Bah this will not go well

I finished a big (to my little world) thing at work this week and nothing got completely screwed up - mostly others were overly complimentary about it. But I feel horrible and like I did something wrong and all the ways it could have been better or I could have been better- AND I know I did not screw anything up, and that really no one else really cares even if something had gone wrong. If I try to tell the therapist, she will say something along the lines of "it was fine, everything went okay" which will infuriate me -I know it went okay - having her say something like that just makes me angrier because I both know what reality is and I know how stupid I am for telling the therapist about it. And none of it helps to fix how horrible I feel about it. And when she tells it is okay - tells me what I already know, like I am too stupid to know it even after I say I know what the reality is, I will want to pound myself into more pulp than I already do right now (and I badly want to be pounded or crushed right now). Possibly her too, but mostly me.

Awe stopdog

Please don't pound or crush me for saying this, but maybe that's not what she'll say? Maybe she'll ask you about times when you did a totally competent job objectively, and your parent figures gave you completely contrary messages. I know in my own case how much I have internalized my dad's invariably critical voice that no matter how well I did something it was still "half-assed." He then followed with the extremely helpful advice that if you're gonna do something half-assed, you might as well not do it at all, so my accomplishments were continually reduced to nothing.

As a kid, whether I like it or not, I wanted his approval, so I started to ally myself with that voice in a subconscious effort to feel closer to him. A pretty clumsy effort. I never did make it on to his "team" which was decidedly anti-me. I did make it onto my own anti-me "team" though which is a pretty sh itty team to be on. Sometimes when I can see that critical voice for what it is, my awkward attempt to be closer to my hostile dad, it loses some of its power because it seems a little more pathetic and a lot more futile because I know that it's real goal is not what it seems to be (to get me to perform better) but something that ain't never gonna happen--achieving that closeness to my dad.

i know it is kind of confusing and frustrating when the way you feel doesn't quite fit with the situation.and i also agree it doesn't help when T just points out the obvious also.it would be aw some if she could maybe come up with some rational reason for why you are reacting the way you are and maybe help with that.it is hard to know

Gonna give you a hug

Not to worry, pounding others is not usually my urge. Sometimes the therapist, but not usually.
It is what she will say- we have done this before. I have even tried telling her how useless and pointless her response of that sort is to me. Even if she goes on to say something else, she will state what I already know = that it is not real. IF it was real - it would not bother me as much. I could do something about it if it was real. I would not need her if it was real. The reason I see these quacks is what to do about feeling so horrible despite the fact that nothing is wrong in my life.
I probably will not say anything about it because of how frustrated I get when I do try.

I would check what the "it" is for you? There is often a letdown when we finish a project? (http://www.elmoto.net/showthread.php...oject-Let-Down) and think about what we could have done better or differently. I know I spent my life wishing I had "studied harder" each time I took an exam, but that never got me studying harder for the next one.

The "it" or part of the "it" is that I will have screwed up something I did not realize was screwed up and I will be humiliated and mocked for thinking it went okay and/or for not realizing how badly I did it. People could be lying when they said it went well, they are laughing at me, pitying me, I should be annihilated because of my wrongedness etc.

Again - I KNOW this is NOT real - this is not really going to happen. But I do not know how to make the reality of "it went fine and no one else really cares but me anyway" get rid of the unreal and baseless fear and apprehension. Telling the therapist only reinforces the feeling of wrongedness because she tells me that the fear is not based on anything which I know. I even agree that knowledge should make it better. It just doesn't.

I hope my response didn't strike you as being about something "not real." The past is real and it's effect on the present has to be acknowledged. To do otherwise is to deny being subject to causality, and that way delusion lies. Your emotions are real. They exist to give you information. If you are having these big feelings of failure about something that you know in the present you didn't fail at, then the only logical place to look for the object of those emotions is in your past. Probably to a place where you have unfinished business where you didn't let yourself have feelings then because it felt too threatening. The "real" thing you can do now is to look for that place or those places and do what you can now to allow yourself to have feelings about that "real" object. And perhaps if you can do that, your emotions might be a little less likely to bleed out so powerfully on these pseudo-objects in the present.

I totally get this part particularly
I have the same reaction to 'everyone feels that way'

Do you think that what you want is her to be proud of your accomplishing a big thing? I guess I'm asking how would you like her to respond?

