Session Two - Assessment
03.09.11, 5:17 pm

Huckleberry has been on holiday, hence the break. After we both sit down, he asks me how I have been and I say that I've been fine. I then ask about how holiday and we talk about surfing for a few minutes.

I then confess that I left half of my measurement questionnaires behind when I left last time. These form part of my assessment and are the measurements, i.e. I rate each of the statements on a scale of 1-8 depending on how strongly they apply to me, with 1 equating to 'not at all' and 8 to 'very strongly'. One of the questionnaires is a generic one, and has generic statements such as, 'I no longer enjoy the things I used to enjoy before' and 'I cry a lot more than I used to'. The other questionnaire is one geared toward health anxiety, and asks things such as, 'I avoid going to hospitals' and 'I worry about my health more than ordinary people'.

Huckleberry decides that I'd better complete the questionnaires that I left behind, and so I spend the first ten minutes or so filling them and adding up my scores. Huckleberry looks through them and remarks that I don't score very highly at all. This is interesting � protocol states that the person complete the measurements before and after CBT treatment, and that hopefully then the decreasing score points towards the treatment being successful.

'It's fine, though,' says Huckleberry. 'You don't score highly now, so I don't think comparing the two scores will be helpful in your case as the score is unlikely to change that much. It's nothing to worry about � we'll just need to try and measure the treatment in some other way.' He then reads through my answers and says, 'From what I can see, and from talking to you last week and this week, you don't appear to have a generalised health anxiety � you're not a hypochondriac. What you have is a very specific health anxiety linked to traumatic experiences in your past.'

This pleases me � I don't want to have a generalised health anxiety. That sounds like it would be a complete and utter bloody nightmare.

'With regard to your past and the two deaths,' says Huckleberry, 'I'm very conscious that I don't want to open a can of worms. I do think that you have a lot of unexpressed and quite complex grief there, and so what I'd like to do is - at the end of the CBT sessions � bring up the subject again, and if you do want to talk to a specialist grief counsellor then I can arrange that for you. Sound okay?' I agree, and am secretly relieved that I won't have to talk about my backstory any more. All it does is make me feel depressed.

We begin the second part of the assessment, which is looking at the extent and particulars of my problem. This is so as to understand how everything in the problem links together, and to then get an idea of how far the problem has spread into other areas of my life. Huckleberry asks me about the geographical locations where dealing with my ectopics is more difficult. I list work (difficult to distract myself as I have things I must do; work is a stressful environment in itself; almost all of my colleagues don't know I have a problem), exercise (goes hand-in-hand with ectopics) and driving (HATE HATE HATE).

Finally, Huckleberry asks me to go see my GP and obtain a letter from her stating that my ectopics are benign, and that he is free to basically induce them in a controlled environment without risk of legal action. This all sounds hideously unfun, but then again, CBT is not meant to be fun. After that, we say goodbye and I wait for James to come and pick me up, feeling slightly as if we're still to actually make any progress.

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