Is there such a thing as being incompatible with therapy??

I would really like some help on this.

Is it possible I am just incompatible with standard therapy?

Because the way I view things and the gut feeling I have is that if I dropped emotional detachment and anger and instead tried to just make myself feel depressed and weak and low and lonely and to try to think all those irrational negative automatic thoughts and idk, all those kinds of things, it would make me LESS functional in life. It would lower my self-esteem and would make me weaker and give up on things. Rather than come at it from a place of strength and help me heal and become more functional.

The things I have been told by various therapists:

- I have a wall (?? I have no idea what they mean by this)
- Maybe I have dismissive avoidant attachment style so I can't receive help (?? I've been trying to get help for years)
- I need to learn how to have safety about difficult strong emotions, feelings
- I need to learn how to be vulnerable and when and with whom to be vulnerable with

And then I don't even understand what safety or vulnerability means. I don't understand how a bubble bath will help me or what I should need to self-soothe about. Can I not be emotionally open from a place of strength rather than defenselessly and helplessly vulnerable?

It all feels like an alien world, all the talk of a safe place, self-care, self-soothing, vulnerability, feeling depressed helpless anxious etc.

What does that mean and what do I do with all of this?

Is there a therapy where the therapist helps you not dig so deep that you get very low and nonfunctional or extremely detached going deep in the Detached Protector (Schema therapy concept). Or where the therapist accepts your anger, while you're not attacking the therapist with the anger, of course.

I would just like some place where I would be "hypnotised" enough so I can just vomit out horrible emotions and "images" and then not even remember having felt them and having vomited them out.

Like a therapist who's someone who makes the mood good around and then hypnotises me and then it's ALL ACCEPTING NO JUDGMENT of the emotion vomit and images vomit and of my anger and everything and anything.

Is there such a thing? Or anything remotely similar?

I’m not sure I totally get your question. But I’ve never heard of any kind of therapy where you put in no effort, experience nothing unpleasant and the therapist just heals you. Let me know if you find it.

Yeah, I think you must have misread something in my post as that's not what I am looking for.

Therapy made absolutely no sense to me. I have no idea what I handed those people money for, talking to one of them never ever made me feel better or anything other than an idiot. I regret having tried it.

I doubt that I could answer your questions directly (and I'm even wondering if anyone could), so I'm going to start with a digression.


Once upon a time I was entangled in school and wondering if therapy might possibly help, or if (as seemed much more likely) it would be just one more distraction from what I "really" needed to be doing -- whatever that was. I was less than 100% sure that school was what I really wanted to be doing, and considerably less sure that therapy was what I really wanted to be doing, but it was looking more and more as if I was going to need therapy in order to make it through school.

At that time I viewed school, therapy, and a number of other potential life experiences in roughly the same terms. I could commit to some program or situation; something would be done to me there; after a while I'd come out the other end changed in ways that I couldn't possibly know ahead of time; and it wouldn't necessarily be for the better. About education and therapy both, I kept asking myself and anyone who'd listen: "What's the product supposed to be like?"

At the time I knew (or at least knew of) lots of people whom I considered insufferable. I was afraid I might already be at least a little insufferable myself but if perchance I wasn't, I certainly didn't want to risk becoming insufferable. Even if I was, I didn't want to become more insufferable and I was pretty skeptical about possibly ending up differently insufferable.

I noticed that quite a few of the insufferable people I knew (or knew of) were older than me, and quite a few were more educated. There seemed to be a definite risk, then, that age, education, or both might make one insufferable. I had no way of knowing if therapy was likely to make me more insufferable or, possibly, less insufferable. It seemed almost certain that if I handled myself one way in therapy I'd get one kind of result (less insufferable?) while if I handled myself another way I'd get an entirely different result (more insufferable?!) -- but I had no idea what I'd need to do either way, and no one seemed to be writing instruction manuals for therapy.


You say, if you dropped emotional detachment and anger and instead tried to just make yourself feel depressed and weak and low and lonely and to try to think all those irrational negative automatic thoughts... etc. I'd like to suggest a couple of questions. They're just for you, you don't have to tell me the answers, and of course you're free to change your answers at any time:

1. Is dropping emotional detachment and anger something that you want to do? If so, what's stopping you? Or if it's not, then why do it?

2. If (or when) you try to make yourself feel depressed and weak and low and lonely and think negative thoughts, what's the result? Do you find yourself stuck in feeling depressed, weak, low, lonely, etc., indefinitely or do you eventually notice that, perhaps, something else has caught your attention and you've moved on?

