Anxious mess

[Headaway]

Sorry, I’ve posted here for traffic.
in the morning me and the dc are going away for a few days with my friend and her dc. When it was booked, I was so up for it. Now I’m dreading it.
I have emetaphobia so will be(always am!) on high alert for the dc getting ill. It’s 2.5 hours drive away so I’m already way out of my comfort zone(we’re travelling separately as we don’t live near each other)
i haven’t slept properly the past week worrying about it. And tonight is no different. I don’t want to go!!

That’s not entirely true. I do want to go. I want to make wonderful memories with my dc, but my stupid brain has been taken over by this ghastly phobia.

If you can push through you would hopefully see that the perceived threat isn’t real. But only you know if you can do it.
When I had severe anxiety I found it helpful to think in the present . So in that 10 minutes nothing bad was happening.. in the next ten minutes nothing bad was happening etc. I discovered bad things rarely happened!

long term though, CBT, hypnotherapy or EMDR could help.

I’ve tried CBT(very recently) and hypnotherapy in the past. What is EMDR? Not heard of that

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitization_and_reprocessing

I wouldn’t rule out hypnotherapy again some practitioners are better than others

EMDR helped me with severe anxiety. It kind of shifted things for me that I was stuck in.

I would love to try it again. The last attempt was around 15 years ago and it did help. It’s so expensive though

It really is. I found a therapist offering 6 free sessions through a charity but unfortunately it didn’t help. I then paid a different therapist who was amazing but £75 a time! And that was 7 years ago. It’s a shame it’s not on NHS.

I’ve recently been quoted £80 per session. Single mum over here, so that’s not an option