Quote:
Originally Posted by Freewilled
I told my T it seems like my mom is manipulative. He corrected me and said, "you feel manipulated." So I said, "yes - I feel manipulated." I took that to mean its important not to ascribe motivations to people and instead, state how their actions affect you. It's been helpful to me.
About stating needs up front - that's all fine, well and healthy. Unfortunately, I literally struggle to verbalize my needs. I don't know wtf they are half the time! I get into the therapy room and a lot of the time my mind goes blank. I have all these feelings and thoughts swirling around and I try to speak but it comes out all muddled up. I'm confused. It's actually quite terrifying to me. My T might think I'm doing this on purpose, I dunno. But I know for myself with 100% certainty that it's something that happens TO me. But I keep going to T every.single.week, like clockwork because I am bound and determined to overcome whatever the hell is going on with me.
If we all were at a place to have healthy, clear and interpersonally proficient interactions, we wouldn't need therapy lol
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It's something I've been learning through therapy, to identify that I'm needing when I'm feeling an emotion. One thing that I've learned that's surprised me is that usually when I'm feeling angry, I'm not really feeling angry; there's usually something underneath that anger like sadness or hurt or disappointment or frustration, and underneath that maybe there are feelings of incompetence or neediness or inadequacy, and figuring out how to peel back those layers and get to the root of my actions has been my task in therapy.
T is also teaching me to frame things like this: when x happens, I feel y, because I need z; would you be willing to do abc to help me feel better about this? This sort of framing works because there's no blame; it's not, "You make me mad because you're selfish/manipulative/mean!" It's, "When you say that to me, I feel sad, because I have a need to be respected in this relationship, and calling me that name makes me feel less than."
Working on it...