</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Perna said:
We can only do as well as we can do! Learning to live with ourselves and not put ourselves down can be half the battle. Everybody screws up but I don't think that's anybody's intent.

Do you do any reading or self-help sort of work? In my 20's-40's I was a big reader, read 3-5 books a week. I found a lot of "teen"/young adult novels helped me enormously because their characters seemed to be struggling with the same sorts of personal problems I was? Just using book characters as examples got me a long way on my own.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

Thanks for your reply Perna. I used to be a very avid reader in my teens but have done very little reading in the last 30+ years(aside from reading a chapter or two of a book to my late wife before bed. She was fond of what we here in the UK would call sagas).
The main problem i have with fiction is an inability to visualise characters or scenes as i read which makes the experience rather one dimensional and frustrating.

The other problem i have is that whilst being far from stupid and indeed verbally skilled i do have certain cognitive problems in relation to 'critical thinking ' and executive functioning which can make self-help type work quite challenging.

One of the reasons i fell out with that woman aside from the religious issue was because she assumed i was being awkward and resistant ,even though i turned up to every session when it would have been quite easy not to sometimes when i felt bad,when in reality i found it hard to engage in the kind of 'critical thinking' needed.
For example she gave me one of those thoughts,feelings,and actions sheets and it completely flummoxed me.