The most important lesson

Just wondering:

What is the most important thing you learned from therapy, which you would hardly ever have believed before you started it?

The most unbelievable thing happened last week: I went to the crisis unit for intake, on my own,completely ready to be admitted.

Now for me that is beyond comprehension. Even t was amazed. Given that the first thing I said was if you ever mention the CU that'd be are last session.

So after 3+ years I finally learned CU is actually an option for me.

That the world is full of love.
Also, not all love is like an open fire. There is central heating love, too.

It's really, really, really best not to trust anyone. Therapy can be very dangerous and traumatizing. Therapists lie. NEVER ever let one get close to me again. I am truly the only one who can fix me. Lots of other bad stuff.

Wow, that's huge!!

So good to notice we can amaze ourselves from time to time!!

"If you feel it, it's real."

That being vulnerable and depending a lot on someone isn't a death sentence. Actually, the opposite, though I *still* struggle to believe it sometimes, haha.

That relationships with other people are a need, not a want. I'm not selfish or bad or too dependent for needing to be in relationship with others. And they probably actually enjoy it, too.

They are just guessing and stabbing around blindly all the time.

I'm loveable. I deserve to be happy.

That someones love can heal even me.

That the people I believed I could trust were not trustworthy at all. It is still unbelievable and heartbreaking for me to come to terms with it.

That I'm forgivable, and most recently, that I'm worth taking care of myself.

Wow, I love the positive vibe in this thread!!

And for me: that even when you think you're completely rational, you can make your heart get involved... which makes life so much more interesting after all.

Feeling loved saved my life

What I think to be true of myself is not necessarily true. Its just what my parents planted in my head.

That I am not invisible when I cry.

That my thoughts don't always come from within me but may be my parents' voices.

I'm not so sure I've actually learned anything yet, I just see so many things I need to learn that I was never really aware of before.
I guess I have learned that hiding behind a smile and skin thick enough to rival an elephant's is no way to live. I still have no idea how to go about not hiding though...

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And yet that is exactly what therapists do!

These are great responses. So many if them of are true for me also. But mine is probably that i could be not constipated! Or to use the psychological term, no longer a n a l retentive?

That how I feel about life and respond to life's events is a series of choices. MY choices. I have much more control over that than I ever gave myself credit, or responsibility, for.

Many things.
Boundaries.
About interacting with others -I used to say to T, "If people would just tell me the rules I'd do them (to get along better.). People keep changing the rules."
T replied, "Pre, you make the rules- and let everyone else deal with them."

All the years I have been in therapy before, all the troubles I've had before - two hospitalizations before age 34... No one taught me about boundaries until I was 40 years old.

It is, but they only do it for an hour at a time and they spend years learning how. I live my life that way.

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I disagree. Yours may have, but they don't all do that. They monitor what comes in and out, but they don't hide. I think mine is very genuine, but just chooses to make sure her genuineness is in my best interest.

Not my therapists.