Am I too hard on myself?

I keep hearing the same thing over and over throughout all of my threads: "Don't be so hard on yourself!"

Do I really do that? My therapist thinks I do that a lot. I don't see it, though. I think I am just being realistic that I don't have it altogether and that I mess up a lot!

I am easy to admit when I do something wrong. Is that so strange? I am totally blind to the 'idea' that I am too hard on myself, yet I keep hearing different people bring that up. Obviously, they are seeing something that I don't see in myself. Therefore, I need to look into this self-sabotaging behavior.

Just because you have or think you have a long way to go doesnt negate how far you've come.

I dont know if what I am going to say will help but because I dont know you very well I will share my experience. I get that alot myself. My default setting seems to be that I focus so much on how far I have to go and all the things I messed up and need to do better that I forget that if I could do this all already I wouldnt need T. Therefore, yes I need to learn from my mistakes but that doesnt mean I need to kick myself everytime I dont do something "perfectly". Its not wrong to admit when you do something wrong. Is it really that its wrong or just that it doesnt meet your standard for where you should be? I know that for me it not normally wrong but more that I dont feel it is "perfected" enough. If this makes no sense just ignore it...hope this helps.

my instant answer on reading your thread title; was yes ... you are I've seen it a lot in what you've shared in the what you want to tell thread; it's ok that you know you aren't perfect - none of us are ... and it's ok to be "realistic" (although your version of realistic tends to be heavy handed on seeing faults rather than growth/good things) but I wonder about extending grace and forgiveness .... gentleness .... towards yourself as well?

I struggle with this myself, frequently telling my T that his problem is that he just doesn't understand my unlimited capacity for screwing up. His response is always that we need to focus on getting me to recognize my perceived "screw ups" before they happen. I hate that he has an answer for everything.

At least see if you can try to take a little baby step to stop looking for ways that you are hard on yourself because you are being hard on yourself for being hard on yourself.
Give yourself a little pat on the back and tell yourself that maybe it's true that you are hard on yourself, but that's just the way it is right now. Breathe in. Breathe out. In that breath, it didn't matter, did it? One teeny weeny bit of progress right there. Good for you!

squiggle I think doing the 2 jobs you do, you feel you have to be this wonderful person and you feel guilty when sometimes for whatever you can't be. That's how I feel about me sometimes anyway. I think you are too hard on yourself but sometimes it's easier to believe the bad stuff rather than good things. Kind of a self punishment maybe. You've come really far despite your struggles with therapy, I hope you get to continue your hard work

What we think is totally up to us; no, the original thoughts that come into our heads aren't something we decide but where they "go" or where we go with them, is.

Why think you don't have it all together and mess up a lot? Is that the only way of thinking about things; in terms of whether you're together or not? What if things just are, are neither together nor not together?

Think about 5 random items. You and I would try to "organize" them, wouldn't we :-) make sense of them? Why? Yes, if we want, clouds can relate to toilet paper, can both be "soft" but think about it; are they really related? No, they're just clouds and toilet paper.

I'm an anxious sort and want things to be organized, want to know what I have in front of me, how I can "use" it or how it might help/hurt me. My husband says I don't appear to have an "I-don't-know" bucket to put things in.

If other people don't see you as messing up a lot, why see yourself that way? What does it help for you? Making mistakes is necessary as we can't see a whole picture or learn anything new without it not being "right" in the first place. But not all things that aren't "right" are ours to fix or even need to be fixed. Think about sunsets or sunrises and how many different ones there are and which you prefer. Would you "fix" sunsets you don't prefer? "Hey, there's not enough pink and purple in this one and we need more streakiness!"

Next time you go to apologize and belittle yourself, tell yourself instead that you are disappointed that you didn't put in enough pink and purple. Maybe that will make you smile and relax about what it is you think you did/did not do enough of, "right".

Yes, it easier to believe the 'bad' stuff than to accept a compliment. Funny though. I don't see myself as a negative person at all. I think that only comes out in my writing?

