Moonface Anything, Again

[Karo]

You definitely should be able to achieve all of those! and you already have been achieving at that last one.

[Moonface]

Well school will happen just as soon as I finish my application. Unfortunately my mental state and also lingering trauma make it harder than it has any right to be to make the submission. I'd like to fix my mental state this year too because it gets tiring having a constant struggle at seeing things as going well and constantly questioning if I could be doing more or whatever.

[Karo]

Well personally Moony I feel like your doing more than enough here and you keep being an awesome friend. I know how it can feel sucky when you feel like you aren't doing enough, but I do believe you are.

If you are able to try to consider what classes you are taking if you are doing all art classes like me the work load can be pretty intense so this term I'm doing a lot of the art histories I need to get done.

[Moonface]

Oh I definitely don't want a huge workload. I don't ever want to be doing homework past midnight again like I did all the time when I last did university. x.x

[Karo]

Yeah that can definitely lead to burn out! There are some subjects where I feel like I kinda struggled to grasp so for those I am definitely going to try to reduce my work loads for this. Moony I hope your time in college will be a nice and fun experience this time and not a nightmare like last time. >.<

[Moonface]

Well so far for my prerequisites the experience was overall pleasant, and there is far more freedom in the American college system than there is in the UK university system which helps me avoid being stuck in bad situations.

[Karo]

So as I accidentally messaged you during a therapy session I got to thinking when it comes to therapy I feel like I know actually very little about it as I never ever went to one.

How does a therapy session usually go and do you have set goals your work toward during these sessions or is it just kinda like you go to talk about whatever your feeling at the moment?

And how do you decide how often you should go to a session?

I hope these are okay to ask I am honestly curious about the process cause I feel like I could benefit from going, but money tend to be an issue for me.

[Moonface]

You're fine for asking, I'm not fussed about sharing. XD

Generally my therapy sessions are that if I have something to talk about at that moment that's important, then that comes first. Since my therapy is for anxiety/depression, I'll be asked how my week was and what's better/different and if everything is good, then that is just viewed as I had a good week without a problem and so we move straight on to continuing with the stuff we're working on, which for me is things such as CBT and changing the way I view things or techniques to keep my anxiety low and how to approach things such as if someone has upset me, rather than accuse them and make them become defensive as a result, instead you use this thing called BIFF which keeps the entire thing as neutral as possible.

If however I said my week was bad, then we cover that instead so we can address what was wrong, what I can do in future, or how I can feel better about it. For example when we had to put down Shira's cat, that rocked me hard and my therapist spent an entire session just helping me get through that and put all of the other stuff to the side.

When it comes to goals, it's just an end goal for me. Everything leading up to it could be viewed as small goals, but those goals are more learning different things that collectively make up the end goal. If I were to use smoking as an example, then the way my therapy works is I wouldn't set a goal of "Don't have x amount of cigarettes this week" but just have an end goal of "Stop smoking", and each week would be working on things that help me avoid cravings or something that assist in getting the number of cigarettes I smoke down. Equated to my therapy, that's getting the number of anxiety/depression episodes down.

However, this is for my therapist. Shira has a therapist too, and hers is different to mine because my therapy is for CBT, and Shira's is not. I've had two sessions with her therapist, and in those sessions it started out with us both being asked what we think can be done to improve our environment (the house), and write those down. We'd then share our lists to see where we both saw a problem and where person A saw a problem that may not have been seen by person B. Then it went into coming up with a plan to deal with one problem, which for us was to tidy the dining room, and then that gradually will increase to more rooms, more tasks, etc. So for that, there's more concrete goals but it still fits the similar mold of small goals that collectively make up the end goal.

Onto how often you go, that is never determined by you but by the therapist. If it's really bad, you could be asked to do twice a week, but generally it seems to be once a week is the starting point, and then as you progress your therapist will propose going to biweekly, and then monthly, etc.

For cost, hard to say because everywhere is going to be different but my therapist charges $85 with no insurance, and the person Shira and I see who determines our medication charges $75 with no insurance. I don't know what Shira's therapist charges though.

[Mr EliteL]

Now it's your turn, Happy Birthday Moony!

Screw the dumb unnecessary occurrences that have happened recently. I hope today is much better for you and can enjoy it to the fullest!

[Karo]

Happy Birthday Moony I hope you have a great one!

What did you do today and what did you get? (Please do wait until the day is over before answering as if its like 3 P.M. there still day left!)

[Moonface]

I only just got off shift so I haven't done much that I'd want to do for my birthday yet. No idea what I'm going to do or what I'm getting until I get home.

[Karo]

So Moony what did you end up doing for your bday after work?

[Maniakkid25]

Ah gawd, guess I'm late again. Happy day after birfday, Moony. Hope it was decent, plz. Don't hate me for not wishing ppls happy birfdays, btw.

[ShiraNoMai]

I got the IRL privilege of spending the rest of his birthday in person so ha! I'll let him detail his gifts, cuz I believe I may be the only one to have given him non-consumable things at this point.

I gave him three options for an outing that night I came home: 1) Dinner out, small dessert; 2) Dessert out, Dinner in; 3) Local arcade, arcade food/dessert meals. He was a little exhausted, so 3 was out of the cards; 1 was on the table until we learned the restaurant I was gonna take him to closed at 8 (seriously, what restaurants do this?!): so option 2 it was! Took him to a local ice cream shop that's one of the oldest businesses in the city we're in. They were exceptionally good

[Mr EliteL]

Well at least one of those options ended up being fine instead of all three going caputs. Unlucky about the restaurant, but yeah what the heck? Is that the normal time they close or somehow not?