Sometimes I feel like you do - that this accomplishment must be a 'fluke' and that any minute now, I will be 'found out' as the incompetent person I *really* am.

Do you think your colleagues have a reason to be dishonest in their praise of your work?

There's a lot to look at - accomplishment, peer praise, expectations, trust.

I haven't read all the responses.....but it seems to me that your T stating what you know she will state would evoke feelings of being dismissed. It's not what you seem to need at the moment. What seems important to address is the feelings that you're having about it, where they stem from, etc.....what your feelings/reactions are doing to you - whether or not they are helping or hurting you - and building from there.

With my current situation in T - and my reaction - T told me that I need to be able to see that what I'm doing is hurting me, isn't serving me, is only causing me to feel isolated and insignificant....and that takes time and work. Not sure what that work is.....but we'll get there.

I saw Vonnegut speak like in 1979 I think, and he said one of the biggest ways we screw up our kids is by saying stuff like, "Daddy got a promotion, isn't that great?!" and expecting them to go Yay! When in actuality it's pretty meaningless and now we've set them up to have these ridiculous rituals and expectations. That has always comforted me. The other thing I find that relieves my perfectionism is the saying that a work of art is never completed, only abandoned - so the same for any major work product. Maybe this T isn't smart or deep enough enough for you - mere platitudes wouldn't do for me. I need a more existentialist perspective; my T has that, with his philosophy degree.

I don't think I care if the therapist is proud of me or not. I am not certain what she could be proud of or how it is even possible for a stranger to be proud of someone else. She does not really understand what I do and I would probably respond to her saying anything about her and proud with complete disdain because she would have no idea whether I really did an okay job or not and she would have completely overstepped her role. Even if it were not what I already know, having the therapist tell me I did something okay enrages me because I do not believe she would know one way or the other. I would like her to respond with "you can get rid of irrational feelings by doing X" and X needs to be something real - not some touchy feel-ly feeling crap.
No, my colleagues do not as far as I know. And I only threw them into the mix earlier to show how I really had no basis for my feelings- the response from others that it went okay is no big deal one way or the other. My response to this situation is totally not rational. If colleagues had a reason, my response to that part would be at least somewhat rational even if slightly extreme. I don't find praise reassuring or comforting usually. I mean I guess I like it better than being criticized, but it is at best neutral, not reassuring or comforting.
What I find so irritating is both how irrationally I am feeling and how at best useless (at worst I will have to come back and cause harm in order to function) telling the therapist will be.

I just want to say that you seem so aware of yourself, so lucid, that you definitely have a very good place to start.
I also want to say that I think a therapist, ideally, would not stop so... obtusely, at such assertions. It seems like an insult to your intelligence to continually, placidly insist what you already intellectually know (that nothing really did go wrong). Kind of irritates me just thinking about it, honestly. She should be supplying you with more tools than that.

And again, I know you are capable of coming to this conclusion yourself, but have you ever told this to your therapist? I know you've told her that she's not helping by telling you what you already know, but have you told her you already understand what rational reality is, and that you want to align your emotional reality with the rational reality, but don't know how?

I would tell my therapist basically what you've told us.
"I intellectually, rationally understand that I accomplished the project adequately and completely. I in no way need you to tell me that. The problem here is that even while I rationally comprehend the current, 'objective' reality, my emotions are telling me something contradictory to it. And I don't understand why, and hopefully we can get to that understanding in order to rework it. I know the fear does not reflect this current situation, but rather something else, yet unknown to me. Stop telling me nothing is wrong, which I already know; it is not therapeutic and does not contribute to progress. Please be an actual therapist and help me understand why I feel this way maybe give me some tools to actively deal with it."

I understand that the prospect of saying this, and then having her shoot it down, is perhaps infuriating enough to stop you from saying it altogether. If she doesn't respond to that, I would be... flabbergasted. It might indicate some incompetence on her part. Not only is it useless but it also invalidates your plight.
It's possible that by continually telling you "what you already know" she hopes you will internalize it and integrate it into your emotional experience, but she's not going about it very well.

I think Snuffle has a great insight regarding past objects and pseudo object.

I have told her, written it down and sent it to her, and told her again.
She thinks her response helps in that whole synapsis/neuro repair way. She will go on into the part about what my parents did to me like Snuffle's example. It still does not help me have rational feelings.

