A Room With Blue Chairs.

Yesterday evening I pulled up in my car, parked on the right side of the road and waited for my mum. As soon as she arrived I got out of my car and we walked into a big bright building together.
Turning left into a room I handed over a form, signed us both in and collected the booklets handed to me. Saying thank you we walked to find a seat.
We commented on how we, as people, always spread ourselves out and won't sit near other people unless we really need to.
Rows of blue chairs, not the most comfortable chairs we realised after an hour and a half of sitting on them, some occupied with gaps of two chairs empty and then another person.
The room is filled with both men and women, everyone varying in age, some sitting alone and some, like me, sitting with someone they have taken as support.

We are all there for the same reason.

Stress. 

We all want to learn how to control, not cure, our stress.
We sit and learn about what the 6 week course will entail. We touch on the different varieties of stress and what causes it. Most commonly being depression and anxiety.

As the lady running the course talks I couldn't help but to get distracted with my thoughts sometimes and looked around the room. I wondered what each person's main problem could be. Why were they here? How severe is their stress? Are they depressed? Anxious? Dependant on alcohol? Are they taking medication for their stress? Have they been to therapy before? Is this their last resort? Do they work? How old are they? Do they have children?

It was nice, yet kind of odd, to know there were people in the room who were feeling the same as me in some way or another. Even if not understanding how or what I feel at least understanding that feeling of "I need help".

It's hard sitting in a room full of people. When you feel judged anyway there is nothing like going to a stress control group where you know others will be looking at you wondering why you are there.
I find it really easy to write about my feelings and thoughts but find it hard to talk about. Sitting in a room with others, although we don't talk we just listen, really takes me out of my comfort zone. I really feel like I'm putting myself out there, I guess kind of like an AA meeting, and even though we are all their for the same reason, you can still feel really alone and embarressed I guess.

The lady running the group talked about different types of stress, effects of stress, how people are stressed over different things, how we react, what we think and ways of coping.
The course goes on for 6 weeks and in each session we focus on different things.

1. Learning about stress.
2. Controlling your body.
3. Controlling your thoughts.
4. Controlling your actions.
5. Controlling panic.
6. Controlling sleep and the future.

I really want to write about this as I learn. We went home with some work books and I'm hoping to write about this as I go along.
There are a few things she talked about which I didn't quite agree with which I want to write about too.

I'm not expecting to be cured of depression and anxiety, but if this can help me to understand it more, and to maybe cope a little bit better, then it's totally worth it.

And if it doesn't help at all, then at least I tried.