My appt with T this week we talked about my feelings of being NOT normal and how that colors my view of the world, or at least my world. It makes me feel like an outsider to the human race somehow. And I should clarify, when I am talking about how not "normal" I feel, I am referring to how I feel when I am depressed or have anxiety (the two usually go hand-in-hand.)

When I am depressed it's like somebody has slipped a pair of distorted glasses on my brain. Things I know to be true, I doubt. I question myself at every turn. I don't trust my feelings, thoughts or emotions because they all feel out of proportion.

I know I am no more special than anybody else walking around. I don't have this idea that I am somehow special because of what I have been through. I do however feel and believe that I don't cope as well as most "normal" people.

In part because of my childhood, and in part because if some significant trauma I have experienced I coped with what would be "normal" life events for everybody else by going into survival mode. I coped using the only coping methods I knew how-most of them not healthy. I learned these at a VERY early age, and they have become part of who I am. How do you change that?

So, if I am truly "normal" as my T puts it, all I need to do is replace those unhealthy ways of coping with healthy ones. Easy, right?

Hardly, and he acknowledges that. In a way, it goes back to that "Do better" phrase that we talked about several weeks ago. It's making healthier decisions. It's asking for help. It's about being mindful.