I doubt that I could answer your questions directly (and I'm even wondering if anyone could), so I'm going to start with a digression.


Once upon a time I was entangled in school and wondering if therapy might possibly help, or if (as seemed much more likely) it would be just one more distraction from what I "really" needed to be doing -- whatever that was. I was less than 100% sure that school was what I really wanted to be doing, and considerably less sure that therapy was what I really wanted to be doing, but it was looking more and more as if I was going to need therapy in order to make it through school.

At that time I viewed school, therapy, and a number of other potential life experiences in roughly the same terms. I could commit to some program or situation; something would be done to me there; after a while I'd come out the other end changed in ways that I couldn't possibly know ahead of time; and it wouldn't necessarily be for the better. About education and therapy both, I kept asking myself and anyone who'd listen: "What's the product supposed to be like?"

At the time I knew (or at least knew of) lots of people whom I considered insufferable. I was afraid I might already be at least a little insufferable myself but if perchance I wasn't, I certainly didn't want to risk becoming insufferable. Even if I was, I didn't want to become more insufferable and I was pretty skeptical about possibly ending up differently insufferable.

I noticed that quite a few of the insufferable people I knew (or knew of) were older than me, and quite a few were more educated. There seemed to be a definite risk, then, that age, education, or both might make one insufferable. I had no way of knowing if therapy was likely to make me more insufferable or, possibly, less insufferable. It seemed almost certain that if I handled myself one way in therapy I'd get one kind of result (less insufferable?) while if I handled myself another way I'd get an entirely different result (more insufferable?!) -- but I had no idea what I'd need to do either way, and no one seemed to be writing instruction manuals for therapy.


You say, if you dropped emotional detachment and anger and instead tried to just make yourself feel depressed and weak and low and lonely and to try to think all those irrational negative automatic thoughts... etc. I'd like to suggest a couple of questions. They're just for you, you don't have to tell me the answers, and of course you're free to change your answers at any time:

1. Is dropping emotional detachment and anger something that you want to do? If so, what's stopping you? Or if it's not, then why do it?

2. If (or when) you try to make yourself feel depressed and weak and low and lonely and think negative thoughts, what's the result? Do you find yourself stuck in feeling depressed, weak, low, lonely, etc., indefinitely or do you eventually notice that, perhaps, something else has caught your attention and you've moved on?

3. If (or when) you try to make yourself not feel depressed, weak, low, lonely, etc., or think negative thoughts, what's the result then? Do you stop feeling depressed/thinking negative thoughts right away, or only after something else has caught your attention and you've moved on? For me, it was always a lot like trying not to think of a white elephant. What's it like for you?

It's getting past my bedtime so I'm going to stop there, but I'd love to pursue this some more eventually.