Okay, I figured it was time to get back to trying to process again, so I'm trying to re-read this thread and see what I still need to reply to, and I am so tired I can't stay awake or do a decent job thinking about anything. I worked six days this week when I'm used to working four. I need some time and I'm not getting it. Or maybe I'm avoiding it. Being tired and sleeping are avoidance strategies for me too. After my last post here where I said I had to put this aside so that I could function, I got a headache that really never has gone away yet. DH went shopping and brought me some gum with caffeine in it (which I use if I get too tired to function, but was avoiding this week - don't want to get too dependent on it). He gave it to me and said it was for me but not for tonight because he doesn't need me to be cranky and high at the same time.

Two weeks in between therapy sessions is too long. I forget what I'm working on. Last week I forgot that I had emailed T, and what she told me to do when she wrote back. I wonder if part of the problem with lack of progress is actually that during the waiting time I keep moving on to something else to do or think about. I don't keep what I was supposed to be working on in mind for the whole two weeks. Sometimes it evolves, and sometimes I push it aside. Then when I finally go to T again I can't remember what I was supposed to be doing and where we were. We're not there anymore, or at least I'm not.

This week I've been reading Masterson's The Search for the real Self. I think that it fits with where I was, because he talks about developmental needs, and the development of the real self, and what it's like to have a normally-developed real self, and what it's like when a false self is running things. There is a list of key capacities of the real self. I'm recognizing my deficits in all ten areas. I would like to work on developing those capacities, but I'm a little afraid that it's too late for me now. I wish that I had had these capacities when I was making the decisions in my early twenties that shaped my life. I wish that I had known that I had options. I went to at least four therapists in that year or two, and I needed help with being able to make decisions for myself and plan my life, but none of them helped me to be able to do that. I hate them for not helping me in the way that I needed help. I didn't know what I needed back then, and didn't know how to make use of therapy. But I knew that something wasn't right.

The list from Masterson (all capacities that I need to develop still):

1. The capacity to experience a wide range of feelings deeply.
2. The capacity to expect appropriate entitlements.
3. The capacity for self-activation and assertion.
4. Acknowledgment of self-esteem.
5. The ability to soothe painful feelings.
6. The ability to make and stick to commitments.
7. Creativity (I have to comment here, that I can be pretty creative, but he means the ability to replace old, familiar patterns of living and problem-solving with new and equally or more successful ones. I don't do this well).
8. Intimacy - the capacity to express the real self fully and honestly in a close relationship with another person with minimal anxiety about abandonment or engulfment.
9. The ability to be alone.
10. Continuity of self (one of my biggest struggles).

All of these things would be good things for me to work on. And I have been, but not focused enough, I guess. I have made small gains in various areas, but it doesn't look like much because I haven't concentrated on any one thing long enough to get it resolved.