3. If (or when) you try to make yourself not feel depressed, weak, low, lonely, etc., or think negative thoughts, what's the result then? Do you stop feeling depressed/thinking negative thoughts right away, or only after something else has caught your attention and you've moved on? For me, it was always a lot like trying not to think of a white elephant. What's it like for you?

It's getting past my bedtime so I'm going to stop there, but I'd love to pursue this some more eventually.

Interesting discussion, fooze. It reminded me that whenever i was certain there were only two ways of looking at a subject, my ts always liked to tell me there did indeed exist more alternatives.

I don't know about ''incompatible'' but yes, therapy is not for everyone and/or might not 'work' for everyone.

There are a lot of misconceptions in what you believe. For one, therapy does not ask nor require anyone to drop their anger in order to be 'weak' and depressed. I don't know what type of therapy would advocate that in the first place. Therapy aims to empower, never to make anyone weak. Likewise, being vulnerable does not equate to being 'weak' or as you say "helpless" and "defenseless". It actually requires a lot of strength to stand in your truth, warts and all.

It seems you are using anger to operate in the world and mistakenly believe that using anger means: strength, high self-esteem and being functional. Reading what you write, it actually seems you are using your anger as a defense that is masking something because to you, contemplating anything else is weak or helpless etc. Being stuck in this one mode, THAT is what indicates weakness - not being flexible or adaptable and functioning in a rigid way all the time

I would just like some place where I would be "hypnotised" enough so I can just vomit out horrible emotions and "images" and then not even remember having felt them and having vomited them out.

This is what I was responding to. To my knowledge this isn’t a thing. Therapy doesn’t remove unpleasant feelings or bad memories or disturbing thoughts and images. It can lessen their hold on you. For sure the therapist should not judge you for your “emotion vomit” and to the best of their ability create an environment that feels safe for you to have and express your ideas, memories and feelings.

But is it completely safe? No. You’re going to feel raw and awful if you’re talking about awful things. If you’re accustomed to being judged you will likely feel (or worry) that the therapist is judging you even if they aren’t. And you’ll need to talk about that and it’ll take courageous vulnerability to do that.

Vulnerability is not making yourself weak, it’s allowing someone to know you. That can feel scary. And you can decide whether and with whom you’d like to do it. But if you avoid it forever it can manifest in unpleasant ways like panic attacks in public or whatever.

Therapy is messy and can be unpredictable. I think that’s a feature, not a bug.

I once asked this same question to one of my therapists...

Thier answer to be about me was...

there is no incompatibility in standard therapy. standard therapy is walking in a room, sitting down and talking then leave. anyone can talk. if someone is able to communicate to their friends a problem they are able to walk into a room, say hi to a therapist and talk about their day, their life and their problem area's

the hard part isnt whether someone is compatible with "therapy" for any one can do it. the hard part is finding the kind of therapy that a person is............willing .............. to do.

willing and compatibility are two different things. anyone can do any kind of therapy but do they want to, do they want to put in the work, do they want to change their behaviors and how they think.

willing is the hardest part of therapy. if someone goes into therapy already with a preconceived idea that nothing is going to work of course nothing is going to work because they have already decided not to talk, not to try what is suggested.

when someone has already decided nothing is going to work thats called putting up walls (a stop sign) .

putting up walls means a person is not talking, not trying, has attitudes that are sabotaging therapy time. there are many reasons for putting up walls aka putting up the stop sign, digging in the heels and not doing the work. going into a room and telling a complete stranger your deepest problems, thoughts and emotions and then making changes to your life to make your life better is a scary thing. its hard, a person has to be very strong to look at their own life, their problems and be willing to make the changes.

then she told me that she / therapists are not mind readers, they cant make things better for me, if therapy constantly is a failure for me to look at me not them. they can supply the room, the time and the objective point of view, a shoulder but I am the one that has to be willing to "do" therapy by talking and being open to discussing what my problems are. if I am not willing to do that the problem is not the therapy is incompatible. its I really dont want to do therapy.

then she had me take a week off and think about why I wanted to be in therapy and what I wanted to accomplish by doing therapy, set 3 goals to accomplish during therapy. when I came back be willing to begin working on those self - set therapy goals. If I could not come up with 3 goals then I was to just write a page on why I want to be in therapy and that will tell me what my goals for therapy are.

