[growlithing]

My T always gives me advice for handling my emotions but I never do them. I rarely entertain doing anything that will benefit me or help me. I think all of the "coping skills" (hate that phrase) she and other Ts talk about are lame.

Maybe I subconsciously don't want to get better. Maybe the idea of not being lonely inside all the time or unhappy scares me because it's all I've ever known. I feel like being deeply miserable is part of my identity. I'm scared of stopping my SH because a part of me feels like if I'm not negatively affected every day by what my abusers did to me, then everything that happened is both okay and wholly unimportant.

I hate myself for being so stubborn. I feel like I'm wasting my T's time and affections.

[unaluna]

Exactly. When does the tipping point come, when it becomes less scary to do good and okay to stop doing bad? Ya know, when they do the learned helplessness experiments with rats, thd rats would rather die than change. But our brains are bigger than that, right?

[feralkittymom]

I don't think it's about not wanting to get better, not about intention. But maybe about identity, as you've said. If you are not being who you think yourself to be, then who are you?

Therapy involves putting yourself in, and being willing to tolerate, transition--to what is now unknown. This is where trust in your T becomes so important. Can you allow her to be that emotional bedrock until your identity reforms itself?

[Perna]

I think, in a sense, it is about intention; you probably have never worked on a project of your own, start to completion. It takes practice, like anything else, to pick something to do and actually work on it and do it. Nothing happens in one's head, one has to actually do the boring, mundane, day-to-day stuff for a long time, practice the piano scales day after day before one can play the piano; one has to actually try the lame-sounding stuff instead of just saying, "that's lame" without even trying them to know. You can't know what you haven't experienced, haven't tried; the map is not the territory.

[growlycat]

Getting better doesn't mean that people will stop caring for you. That was hard for me to learn.

[growlithing]

Originally Posted by Perna

I think, in a sense, it is about intention; you probably have never worked on a project of your own, start to completion. It takes practice, like anything else, to pick something to do and actually work on it and do it. Nothing happens in one's head, one has to actually do the boring, mundane, day-to-day stuff for a long time, practice the piano scales day after day before one can play the piano; one has to actually try the lame-sounding stuff instead of just saying, "that's lame" without even trying them to know. You can't know what you haven't experienced, haven't tried; the map is not the territory.

Ha, I really appreciate your metaphor. I am a musician and I get up at 7am nearly every day to warm up and practice my scales before morning rehearsal. However, when I was younger, I didn't understand why playing scales was important. I didn't understand why playing the lame stuff helped me grow as a player until my freshmen year of college when my professor forced me to do it. Slowly, I started noticing results and it eventually got less and less lame.

I don't know if therapy works like that or not. I can see where it might. However, I've never once been scared to improve musically and I don't know if I'm convinced I can improve psychologically at baseline. I think that kinda makes it a bit of a game changer.

[growlithing]

Originally Posted by feralkittymom

I don't think it's about not wanting to get better, not about intention. But maybe about identity, as you've said. If you are not being who you think yourself to be, then who are you?

Therapy involves putting yourself in, and being willing to tolerate, transition--to what is now unknown. This is where trust in your T becomes so important. Can you allow her to be that emotional bedrock until your identity reforms itself?

I am being who I think I am. If I wasn't being who I think I am, I don't know if it would be so hard. I have a strong sense of identity and I am scared of losing that.

No, I don't trust her. I don't trust anyone at baseline let alone so much that I'd allow them to mess with my identity. That would give them way too much power.

[feralkittymom]

Originally Posted by growlithing

I am being who I think I am. If I wasn't being who I think I am, I don't know if it would be so hard. I have a strong sense of identity and I am scared of losing that.

No, I don't trust her. I don't trust anyone at baseline let alone so much that I'd allow them to mess with my identity. That would give them way too much power.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. My meaning was that if you were to risk not seeing yourself as someone who is miserable and SH-ing, then who would you be? That's the scary transition part because you don't know that person yet. I don't know how you make that leap into the unknown, however, without trust.

