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kim_johnson said:
I don't know how to lower expectations without going numb and emotionally withdrawing. Is that what you mean?

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No, not at all. Let me try explaining it, but remember this is something I just am trying to sort out in my own mind, and I tend to use words idiosynchratically. So this might not make any sense at all.

I think it's a matter of thinking in terms of "and". Not "but". "And". It's got to do with embracing both sides of the conflicting reality of many situations. Something like "My therapist is wonderful and he really does care about me as a person *and* he often forgets major things I tell him within just a few days." Not "but" he forgets. "And" he forgets. I'm not tainting or reducing my caring for him and respect for him or his caring for me with a "but". I'm acknowledging a separate reality with an "and".

So it may mean embracing (not just saying, but truly embracing) "My therapist cares very much about me *and* he doesn't always email me in a timely way. I love how I can feel his genuine caring *and* it really hurts when he doesn't return my emails promptly. He really cares about me *and* he has a life outside therapy with his life and family."

Like I said, I'm still working on this concept for myself. And I have definitely not gotten it to the point where I can apply it more often than not. Or even a substantial minority of the time. But when I can embrace the opposing truths, the dialectic as Linehan calls it, right?, I feel this enormous sense of peace and that feeling you get inside when you know something is right.

I definitely understand wishing that I hadn't given people the power to hurt me by caring about them. Absolutely definitely. I wish it all the time with my therapist. I usually reject the idea that it is better to have the joy of loving and the pain of loving than to have neither. Except with dogs of course. Who only hurt you by having a shorter lifespan.

But I really don't think I could carry intense anger that long, or hate. It really does hurt too much. It would slide into less intense variants, not because I'm wonderfully forgiving, or even because I don't care enough. It would be purely self protective. Hate and anger cause so much pain and pressure inside me. I just can't take it.