By doing this "homework" we were able to find out why I had not been willing to do the work, set goals and "do" therapy. through doing the work we were able to add in to therapy all kinds of different therapy models. Some therapy models worked for me and some didn't.

there are many different therapy models out there. (CBT, DBT, REBT, ACT, IFS....) lots of them out there. Some like me use a bit of this and a bit of that depending upon what my problem areas are.

But standard therapy (going into a room and talking with a therapist, psychiatrist and so on) does not have incompatibility, anyone can do it.

my suggestion is maybe you can sit down and decide why you want to be in therapy and what problems you want to work on. then go to therapy with that in mind. if you find you cant talk in therapy write down why you cant talk. this will give you an idea of what your "walls" are.

as for hypnotizing your mental problems away that wont work. its actually a mental problem and many physical health problems, when someone does not have emotions and abilities to think and feel.

Hypnosis is just a deep state of relaxation that you put yourself into, a hypnotist is just a guide that tells you how to relax yourself. they can make suggestions to you when you are deeply relaxed but you are the one who does the work, if you are not ready to make the therapy changes its not going to happen even under hypnosis. if you are not ready to talk about your problems its not going to happen under hypnosis.

example if you are not ready to talk in therapy to your therapist you wont talk to a therapist while hypnotized.

Hypnosis is just a deep state of relaxation. people cant do things while under hypnosis that they cant do when not hypnotized. since you are having problems talking with your therapist when not hypnotized you will have problems talking to the therapist when hypnotized.

here is a trick one of my therapists told me to try as a way to see if hypnosis would help me...

during therapy close my eyes and take some deep breaths then open my eyes and start talking about a problem. if Im not willing to deeply relax myself and talk about my problems in therapy a hypnotist was not going to be able to help me stop smoking. I had to be willing to deeply relax and talk about a problem before hypnosis would work for me.

Hi Etcetera1, I can relate to your question as I myself feel that I’m a bit incompatible with therapy. (For me, I think that therapists failed to comprehend that just coming and simply talking was hard, and that if they could listen with kindness, compassion and understanding, that this would be wonderful therapy for me as it would help me to accept my emotions and thoughts, just the fact of sharing them and being seen by another, and being received with respect and caring). I think my therapists felt they had to give me amazing insights and challenge my thoughts, which I found shaming in a traumatic way. I’ve stopped therapy for now, and I feel much better without it. Therapy brought to the surface all kinds of distressing emotions, and it feels fantastic that they’ve gone below the surface again.

You said therapists have said that:

I need to learn how to have safety about difficult strong emotions, feelings
- I need to learn how to be vulnerable and when and with whom to be vulnerable with

I personally think that its therapists who need to learn things - like how to truly accept and respect a person, and to have humility. I think that therapists can be very imperfect, but they often don’t realise this, and can work in a way that blames the clients.

I also found that the concept of self-soothing didn’t make sense. I think someone wrote it in a text book once and they all adopted the concept, but who knows what they really mean by the phrase and maybe different therapists give different meaning to it. I think we all self soothe, but unfortunately, some of us have much more painful emotions than others. I used to think that if my T could personally feel the emotions that were triggered by my sessions with her she would then shut up about self soothing.

"Incompatible to therapy" is not a new concept. The buzzword for it is resistance. The folk phrase for it is, you can lead a horse to water but you cant make him drink.

The buzz words for those buzzwords are - blaming the client and poppycock. Therapists are useless gits who have no water at all for a good number of people

Thank you all for the thoughtful responses and sharing your experiences with therapy (whether good or bad experiences), it really is giving me food for thought too.



(I hope the length is OK, I haven't had a chance to organise my head to shorten my message to be to the point more. My apologies if this is hard to read, let me know and I will try to make it more concise in that case.)

Yes I relate to you with your digression, I have had that problem too thinking that maybe me doing self-help (books written by actual therapists, not shallow stuff), and trying to do therapy, that those are distractions but I did also feel that it has helped me keep from drowning even if just an inefficient and usually not enjoyable distraction. As I have given quite a few honest tries to therapy and psychoeducation and all that work on myself. Just like you, I had the feeling that I'm to do this, so that I could keep holding a job even if my digging into my stuff also almost made me lose my job sometimes. And with the eventual hope of having a truly good relationship(s) too.

But over time it has started to feel like - whether this is a rational or irrational concern - that I'm being required by the therapist (IRL, or online or in books) to drop any safety even if the safety is provided by defenses.

And then as a result, I would feel I was getting pulled really low and deep inside my head and my mind, and absolutely dysregulated with emotion and without any productive processing of emotion or it would be very slow and inefficient and painful processing of them due to the strongly dysregulated states.

