I guess that, a really good therapist will undertake tasks alongside us. If it is fear of train or bus travel, the therapist will go through the experience alongside us, themselves gradually, over several journeys, distancing themselves from us, a further away seat on the same train/bus, until we gloriously achieve doing the ride/task without the therapist there at all. We become, over time, eventually able to ‘fly solo’ so to speak.
My therapist visited the public convenience at the same time as myself. We both touched the toilet cistern handle, then the seat, then actually got to a point where I could exit the room without actually washing my hands, and opening the door using the handle to exit. I couldn’t deal with this at the time, it took a lot of attempts. It probably took at least a dozen. Now, sometime later, I realise that as most people don’t wash their hands anyway, and that I’m not responsible for the tummies of everyone else, I can now, use the loo, wash hands, and pull the doors open to exit the loos, without panic. I’m actually doing more than most… Just remember that each time you see somebody exiting a public convenience, and you don’t see them drying their hands on their clothes, or hear those noisy hand-dryers…
A good therapist will set tasks for us to do, in order to desentisise the fear we feel.
There are some tasks that even I won’t do, but these days, I am mostly able to live a ‘normal’ life. I cement my therapy by watching people in shopping centres, restaurants, and suchlike.
Door handles, compulsive checking… Just once is enough, anymore is overkill, and liable to make us do it until we literally cannot stop. And that sort of thing gets in the way of living a ‘normal’ life.
If someone else doesn’t ever wash their hands, then that is their problem, not mine.
A good therapist will enable us to get free of excessive washing and checking…
Just once, because once is always enough… Sometimes twice, but never more…
Wannabe