I am very successful in my profession. My therapist says that it is because I am somewhat in my comfort zone. As a teacher, the focus is not on me, but on my students. It is ALL about my students. That is my goal. To see them succeed and acheive their greatest potential.

I can accept that I have come a long way in therapy. My worry is that SHE will get tired of me. Where does that come from? That is the question that I need to explore. I am so afraid that SHE will dump me before I feel that I am ready.

Since I foresee that I will need therapy for a long time, that bothers me. I know that SHE has got to get tired of hearing me talk about the same stuff all the time.

I don't accept that others will stay with me as long as I need them to be with me. Past experiences? Yes, they most definitely affect why I think this way. I don't know how to really believe that someone will stay with me and 'want' me to be around until I feel that I am okay to stand on my own.

Isn't it odd how one or two really bad experiences in life can have such a hold on you? Those experiences can completely destroy a person. I don't even know why those particular experiences burned me so bad, but they did. I keep thinking that I have worked through them and I have put them in the past, but I keep being triggered right back to them. Why?

Have you and my therapist been talking? You sound just like her! I don't understand this at all. The part about extending grace, forgiveness, and gentleness toward myself. I don't think I am that hard on myself. But others do. I wish I could get figure this out.......

Because I know the truth. I don't want to live a lie in front of people. What they 'see' is not what I really am on the inside. It is just an act that I put on.

Does this help me? No, it probably does not. I hate being a hypocrite. That word is just burned in my brain. Maybe because of a past religion I was in. It was either their way, their beliefs, or you were wrong. You were going to hell! I am so glad that I am out of that religion. I never felt that I could live up to their standards. I always felt that I was living a lie. Trying to 'look the part' on the outside, but knowing all the while that I did not really believe it on the inside.

I think your therapist may have a point about the focus being on your students. It's easy to see the potential in others but very hard when it comes to yourself if you were one of your students how do you think you would view yourself? Would you see your potential?

I worry about my T getting tired of me too, do you think this is what you feel from her or from past experiences?

I don't think there's anything wrong with talking through the same stuff as long as you try to process and learn from it

Why do you feel she wouldn't 'want' to be around you? It does sound like she wants to help you and will work with you to achieve that.

It is odd how one or two really bad experiences in life can have such a hold on us, I often wonder why that is, we tend to hold on to those and be scarred by them, maybe it's so we can reject people before we get rejected or prepare ourselves for them leaving so it doesn't hurt so much? Have you told T about those previous experiences? Maybe we need to learn from the past instead of letting it come back to haunt us? Not easy though

Take a look through this site. Has anyone EVER been dumped by their therapist?

Therapists move away, retire, or suggest referrals. But they do not "dump" their patients.

I told my T: "I don't ever expect to be normal. I'm going to keep coming until one of us dies." She seemed cool with that.

I think that part of my 'issue' is that we don't meet in a 'real' office. She meets with me at her church in the assistant pastor's office. I am the only one that she meets there. We do this because it works out best (time wise/location) for both of us.

But it kinda feels less 'professional'. Like I am meeting with the pastor's wife or something. If we met in a regular office building, I wouldn't feel so much that I am imposing on her time or that she will get tired of meeting with me. I am getting better with this, but I have to admit that I wonder how long she will meet with me like this. She tells me that she is not going anywhere. Now I just have to believe it!

Isn't the goal in therapy to work through things and learn to cope on our own? Or not need so much support? We can manage more things on our own? Therapy is not really set up as a life-long thing. At least that is what my therapist says. Her goal is to help me get stronger and have a healthier mind set. Her goal is to help me manage the stress in my life. Her goal is not to keep me in therapy for the rest of my life.

She says that although I am coming every week right now, there may come a time when I feel that I can go every other week. And then maybe once a month or so. She tells me that this is my call, but she does give me her opinion about what she feels I should do. Right now she thinks I still need to come weekly and that I shouldn't think about that as a negative thing. She says that I will know when the time is right to change anything.

Again, those decisions are mine to make. She won't do that for me.

Squiggle I know what you mean. I think I am headed into a long therapy journey and I hope my T does not grow tired of me.