The dysregulation meant I stopped being functional, I could not do work, could not eat, often I could not even sleep, etc. Crises basically that I always had to handle on my own taking days from my life each time. It led to me almost losing my job, etc.

And I could not see a way how to do it instead coming from that place of strength and positive beliefs to heal and get on the journey towards being more functional instead. I have never found that kind of support in therapy.

What I did desire and wish for in therapy with therapists was for them to accept my expression of anger (not anger AT them) and to try with lots of effort to actually reach to me with more intense emotional invitations through my emotional detachment. I have never received that kind of help though and I have never heard of any therapy like that. Standard therapies do not seem to be like that in my experience.

So, I had felt pressured to simply drop the anger, the detachment, all that and plunge deep then.

When I would be low in the crises, things like self-soothing (taking a bubble bath, you know! )would hardly have any meaning; it would seem like a superficial thing that simply did not affect me much. Instead I'd always have to endure by just holding on, hanging in there, a question of pure life-or-death survival.

I do not believe that therapy is supposed to inflict that much pain and loss of functionality, I understand it has to be uncomfortable of course, but these experiences of mine seemed excessive.

And when I did try to open up emotionally to therapists, online, IRL, anywhere - open up beyond anger and detachment - I almost never felt good or safe about it, whatever safety even means. Like I said I don't have a true experience of safety in these situations. If I have had a little experience of it it was randomly for a few seconds only, with 1-2 therapists sometimes. With most of them, no.

I do not really understand why therapy has had this effect on me.

Sorry if I am repeating myself. But, it has constantly felt like I was either being made even more detached than I was....or suddenly plunging into these really deep crises. With little warning in advance.

It also has made me feel deeply uncomfortable and with a gut feeling telling me that this is somehow wrong and off, that trying to do all this would push me deep inside myself, too deep in my head, too detached, yet suddenly strong emotion in the end, without warning in advance. While my desire and a main goal with therapy was always to be able to go out of my head, outside, rather than inside. I do not understand these things. Did this make any sense at all?

....

To answer your questions:

1. I want to have more control over how much detachment and/or anger I would have. Not too much of it, but not too little either. I feel both the detachment and anger are a fundamental part of me, and not just defenses. Like I do personally identify with a lot of it. But I do want to fix something about it all. So that I can have other emotions and a more full life and vitality. This is my motivation here. I originally had the main motivation to find and build quality, emotionally connected relationships, but I have to be very careful about wanting such a thing right now.

(In IFS, I liked how it tries to see positive qualities too of "protectors" like these angry fighters and detached managers. In Schema therapy, it felt like to me, I could be wrong, but it felt like to me they were truly seen as just bad defenses to be demolished)

2. Yes, I find myself stuck in it indefinitely. To be precise, I am not able to actually *identify* with such negative thoughts, but it does bring out "bad emotions" (not thoughts, just raw emotion), low emotions, very much upset, very much pain, and then I have to go through the very deep crises on my own as therapists have not been able to help there to help me keep safe or regulated.

A big problem (?) is I actually am not able to identify with emotions and states of feeling depressed, weak, low, lonely. Low perhaps, in a technical sense, I am aware that I can have a low energy state so I call that a low mood whether I feel the mood or not (detached from it). I am not even sure what negative emotions are in me somewhere that I could actually identify with in an authentic way and not feel pressured into it. Or how to identify with them. I understand you have to go through pain to heal but I must have a misunderstanding about this whole topic.

What I would hold on to to not drown in all this would usually be some self-help books written by knowledgeable therapists, but those books usually contain generalities, not so many examples or actual practices to do. Or the actual practices still contain so many generalities and little guidance beyond that, much like you said there are no instruction manuals for therapy. But I did hold on to these books and other notes from some knowledgeable therapists online, trying to believe that using tips from CBT or IFS or some other framework will help me not drown. Also I would have some of my own very private beliefs about progress and positive change, so that helped too to not drown.

A note, I have not tried to actually make myself feel weak or vulnerable, while doing and surviving all these crises. Just other various, intense "bad emotions" that would want to inflict strong emotional thinking on me but I could not ever identify with such thinking as that is what would give me the feeling of drowning and losing my self. I have to very strongly defend against such attacks and not give in to them.

