seeing the guy about being crazy, part 3

So I finished the sessions with the therapy guy. My company buys a benefit that allows five sessions before either a referral or paying the therapist directly; we did four, and my progress was such that we decided to hold one for "if I need it". The stuff that worked:

• Maintaining the exercise & diet disciplines;
• Changing my "self-talk" about the meaning of the experiences related to the worst anxieties;
• Developing and using an affirmation (and I didn't think this one was going to work);
• Journaling;
• Returning to meditation (although I haven't done if often, or frequently, enough).

Meditation, for me, works to reduce anxiety, given two factors: first, I have to be doing it regularly, and second, I can't start a course of meditation while I'm undergoing an ongoing problem with anxiety - I can't maintain the discipline of returning to the focus again and again; instead, the focus of the anxiety takes over. So, now that I'm at comparative peace, it's time to discipline myself to develop the strength to get over the next tough spot.

Therapy works, if you find the right person, and do what you're told.

I've noticed that, instead of being terrified by the situations that caused the anxiety, I've become angry at the injustices I see in them (perhaps unreasonably so). I also see that, over the past year, I've been less willing to continue in situations in which I feel criticized; I left the choral group, for example, over criticism that, it's pretty clear now, was not directed at me, although I didn't know that at the time. I need to be careful of this in future, (and perhaps return to the choral group); I find I have no close friends now except the ones I have through my wife.