Nov 17, 2011, 12:27 AM
|
|
|
|
Member Since: Apr 2010
Posts: 1,872
|
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by mcl6136
To all of those in therapy,
Those of you who are NOT in therapy are driving me crazy.
*My family of origin, who did more damage than I have space to elucidate.
*My boss, who makes Michael Scott from The Office look like a brilliant people person.
*My former spouse.....
Well, you get the picture. None of these people seem motivated to look at themselves or acknowledge their shortcomings, and yet...here I am in therapy, trying to process this. Yesterday in therapy, I basically wanted to say, I'm here in part because so many people in my life have never done the work of looking WITHIN. And yet, I continue to pay for this process and Why?
I feel really resentful that I'm trying to gain awareness, acceptance, and yet I'm dealing with people who have little interest in what I'm up to! I feel more comfortable with OTHERS who have made this commitment too. People like those on PC. I realize that none of us is perfect here, either, but I do experience this therapy journey as a one-way street. It has alienated me, to a certain extent, from those in my life who haven't ....or won't.
Can anyone else relate?
|
Absolutely. Great thread! My ex-bf really fell in this category of lack of self-examination. The sad thing is I could totally see that he was hurt and I could understand why he had such a hard time clueing into his emotions, but he wasn't trying to change. Many of us in therapy are dealing with the effects of our parents problems, which we can more or less get away from as adults. But the people who need therapy are not always people you can get away from. Like bad bosses, as you mentioned. No matter how mentally healthy we may be, sometimes the people who need therapy have power over us, power to hurt us. Yeah, I may be mentally healthy and treat others well, etc., but if some slimy boss cuts off my health insurance when I'm sick, or whatever, it's going to hurt no matter how mentally healthy I am. So I guess I'm saying therapy can't fix everything. Sometimes the world isn't fair and the only thing to do is fight the political battles to try to change it (health insurance reform anyone?). When to look inside and when to look out, I don't know.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KazzaX
I can sort of relate in that I did not start doing talk therapy until 2 years ago (having had severe depression for 19 ish years). So I was on the other side of the fence. I would say that, for me anyway, looking INSIDE of myself was not of any importance. They never mentioned it during my time with my family, they never mentioned it when i went to school, they never mentioned it at university and they never mentioned it at work. I never had any emotional IQ ever.. and did not know that emotions were important. Because the aforementioned people never said it was. And when pain comes into it, society teaches us to "bite the pain" , ignore it, and soldier on. There is never anything mentioned about healing, etc. I grew REALLY good at biting the pain and soldiering on (until it lead me to the breakdown that is, lol).
So what I'm saying is that society moulds us to just grow up, get educated, and work for the rest of our lives (eg focus on money and assets). Emotions or self reflection never come into it. And for me, I only was made AWARE of this other side of life once I had a mental illness, nervous breakdown, hospital stint, etc. Still, to this day, I have trouble reconciling the whole concept of "mental health" to real life - I mean outside of boards like this, nobody really cares about self reflection, introspection, healing, etc. It's like trying to put a square peg in a round hole. I think this is partly because a majority of the population had a decent upbringing or somehow just arrived at mental health naturally - so they have never HAD to do this stuff. So they just merrily go on their way, making cash, accruing assets, etc etc.
|
People whose lives revolve around making cash, accruing assets, etc are not mentally healthy. This is a world where half the population lives on less than $2/day and populations of whole countries have average life spans of less than 40 years. It's not human to live life focused on accruing assets in a world like this. If you've lived around so many people who do that that it seemed normal to you, KazzaX, I'm sorry you experienced/experience that. But those people are NOT healthy.
|
and 
This is an old thread. You probably should not post your reply to it, as the original poster is unlikely to see it.
Linear Mode
