Quote:
Originally Posted by sunrise
I hear that you are not being authentic in the relationship, that you are doing and saying things, even if you don't believe them, just to fix the relationship. ...
It must feel awful to be telling her what you think she wants to hear just for the sake of maintaining the relationship. (Perhaps this is what you mean by self-respect--that it is hard to have self respect if one is not being honest about these things.)
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Sunrise, yes. YES. That is pretty much exactly what I'm feeling, and what I meant by self-respect. I am willing to accept that I do have a lot of, uh, issues that make it difficult to maintain healthy relationships. I accept that I can be demanding and confusing for my T. But I can't accept that
all the problems that come up in relationships, with T or whoever, are my fault. And I'm not saying that my T is blaming me, at all. I am blaming myself and then I am willing to shoulder blame that I don't authentically feel is mine to shoulder, for the sake of maintaining the relationship.
In the interpersonal effectiveness module of the DBT skills training group we are taught to priortize relationship, objective, and self-respect. It could be that while in the past preserving the relationship was my #1 priority, that has shifted and taken a back seat to preserving my self-respect.
I'm not sure where I'm going from here. I don't have a session scheduled with T until Wed, so I have a couple more days to think and talk about this.
__________________
She left pieces of her life behind her everywhere she went.
"It's easier to feel the sunlight without them," she said.
~Brian Andreas