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Originally Posted by susannahsays
Thanks Etcetera, I couldn't agree more with all this. It's been hard to be less critical of myself over the years. For example, there's a time when I would have described myself as just lazy. And that really wasn't being fair to myself. But I did that because I felt judged by others. It was a sort of fawning, Stockholm syndrome like thing where I felt compelled to align myself with the idea that I have some sort of personality flaw (e.g. laziness) that is to blame. And since I can't have power that I don't, I always ended up feeling like my suffering was all my fault because I could change it if I really wanted to.
Now that I've changed my thinking, it feels like I'm getting pulled back into negative self talk and cognitive distortions by the therapist/psychiatrist. Or I'm not getting pulled back but only because I reject their assumptions.
It also drives me a bit nuts to think now they will interpret any improvement I make in the future as me finally "taking responsibility" when it's actually just the typical fluctuations of depression. This idea really bothers me.
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Yeah that's totally not cool that they are pulling you low rather than building you up. OK so this may be simple but important....Existing methods of analysing and evaluating objective feedback for the successful continuation of therapy are based on this simple idea, that the client regularly leaving the therapy session in a worse - or unimproved - state is very wrong and should never be ignored.
When I read about this, I felt totally validated in that it's OK to want to leave a therapist and seek another option if I find they just make me feel worse, or making me low, or I'm simply not seeing my symptoms getting better, so I'm posting it for you too, maybe it will help some. I mean if you have to fight their stuff to avoid getting low and having more symptoms, that sounds the same issue to me. Even if you are able to fight back in your mind, it's still a waste of energy and not helpful for you to feel obligated to go back to this therapist.
Just my thoughts of course, hope it helps in some way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by susannahsays
Thanks, LT. I don't think I'm the best communicator about what it's like to be me, if I'm honest. Like I've only recently realized how terrible I am at identifying my own feelings. "Bad" isn't really an emotion. For example, I'm terrible at separating anxiety from all the other "bad" feelings. And since I don't realize I'm feeling anxious, it's kind of hard to do anything about it. Then I start overthinking and panicking because I don't know what I'm feeling except that it doesn't feel good. I think sometimes even when I try to identify what I'm feeling, I get it wrong because it's like I only understand what a certain feeling is like theoretically. I'm not saying I don't experience other feelings, but it's all very nebulous and hard to pin down. And when I slap a label on the bad feeling and it's not accurate, that just leads to feeling unreal like I'm performing. I start questioning if I'm actually feeling anything or if I've confused how I think I ought to feel with actually feeling. I spend so much time feigning the emotions I think I'm supposed to feel that stuff blurs together and I become hopelessly confused.
I kind of forget where I was going with all that.
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That issue is very familiar to me. I learned to just wait and try to tune into the feeling later again to try and see it better. Repeating that a few times before I could identify the particular feeling a bit more closely. And so on. I did also give up on expecting too much from myself (theme sound familiar yet?
), in this area. I mean.... if my negative emotions are by default like "mad, sad, bad", so be it. Sometimes they do become more differentiated feelings and then I try to do the above process.
Also I've given up on trying to be different from what I really am like, i.e yeah when I may not be able to realise that I might be feeling e.g. anxiety, it's just because I simply am not actually feeling it in that particular moment. Like maybe it's there somewhere, sure, but like my brain is still in control enough of it for now, so why should I concern myself about it. What I'm trying to do instead is just try and be more aware of initial signs of the emotion (e.g. anxiety) coming up in situations when I decide it actually would be important to be aware of it.
I don't try to overfocus on my feelings anymore in general as I tried too hard, forced it too much and so it made me lose myself too much. Instead of learning about my feelings at a more natural pace, ie. a pace more natural for me. I find most therapists don't understand that, of course.