Can you be afraid of getting well?

I recently got over the first hurtle of trusting my T. Took awhile but it happened. Now I'm thinking maybe I will get better. Maybe now my life will be relatively free of the BS I've been going through for 50 years.

But as I'm thinking this I'm also feeling a bit apprehensive. I know I won't be cured, but hopefully my life will be functioning. I feel that if I get better, I'm going to lose a part of myself or won't even exist. If I'm not me with a mental illness, who am I? Without the drama, will life be too boring? It's difficult to explain the feeling, but it feels like fear, fear of getting better.

Does anyone recognize this?

Yes and it makes perfect sense. I think it's only natural to have conflicting feelings about the possibility of things changing.

You've had this life for a long time. It's a known. The known is generally more comfortable than the unknown because you know what to expect.

You're reaching a new point in your life of course you're scared, it's perfectly normal.

But I am very certain you have some great things ahead of you, try not to let the fear hold you back.

heck yeah~ and most of my fears are silly. I wonder, what am I going to do with all that empty space. What will occupy my mind. I fear I'll start needing to sleep. what if I lose my motivation to keep moving and suddenly lose my procrastination to succeed. I'll become a successful depressed empty headed woman. ugh. Yeah~ I have a few fears.

This is actually very common with everyone, PTSD or not. We develop our own unique way of coping and feeling safe in our lives. On many levels it has worked, therefore developing a better understanding or considering other ways of coping in healthier ways or different ways is uncomfortable and "risking what we feel and know about ourselves" that is just our own unique way of functioning.

As you actually open up more and make yourself available to learning and healing, you will not be losing your identity at all, you will instead develop new ways of functioning that will allow the "good part" of you to be better expressed and understood.

Hello, SkyWhite. You get to choose what is important to you. The idea is to use the greater functionality you are achieving to identify a purpose that is meaningful to you.

Learning more about the dimensions of wellness may help:

Dimensions of Wellness

Oh yes! You finally find someone who understands and gives you a reason to get up in the morning, and hope to get better. And yet...and yet. Getting well means you don't have a good enough reason to go see your therapist. But that's future thinking. You don't how you will feel in the future and therapy is supposed to help you in deep ways. I heard a motto I really like: If you aren't ready to end your therapy yet, then therapy isn't over.
Another thing. I feel my life is my decisions, and if I want to be in therapy somewhere for the rest off my life, then I will!

Thanks Glok. I printed it out and I'm going to use it in therapy.

That is so much a part of it. I finally trust one person in the whole world and he'll one day say, "well, you seem fine now, bye." I know he wouldn't say it like that, but it's a scary thought. It's also like being afraid to be happy because I don't really know what happy entails.

I feel exactly like you.
If I loose my whole mental disorders "tag," then who I am? I'm no longer the borderline, identity-dissociated guy who harms himself and looses track of time.
Who am I? That's a very deep question. I'm sure a mental disorder is not enough to answer it.
I do believe that you define your own identity. Even in my case - "I" have multiple identities/personalities, I believe that I'm who I am just "because," not because of any mental disorder.
Obviously I'm a very empty person because most of my feelings "belong" to my EPs (Emotional Parts) and the control of "myself" is usually done by the ANPs (Apparently Normal Parts).
Integration is supposed to be the first symptom of DID healing. I'm afraid of integration. I sometimes feel lucky because I don't "have" to be angry, sad, stressed... But of course, I'd love to be "awake" and don't have to dissociate when one of those repressed feelings has to be felt.
I know this is not the DID forums and it doesn't belong here, but that's how I feel and, all in all, I do believe that DID is just a form of C-PTSD.
I'm afraid of getting better. Sometimes a happy life sounds boring to me.
Tom

Yes, it feels like a loss of identity in a way. Sometimes it's also a feeling of, "yah, I feel good now, but it won't last"

It's really kind of f**ked up but I want to get better anyway.