Monday, November 12th has arrived.
My husband and I have a meeting with Dr. G first and she tells us what she will
be doing with her for the next few hours. She also explains that we will all
meet again for the last 45 minutes so that our daughter can teach us everything
she learns. This will be helpful for us, and for her, and for Dr. G so she
knows that she is grasping things.
We arrive back for our meeting and learn a lot from our daughter about the specific physiological responses of the body when it is anxious and in fight or flight mode. This helps her to understand why her head hurts, hands sweat, stomach hurts, hands go numb, heart races and all of the other things that happen when she is anxious. She is taught how to scan her body and really sit with and feel her physiological responses instead of being scared of them. They also work on understanding an anxiety scale and how to rate the anxiety in specific situations. On paper, it looks like a thermometer. 0, no anxiety, and 8 being the highest level of anxiety.
We are so impressed with how much she has learned and the way in which she is able to teach us. She had learned some of this in the past with Dr. T, but not in such an intense and school like manner. They had papers all over the table they had been working on. Towards the end, Dr. G starts to talk to her about the next steps they will be taking. Not specifics, but just generally about how people have to face their fears when they are scared of something. She tells her that tomorrow they are going to be detectives. I can see her starting to get a bit nervous. I start sweating, too. I know the next steps and I am afraid I will be having to physically place my child in the car to get her here when things start getting more intense.
We have a nice talk in the car on the way home and we tell her how proud of her we are. We talk about how Dr. G is so young and cute and likeable and how she wants to be psychologist just like her someday. Little did she know that she was not going to have such kind words about the Dr. in a few days...
We arrive back for our meeting and learn a lot from our daughter about the specific physiological responses of the body when it is anxious and in fight or flight mode. This helps her to understand why her head hurts, hands sweat, stomach hurts, hands go numb, heart races and all of the other things that happen when she is anxious. She is taught how to scan her body and really sit with and feel her physiological responses instead of being scared of them. They also work on understanding an anxiety scale and how to rate the anxiety in specific situations. On paper, it looks like a thermometer. 0, no anxiety, and 8 being the highest level of anxiety.
We are so impressed with how much she has learned and the way in which she is able to teach us. She had learned some of this in the past with Dr. T, but not in such an intense and school like manner. They had papers all over the table they had been working on. Towards the end, Dr. G starts to talk to her about the next steps they will be taking. Not specifics, but just generally about how people have to face their fears when they are scared of something. She tells her that tomorrow they are going to be detectives. I can see her starting to get a bit nervous. I start sweating, too. I know the next steps and I am afraid I will be having to physically place my child in the car to get her here when things start getting more intense.
We have a nice talk in the car on the way home and we tell her how proud of her we are. We talk about how Dr. G is so young and cute and likeable and how she wants to be psychologist just like her someday. Little did she know that she was not going to have such kind words about the Dr. in a few days...
