On moving forward, these are all really helpful points and I can also understand the setbacks:
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Originally Posted by Sannah
It is true that if you want to be a different person just start acting like who you want to be.
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Originally Posted by pachyderm
What are you going to do with the rest of your life?
That's something I am thinking about...
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Originally Posted by zooropa
I'm going back to school next month, after 20 years. I don't know exactly what it is that made me decide now is the time, but I do know that having that sort of plan for the future is new for me and is helping me as I go through some really difficult trauma processing in therapy.
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Originally Posted by WePow
I had my first T once ask me a question that ticked me off big time.
"What would it look like for you to live a single day without a conscious memory of any past trauma?"
I told my T that and he said "What would it feel like for you to go a single hour without conscious recollection of the trauma?" I told him I thought that would be the best hour of my life. He then had me feel harder on it and I realized there was another feeling there - fear and terrror.
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Originally Posted by sunrise
I guess my point is that you don't have to quit therapy just because you are ready to do positive things in your life.
For me, the big thing now is changing careers and going back to school. I cleared a lot of negative stuff out of my life. There would be a hole if I didn't have something new. Another motivator is that I'm not a youngster anymore. I don't want to end up at an advanced age looking back and having regrets: "I wish I had done this, and I wish I hadn't done that, etc." I feel that the time for me is now or never.
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Originally Posted by Sannah
Make a plan and get started. When things come up that get in your way, this is what you need to work on in order to keep moving forward.
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I guess my question here would be whether you could use anything of the past bad experience and turn that around: in other words, use it productively to move forward. For instance, my experience of trauma is filled with a lot of anger. And I think that anger moves me forward, because I want to feel that I can be bigger, better, stronger, cleverer, etc. than my abuser. I want to grow and stay healthy to outsurvive him, so to say. So it's a competitive approach: even though you harmed me I win, because I can use that experience to make the world a better place. I know this sounds rather sad but so far that's been my most productive coping mechanism. This is not straightforward and easy either but perhaps less harmful than other coping mechanisms. Has anyone had this experience, and did it work?