DrClay,

I appreciate your response and encouragement. I'm struggling to find the balance between disregarding positive feedback and simply being honest about where I am. I have been working hard to figure out what I am doing that keeps me stuck, and why I keep doing that. Getting to this point where I can write out the problem as above is pretty big progress for me. Then I get to this point and get stuck again. My eighth therapist has been on the verge of giving up on me for a few months now. She decided to give me a little bit longer to start doing something, and I'm getting rather desperate. We found another reason why I keep staying stuck here too. If I prove that I can't change, then I don't have to keep feeling bad or guilty for not changing. Except that I do keep feeling bad and feeling guilty.

I have been 29 for around 7 years now (I lost track). Yup, I'm stuck there too. I'm too old to still be blaming my parents for it. Although if you look at my siblings, out of 6 of us I'm considered to be one of the more functional ones. One brother is schizophrenic, one sister will be their perpetual child because she has down syndrome, and another sister is 4 years younger than me and still lives with the parents, never learned to drive, has been working on an associates degree for at least 10 years, etc. I do function at least in some areas of my life. I'm married with 3 kids and in my second year working towards a master's degree in counseling (with a 4.0 GPA). I just need to learn to apply what I can do to the areas of my life where I need it, and I have no good excuses for being so stuck!

I do change some things, just very slowly. For example, a year and a half ago I was afraid to drive by myself across the state or in cities. Now I can do that. I changed my whole life when I decided to go back to school. There are ways of interacting with people that I am working on too, and I think that I am making some progress.

Someone here has suggested that I practice thought-stopping before and I didn't really get around to trying that, so there's another example of how I disregard constructive feedback, but I am going to look that up now and do it this time. I've been actively sabotaging myself with my negative thoughts, and for some reason I have been very reluctant to let go of that.

I'll try testing negative ideas (do you mean like checking out with other people whether they feel the way that I assume they do?) and also try to do something with my positive traits (I wonder if you can give me an example of what you mean there).

Looking through your index, I noticed that chapter 14 is probably something I could get a lot out of, and I have started reading that. I'm getting some mileage out of chapter 2 also.

Thanks again for your suggestions.
Rap