Anyone can say 'I love you'. 'I love you' doesn't take any effort. Someone could easily say those words, then turn around and cheat on their spouse. 'I love you' is really just a string of words that we as a society has agreed upon to verbally communicate affection, but what significance does it have when that is the extent of your affection. 

Often, nonverbal communication is much more effective at conveying emotions and intent than is communication through the verbal channel. For example, you could verbally communicate, "fuck you!" But the intent of that verbal cue could be drastically different depending on what non-verbal cues come with it. If you it is paired with an angry, red face, the intent is negative. If it's paired with a laugh or a smile, it's a positive. It's the same with, "I love you."

Words only have meaning when you have actions that correspond with it. It's easy just to say a few words and be done - but showing those feelings in our actions every day is much more difficult.

 If you truly love someone, you will never need to tell them.

On Monday 14th 2016, I went to Walters Psychology Clinic at Toowong to see Dr Chong. I was incredibly nervous, my heart rate was 20-30 bpm higher than my resting heart rate for at least 2 hours before I walked into the clinic. I started to get clammy while in the waiting room, and I could hear my heart in my ear while I called mum for my Medicare number. Dr Chong came out and greeted me. He gave me a happy-chappy impression, which surprisingly put me more at ease. We went into the room and started to do a bit of paperwork before we went into the talking. To him, I was probably visibly nervous, so he started to talk to me and ask me questions, rather than expecting me to dish everything out on my own. I was honestly quite lost of words at this point. 

He commented on my UQ psyc shirt and asked me about school and what I'm interested in. I told him I want to either be in a chair similar to his, or maybe in a research lab, but it's not something I've made up my mind on. He asked me who far in I am, I told him I just finished my second year subjects, so I'm going into my 3rd year of my degree. I assume he guessed that I had some experience with clinical psychology, as he started to talk to me, he would pause and allow me to finish his sentence. And again, holly shit did it make me more relaxed. I remember thinking, "This mother fucker is damn good at what he does, I'm in good hands for sure."

From there on, it was a smooth transition into questions about me. What really impressed me was that rather than asking me, "what's wrong," he gave me a check list of symptoms related to anxiety, depression and stress to fill out. I had to read down the page and tick whatever was applicable. There was a section that I ticked almost every single box. What a surprise right? (Sarcasm)

He started asking questions based on those ticked boxes. He told me what that was for was for him to know the symptoms so that we don't waste time as I try to remember things. As we continued to talk, he continued to jot notes down, and he continued to ask more questions in finer detail. Eventually he came to a question of

"What do you think will make this better? After you answer this, I will tell you what I think is the problem"

I sat there, completely blank. Eventually, I replied,

"To be honest, I don't know what or if there is anything that can make it better. No matter how much I've sat an thought about it, I can't come up with something. All I do is hope that with repeated exposure, I'd eventually become habituated to the feel."

I saw Dr Chong write down the letters 'IDK'. He stood up, walked towards the white board, and said, "This is what I think it is," as he proceeded to write.

GAD

"Generalised Anxiety Disorder"

After nodding, he explained to me the condition and ran me through a few treatment options. He knew I was familiar with the general outline of these treatments. I think I was being visibly restless about the idea. The appointment ended and honestly, all I wanted to do was just sit somewhere, curl up and be a puddle.

Denne and I went to run some errands and my ingredients to make dinner. We went back to my place before going back to Denne's because he wanted mint leaves because he wanted to make a drink for me. While at my place, Mum asked Denne and I to deliver some clothes to grandma's house so that she can donate it to charity. We stayed for a few minutes to talk to uncle and aunty and see how Tayden was doing. We then dropped the ingredients to Denne's house before Denne drove me up to Mount Gravatt lookout for some quality time. He was very determined to do so, maybe because he saw that I really needed it. On the way there, I began to get very panicky and upset after realizing how many people are actually there to see the "Super moon." It took us a bit to get up the hill, and as we go closer, I go more worked up. Denne grabbed my hand and told me that it was something he wanted to do for me and it wasn't something I should feel bad about. 

As we go up to the lookout, someone pulled out right in front of us, and bam we got a parking spot.

We sat there for a considerable amount of time, just talking away. I thanked him for the day and for him being so patient with me. 

I came home later in the night. As I laid in my bed, a huge sense of dread about my mental illness started to overwhelm me. I began to cry while texting Denne on facebook. He reassured me that things will only get better at this point. We both said our good nights and went about our nights. I turned on a video to help me sleep, but my head was running a million miles a hour. Needless to say, ended up falling asleep quite late that night.