Paradox

Today my T and i talked about how i have something to gain from being mentally ill (and not wanting to be sane and well and happy).

1. i dont have to live the sh*tty life of everyone else with job, family, etc. EVEN if a part of me does want that.

2. my symptoms are my identity. without them i would be nothing. so my illness is my identity. she thought it was a paradox. i felt sh*i.

so, if i dont want to get well, then why do i still go to therapy or merely live?

Sometimes getting better can be scary because it's hard to predict what that will look like and what it will mean and then there is that fear that it will all come undone again.

#Life is a beautiful lie#

I don't think that is all that uncommon. We can, strangely enough, be much more comfortable/safe with the status quo of our lives than we are at real change. Change is scary and often requires us to confront ourselves. I think I was stuck for many, many years because in order to truly move forward, I had to make some difficult decisions about family and my own personal choices. It took quite a long time to start taking those steps.

So, why did I go to therapy even though I wasn't ready to make those changes? Because it took that time and support and eventual insight to get me to that place and ability to make those changes. That's kind of what my therapy was all about -- that time between where I started and actually initiating real change and progress.

you can feel both ways. sometimes it's not one or the other. ambivalence over recovery is pretty common. i struggled with it for a long time. you are not alone

Was it your T who brought this up or you? I think that this is a way that mental health professionals sometimes look at mental illness. I think it's possible that it is B******s.

Agreed, people can't and don't develop mental illness out of choice, it happens by cause and sometimes chance. Nobody chooses to be ill especially mentally ill.

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Of course not. I didn't choose to be abused or suffer from PTSD or bipolar disorder, but I know I do make choices about how to cope, whether to get help or not, whether to make changes that ARE within my power to make that just might set my life in a direction that is safer or healthier or more stable.

This isn't about choosing to suffer from a mental illness in the first place. No one chooses that. But it is about what I do with where I am in my life. I do very often have choices -- even if I can't see them at the moment through the lense of depression or anxiety or whatever.

For me anyway, much of my healing came from finally realizing I actually do have more control than I was willing or able to realize. I didn't have to stay stuck, and finally hearing and understanding that I had the power to make change in my life was frightening but ultimately the most empowering aspect of therapy for me. Making those choices wasn't easy. It wasn't fast. It wasn't without set-backs. It wasn't a straight line through. But I had to make the decision to make those hard decisions and changes, even when it meant falling down a million times and pulling myself back up and moving a few more steps forward.

I wanted to give up SO many times. I wanted to stop trying and just keep doing what I was doing because I didn't know or believe life could be any different. I didn't have the faith in myself that I could really feel any differently. But I kept fighting and moving forward where and how I could until eventually I found my stride and really made some gains. Boy, it took a long time to get there though because it was frightening and old habits of behavior and thinking die hard; it was hard work to reframe my thinking about myself and my history and my world.

I am not saying that we don't choose what we do with the information that we have choices but I am saying that we don't chose to have a mental illness.
It's completely different. I appreciate what you are saying and boy can I relate to it but that wasn't what I was saying Lola, so I am sorry if that was how it sounded but that wasn't how I was saying it!

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Are you letting the illness define you and control you Sinking? Only you know if you want or can get well, is this something that is even a possibility for you right now?

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I hate to ask a cliche "therapy question" but I really feel like it, so here it is. How did you feel about what your T said? I think, your own judgment about it is more important than hers.