And I do not find anything comforting or reassuring except solitude and enough time until it fades or something else takes its place.
I appreciate all the responses.

The way I get rid of my irrational and or otherwise problematic feelings is by googling them. That usually takes me to the govt database where I find hundreds of abstracts of articles on just about every permutation of the issue imaginable. I make note of anything that resonates with me, then discuss it with T. I don't know if it's the finding of the descriptions - T tries to get me to verbalize feelings, because if the trauma is pre-Oedipal, it's pre-verbal. But that's HARD, eh? Reading something that I can say, I know that happened to me, and look, here is what the research says is the result of that - yes, that sounds like me, too. Well, NOW what do I do? At least now T and I are both literally on the same page, and therapy can begin.

I don't think anything ever happened to me that would justify this bizarre response in me.

I think that might be exactly what stopdog is referring to as that touchy feely feeling crap.

But, stopdog, you're already in the realm of emotion and you've got all the resources of rationality at your disposal, and it has failed to relieve your suffering. Emotion has conquered rationality in this instance the same way it does 10,000 times a day. It is the more potent force. You can keep being pissed off that this is the case and stay stuck in your misery or you can take another tack.

William James, a man of astonishing and eloquent reason, called humans specks of reason in an ocean of emotion. I think I felt a bit adrift when I first heard that quote, but then I thought I guess I better learn to ride the waves.

I protect myself from the screwup fears in two ways? (1) I reframe "screwup" as "mistake" and realize that I can only learn by mistakes and that mistakes are actually good as they are part of experience and innoculate against making "that" mistake again :-) and (2) I ditch caring about the laughed-at-by-others as I know myself well and that I tried my best on this project (and that's all you can do/ask yourself for) and I am proud of myself for getting it completed on time, budget, etc. I compare only to my own other projects, not other people and what they may/may not have done or how well they may/may not have done; this was my project and any negative-seeming comments by others have to be helpful criticism or don't count with me. Who cares about unhelpful criticism? It doesn't help :-)

Gasp! Wouldn't that contradict the 2nd law of physics? (for every action, an equal and opposite reaction) That alone would be research-worthy! I think I have the first law pretty well tied up tho - a body at rest tends to stay at rest... is there a lying-down smilie?

Really? I've heard you mention experiencing some pretty heinous abuse as a kid that could definitely lead to nagging feelings of inadequacy, of not being lovable, or of ever being enough.

Perna - I view that that as the rational - I do those things you describe too - does not stop this.

I don't really see my past as a child as that bad.

Thanks

Okay, then we have a major perception gap. I wonder if you would see the events as not that bad if someone else told you they happened to them or if a child approached you now and said this is how I'm being treated. Would you just say, hey, no big deal. Have fun with that?

So you have a crazy thought/feeling; we all do? I'd use the "Yeah, yeah, tell me something new" defense. You will start the next project and this project and how you thought/felt you did will fade into the past?

I know you know that this feeling isn't "real" in the sense that it applies to the present situation. My T has explained to me that when we feel an emotion out of proportion to the situation, as you are doing here--it is an emotional flashback. These very real feelings are being triggered by your fear of being mocked/humiliated/feeling annihilated from the past. I don't think ANYONE can tell you "in order to get rid of these irrational feelings, you have to do X." Its not that simple, and if you keep looking for that in therapy, you are going to continue being frustrated and angry.
I agree 100%. If you can't understand why you are feeling these things in the present, how do you suppose that you had them? They don't spontaneously pop up, they are there because of experiences--and since this situation doesn't seem to warrant that, it must be from the past, yes?
when you say 'cause harm,' do you mean to yourself? when you are feeling particularly horrible, is that a way you find relief? Do you see the amount of self-hatred you have? It makes me sad SORRY, i know its touchy-feely crap, but i follow your plight with great interest.
Me and Snuffle are on the same train of thought here. I have a feeling you are going to be disappointed until you realize this, deep down in your core.
That sometimes helps me, to see actions outside of myself. Children are innocent. They are only corrupted and end up feeling in a myriad of horrible ways as adult because of the abuse of others. I agree with Snuffle (again), that it is a gap in perception. I totally see why you need to believe it wasn't bad, because if it was, that screws up your perception of reality.