[Asiablue]

A T once asked me "do you want to change?" and that seemingly innocuous question had such an impact. My answer was of course i want to change- cos that's the right answer in therapy isn't it? But when i got home that question really bothered me. I realised i "wanted" to want to change but i was terrified of doing so. I felt so attached to my own pain that i was who i was and if it was taken away then what was left? I felt like i'd miss that part of me, that sadness and grief and anger that i carried around like a 10 ton boulder. So i had to think about how to replace what i was losing. I've found that as i focus less on changing the bad stuff and more on just doing things that make me happy, things that are good for me, try to be around good people, plus therapy that all those things are naturally replacing some of the bad stuff without it feeling like a massive loss. The massive weight is receding little by little and i'm barely noticing.
There are still days i think, " but what will i be like without the boulder i carry around?" and i feel loss. Seems strange to feel loss for something that in making me so miserable but it's been a constant and predictable friend/enemy all my life and the unknown is scary. But not as scary as getting to my deathbed and still having this boulder of grief lie heavily on my chest. So i keep going, little by little.

So maybe you are on the journey to intention right now, you have intentions to feel better but fear is stopping you. It's ok to be where you are.

Originally Posted by growlithing

My T always gives me advice for handling my emotions but I never do them. I rarely entertain doing anything that will benefit me or help me. I think all of the "coping skills" (hate that phrase) she and other Ts talk about are lame.

Maybe I subconsciously don't want to get better. Maybe the idea of not being lonely inside all the time or unhappy scares me because it's all I've ever known. I feel like being deeply miserable is part of my identity. I'm scared of stopping my SH because a part of me feels like if I'm not negatively affected every day by what my abusers did to me, then everything that happened is both okay and wholly unimportant.

I hate myself for being so stubborn. I feel like I'm wasting my T's time and affections.

Change is scary, but right now you have your "identity" defined as someone who is "lonely", "deeply miserable", self-harming, abused, etc., and you seem to be desperately holding on to that "identity". I get that. Been there; done that; have the t-shirt.

Change will come when you are ready to let go of that "identity" and really figure out who you are. Your abuse and resulting misery does not have to be all who you are. Hopefully some day it will be very little of who you define yourself to be and more just a chapter in your history, but that takes LOTS of time and patience and incredibly difficult and often scary work to get there.

It starts with a decision to make tough changes though. Where do you want to be? Where you are right now, or in a different "place"? That is where you start.

A therapist and I were discussing "learned helplessness" and I proclaimed that I'd lived in my abusive environment so long that I had developed "learned hopelessness", to which she replied that I may have stumbled onto something there.

I still struggle with all of this, and I've been in and out of therapy for 20 years. I don't think it's that I don't want to get better so much as it is that I lived in the abusive environment that I grew up in for 33.5 years which is an extremely long time ... So, it's not lost on me that it's going to take a long, long time to be able to overcome all that.

The most important thing is to keep trying and to not give up!

[Perna]

Originally Posted by growlithing

I've never once been scared to improve musically

Glad the metaphor was good; I never did enough of the scale playing, just "wished" to play

If you think hard about it, there might be a spot though where you are afraid you are not good enough, a place where you know you can't become as good as your favorite music player; there's a place out there you're afraid is beyond your abilities? It depends on if you want to be a great piano player or not, my stepson and I were talking about what we loved yesterday and studying and he was talking about an "edge" and how when he was studying engineering at college he realized he had been at his edge which is why he dropped out, didn't do the work but he didn't get to his edge in legal studies.

I think you are afraid of where your edge is personally, but as far as self-development goes, we don't got one of those, just "intellectually". However, when you get to studying the really hard stuff, personal or not, it's scary.

I think everyone can go through the motions, can do what the "teacher" wants, get the good grades by doing what they're told, being good, etc. but then you get to a place where you realize that's not what learning is about, the grades don't matter, what the other person, the teacher thinks doesn't matter, it's about what you can truly Learn. Everyone takes the piano lessons and many do the scales and get "better" but few are great because they don't "get it" what music really is (or, in the case of personal psychology, don't want it)?

[growlithing]

Originally Posted by Perna

Glad the metaphor was good; I never did enough of the scale playing, just "wished" to play

If you think hard about it, there might be a spot though where you are afraid you are not good enough, a place where you know you can't become as good as your favorite music player; there's a place out there you're afraid is beyond your abilities? It depends on if you want to be a great piano player or not, my stepson and I were talking about what we loved yesterday and studying and he was talking about an "edge" and how when he was studying engineering at college he realized he had been at his edge which is why he dropped out, didn't do the work but he didn't get to his edge in legal studies.

I think you are afraid of where your edge is personally, but as far as self-development goes, we don't got one of those, just "intellectually". However, when you get to studying the really hard stuff, personal or not, it's scary.

