Being Blind and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

I was lucky enough to visit the Dialog Museum (http://www.dialogue-in-the-dark.com/) earlier this month. I went with colleagues from work so we were in a relatively large group. You go into the museum and everything is completely black. You have a guide for the group who is blind and leads you through the exhibition. It was a brilliant experiance. I did not stop talking for the whole hour, I may have pissed people off because of it but in reflection I would not have swapped the experiance for anything.

It really made me reflect on social anxiety. If I sit there and do nothing and say nothing it makes me disabled. Taking away my vision and making me rely on talking to others to know where to go and having to use my voice to comunicate was enlightening. I could not watch and follow so I had to talk and ask.

As most of my job involves working on the telephone I may as well be blind in my dealings with other people. I need to speak up and ask for help when needed. Today I had a break through on applying the cognitive behavioral therapy I learned some years ago. I started to worry that my management were discussing me and both planning what to say to me and when to deal with me as I was being needy. I asked one if they were coordinating their responses and when he said no I was able to completely break that cycle of automatic negative thoughts :o).