Couch 203: The Spam and Cool Whip Couch!

LT- I’m glad it well.

I pissed off a therapist on a different site - that always makes me happy

It would have made me happy to see it happen.

I am feeling particularly hostile towards those guys right now. I keep thinking how the woman humiliated me and messed with me and I want to beat myself to a pulp for letting it happen

I hear you on this and offer hugs. My dad has been gone most of my life and ot never feels easier.

why did he say you have to forgive your mom?
that is your choice and people aren’t owed forgiveness especially if they don’t even apologize for hurting you. I don’t think T understands developmental/attachment trauma. I think you need someone who specializes in that, as I said before. jmo.

After I came home from walking my dog and running errands, I wanted to eat the whole kitchen. Why would I undo all the walking I did the past 2 days? So instead I ate some watermelon and avoided damage. Turns out I wasn’t even hungry. The watermelon was just enough. When am I going to figure out that most of the time I’m not even hungry when I eat. More times than not-it just turns out I either just felt like crunching on something or I just want a little taste of whatever I was going to binge on. If I can figure this out before it starts I would probably be as thin as my pinky.

He seemed to think that I need to forgive in order to move forward. But as I've talked about with both his backup T and him, I haven't even really hit the anger stage (I have trouble with anger stuff). It would be like going from blaming myself for not being a good enough child to forgiving my mom, without that step in the middle. When we discussed it more recently (after I saw his backup), he seemed to understand more where I was coming from and what I needed in terms of working through childhood stuff. I may still consult with another T and consider taking a break with this T for a bit (not immediately, but sometime in fall), perhaps to work with a T who is better with attachment stuff. Then consider going back to this T to work on other things. He's said before that he's open to my doing that, like if I go see someone else, I can always come back to him. So maybe that's what I need to do, I don't know. I need to do more research on T's in my area and see if anyone might look promising.

This seems like an important realization.

Went on a lovely hike with my BFF, which was especially good because her house is currently full up: me, her, her husband and kiddo, her two in-laws, and an additional houseguest of her husband’s. That’s just too many people in a small house for this introvert.

LT - Some people believe that you need to forgive in order to move on. My T did not believe that. Also, the grieving cycle isn't always a circular. Sometimes you skip a step. Sometimes you have to go around more than once. We each grieve our own ways. Don't worry about other people who tell you how to grieve. Respect your own process, and be gentle with yourself.

Ok I am sure it is my way of communicating. I am asking for help with the paint on my brush it started clumping the only difference was it was a new brush and people are looking at the painting and offering ways to fix the applied paint which is not my problem
This is the problem I had with exT he seemed to grab the wrong end of the stick and it was frustrating

Now that I know L loves me, I don't feel like I deserve it. Part of me wants to tell her my secret now because she'll then see how ugly of a person I am.

I'm glad she told you that. You certainly deserve it.

T didn't tell me that, and I doubt he ever would, but I'm sort of struggling to deal with how concerned he apparently was about me Friday night. That he took much of his evening to try to help me. Normally he downplays . It feels like he was genuinely worried about me, amidst the frustration. In a way it feels nice, but I also don't feel I deserve it. Today I said that I, for example, wished he'd say he doesn't think I'm a bad person, assuming he wouldn't say that. and he said, "I don't think you're a bad person" without even pausing. And he seemed to slip and actually say "I care about you" when normally he sticks with "I care about your well-being" or "about your success." I feel it can be scary to get what we feel we want, particularly when deep down we feel we don't deserve it. Which is pretty much what you're saying about yourself.

Please try to accept L's love. You're a good person, even if you don't believe it.

My ex T 2 was a very firm believer of "you need to forgive to move on" My current T says "F@#k forgiveness" I like that style more lol

I can see moving on. I don't think one need forgive.

You may never get around to feeling the anger/ middle stuff. Some people aren’t wired that way. I’m like that. You can hurt me anyway you want and I won’t feel anger. I will feel self blame or pity for the other person ( for being so unhealthy themselves ). Forgiveness is a beautiful thing, even if the other person doesn’t deserve it or hasn’t earned it. You don’t have to be angry at someone for hurting you in order to fully heal. It’s a courageous thing to do to choose forgiveness.

I think forgiveness and moving on are essentially the same concept for many people. I know that's basically what I've come to understand for myself personally.

Forgiveness, for me, is really not about the other person at all. I don't need them to admit their fault or apologize in order to find a place of forgiveness. Nor do I have to let them off the hook or find some way to rationalize their behavior. That's not what forgiveness is about for me.

It's more about leaving as much of my anger in the past so it no longer possesses my every thought and action like it once did. I guess it is a sort of acceptance that my history happened; yes, it was awful, but it is okay for me to let it stay in my history and not run the show. Forgiveness, for me, was reaching that ability to breathe that history into its place in history. I use the verb "breathe" because when I finally could do that, it really did feel like I was breathing again for the first time.

I know that explanation probably makes no logical sense. I think the concept of forgiveness is a very personal thing. I come from a religious tradition of grace, so forgiveness is a pretty easy for me and it isn't wound up in dependency on confession.

Hard to explain, but if the idea of forgiveness doesn't work for a person, maybe the idea of just reaching a place where you can appoint history to its place in history makes sense. That's kind of how my therapist framed it for me, and at the same time I began to better grasp my own concept of forgiveness, so the two ideas sort of merged I guess.

I find this very interesting and hopeful. Like LT anger is something I feel I need to reach with certain people in my past. Every book and study I read seems to say so. Anger for what they did and didn't do for the child. Yet here I am years later unable to feel that anger towards them. I feel more empathy towards there struggle and how it ended up the way that it did than anything which I feel actually keeps me stuck in a never-ending cycle. How can you truly 'deal' with it and work through it if you bypass anger? If you can and still move forward than is good to hear as I am losing hop that I can.

I am out at a coffee shop working on the online writing workshop story for this week. I’m not in the mood, because I know the workshop leader will be dismissive, but my classmates will likely be more helpful.

I was never outwardly angry at the people who hurt me. Instead, I was raging, but towards myself. That came out in deep depression and anxiety, and serious episodes of suicidality. For me, it wasn't about getting angry with them so much as stopping the rage that I was taking out on myself. I think in a way it was perhaps more important that I forgive myself than anything. I had twisted all my anger so much at myself that it was finding my inner peace that was most healing.

You inspired me to apply to join a writer's workshop and I was accepted. Not so much to get published, but more just to write out some stuff in the form of short stories dealing with the horrors of therapists and cancer/rns/mds/hospitals. Second person is my go to --so will be trying to branch out some.

Excellent. I am thinking about rewriting a draft of a different story from third into second, but am apprehensive about second.

It also involves a therapist, who gives a client An Extremely Bad (but very therapisty) Idea that sets the story in motion.

Can someone please explain to me what's up with the recent spate of live-action Disney movie remakes? Have they run out of new ideas?

I had a phone check-in with my therapist today. His voice sounded so ****ing caring. It was really meaningful. He asked me to send him my (likely) new lawyer's website after I told him that if he read it he would understand why I picked them, so I did and thanked him for calling me. He responded with a "you're welcome" and mentioned an album that he was enjoying lately. He knows that I get something from music and it meant so much that he shared something that he enjoyed. I've shared music with him but it's never been reciprocated before. I'm feeling really connected. Unfortunately, we're about to have a week-long break and I'm not looking forward to that at all.