I think everyone can go through the motions, can do what the "teacher" wants, get the good grades by doing what they're told, being good, etc. but then you get to a place where you realize that's not what learning is about, the grades don't matter, what the other person, the teacher thinks doesn't matter, it's about what you can truly Learn. Everyone takes the piano lessons and many do the scales and get "better" but few are great because they don't "get it" what music really is (or, in the case of personal psychology, don't want it)?

Well, for what it's worth, I'm not a pianist. I tired to be but it wasn't for me. I'm a trumpet player. For some reason, I'm not terribly concerned about my musical edge. I'm more concerned with my ability to realize my full potential. Even the absolute best trumpet players were at one time just as good as I am today. If they can do it, why can't I? The great musicians of tomorrow are walking this earth right now as I write this and they share the same thoughts and fears with me about maybe not being good enough or ending up on the streets starving. Maybe I'm just arrogant or I've been bolstered up by professional trumpet players and conductors, but who really knows if I will end up being one of them or not?

I guess the fundamental difference between improving in therapy and improving musically are a few things actually. Improving musically is a concrete idea to me. How do you get better? You practice what you aren't good at and implement good practice habits. I've seen TONS of people improve this way, I've seen myself improve, I've heard personal testimony first hand from some of the best trumpet players in the country including the ones currently holding the jobs I want. Therapy? I don't know. There is some serious debate whether therapy actually works and I don't know where my T is emotionally or where she's been and how she's made it from point A to point B.

I guess the main thing for me is that I practice scales to make it possible for me to play music. When you understand why the notes need to be played, that's a lot of incentive to sit in a practice room and learn how to play them. I have a crystal clear image in my head of what I want the music to sound like. It really frustrates me when the music in my head sounds better than in the real world, but it doesn't scare me because I know what I what the end result should be. I know what it feels like to be musically successful. I don't know what the end product of therapy will be. I know what I think I hope it will do, but I have no idea if I'm fixable or what it will feel like if I am fixed. At least with music. I have a good idea of what my full potential should be.

[Tarra]

I felt very scared about the idea that therapy would likely change me into a different person - what if I turned into someone that previous-me wouldn't even like? Who was I gonna be? Now I think, well I've tried this way of being for 20 years, it's had its good points but also it's clear that in some ways it's really really not working. Now it's time to try something new. And anyway, I'll be a different person in any case in 10 years time, all people change as they grow up, so I might as well make sure I'm a happy, healthy different person.

I agree that working with emotions is a lot like music practice. Learning intellectually what notes make up a piece doesn't allow you to play it, you have to learn by putting it into practice again and again. Emotions are the same, you have to build new neural networks of compassionate responses and helpful coping mechanisms.

I found that emotions are smart beasts, they don't just follow what we say we believe, they watch what we actually do. For example, when tackling anxiety, I can tell myself till I'm blue in the face that a situation is safe, but until I start acting like it's safe and forcing myself to do what I'm scared of, my anxiety will still think that it needs to be scared. So therapy needs practice and application for it to have much effect.

[tinyrabbit]

I think it's brave to recognise this. Personally, I don't want to change yet. I want my T to be with me in the place I'm in now before I change it. The idea of change actually scares me quite a lot, and I think it's worth being aware of this - that maybe it's not so much that you don't want it, but that it scares you.

[harvest moon]

The minute I fully realized that getting better was up to me and only me, was the moment I got stuck in therapy; I still am. I kept telling my T that 'I want to want to get better' and that I am afraid that I don't truly want to get better. I am terrified of change; I cannot imagine myself feeling good. My intellectual part cannot cooperate with my emotional part and this is my everyday struggle. I always thought that getting better would mean killing my current self (even when I lost all the extra weight I had gained due to depression, I panicked because I felt like I was literally taking away a part of me along with the weight). I truly believed (and still do in a way) that no one will care for me if I am happy and content; I visualize my getting better like small pixels of myself falling apart and waiting to be replaced with what? I still do not know how to conceptualize change and with what to 'fill' my new 'self'. My T says that I've come to a point where it is also a matter of choice: either I will chose to overcome depression or I won't. And this is the scariest thing I ever had to hear. I can identify with everything you have written and wish I could offer some sort of wise words!

[Bill3]

a part of me feels like if I'm not negatively affected every day by what my abusers did to me, then everything that happened is both okay and wholly unimportant.

You feel like you have to be hurt anew every day in order to continue to believe that the abuse was not okay.

Hurt anew. I wonder if you could say more about that.

I ask because another way to look at it is that the original suffering resonates devastatingly through the years as it is.