3. If I allow my anger and/or emotional detachment to come back, I instantly feel fine again, but if I got very deep in the crisis this takes hard work to regain that sense of normalcy. I just have to I don't know what exactly I do to survive, and after that I am back to normal. When I am my normal self, I do instantly push away (with anger) or block out (detach from) all negative or depressive etc thoughts. It is not like trying to not think of a white elephant. Maybe you would call these strong defenses, I don't know. I am not sure if it is that or something else.

...

You might want to ask, why I would want to go through these defenses then if they work so well, well my motivation for it was as above. Because I was told that this is an important part of getting better. But I am getting really tired of how exhausting all this process is. I have certainly processed some emotions but it's been exhausting. And it really is hard for me to tell if I have been getting better. I sometimes feel like I have, then sometimes I don't know. If I have, then it has come at a big cost and I do not wish the experience on my worst enemy, ever. I cannot tell if it is just my problem being some difficult problem, or if I was doing it all "wrong", or I didn't find the right therapy, or if I am plain incompatible with most therapies.

Yes I realise there is something up and is why I made this thread, I wanted to honestly share what I actually think and feel about it all. I suppressed it because I thought it's "wrong thoughts and feelings", but I finally accepted that this is how I see things now. So that is why I wanted to share openly and ask about people's input on all this.

I did have a therapist that did explicitly try to tell me that anger is not okay, and that did have a profound influence on me for a while. I am not fully recovered from that yet but I am doing better.

I do not really understand what empowering therapy looks like. I do not feel like any of the therapists I've had, whether online or IRL, actually connected to me emotionally, or accepted my anger.

I will admit I don't compute how vulnerability is based in strength. Do you perhaps have some example of such expression of vulnerability?

I do have a big dose of Choleric in my "temperament". I personally believe some anger is very empowering, and some can be destructive or directed at the wrong target or goal. After that therapist, I had to sort it out again for myself as she didn't really make distinctions about anger and it was just all "bad" in her opinion.

And yes, anger sometimes is a defense, sometimes it comes with too much mistrust, or is too impulsive and uncontrolled or wrongly violent, and sometimes it's self-assertion and standing up for yourself and changing your situation, or protecting other people.

Fighting for what's truly important, for fairness, for justice, and for all the above things has a meaningful place in my world. That is just how I look at it as far as the purpose of anger as an emotion.

Yes I do associate the empowering kind of anger with high self-esteem and self-respect too. And yes, it helps be strong, tough and functional, in my world. This is me. I am not saying others work the same way I do.

The way you seem to define weakness, it sounds like you view it as being inefficient in achieving one's goals? Lack of strength in achieving and accomplishing goals? I may have misunderstood you.

And finally, yes, so some bad things I am trying to process from my life and my anger did want to become destructive and uncontrollable and it's all been hard work to not allow that to happen. And I am sure it makes sense that it's a defense masking things behind it, and it works well for that purpose, and sometimes I do feel it's really needed for my survival.

I am not sure if this view is incompatible with most therapies. Is it?

And can I ask, what did you mean by, therapy is not for everyone?

I am sorry to hear about your experience. Yes, some of this resonates with mine. I don't really have complaints or grudges about any of the therapists I've had, I did and do feel strong and deep dissatisfaction, and I did complain to some of them before, but I came to the conclusion that I don't really know what REALLY happened in these therapies. So I no longer really have any opinion about what went on. It's just such a complex matter that it's hard to say anything definitive about it for me.

I very much relate to you with how hard it was for me to try and open up emotionally. It was so hard that after a while (years) I just simply tried to force it and speed it up, and unfortunately I only realised later that that was a bad idea too.

I've come to understand that no therapist is perfect, as no human being is perfect either, but if there is a serious mistake, then that has to be fixed so as not to have the therapy cause actual harm to you.

I've also felt like it's a Catch-22 as to be able to receive the therapist's empathy I have to be more in touch with my own emotions, but how I can get to be more in touch with them if I cannot receive their empathy? I did see sometimes that some people can try and reach out with more intense attempts emotionally to help me connect to my own emotions but I've never ever ever heard of an actual therapy approach that "officially" incorporates this.

(Is there one?)

As far as distressing emotions going back under the surface again.....Yes I did that forever myself. Until I had enough of how it removed too much of my energy and vitality too. It might be you've found my own solution where suppressing the emotions do not interfere much with your life. If you want, mind saying more on that?

Yes, some therapists jumped to conclusions too fast, tried to assume what capabilities I must be lacking (completely off track with that), readily ignored and invalidated my "imperfectly expressed" emotion, when I attempted to express and open up, etc.

I do think if I don't even understand what safety and (the right kind of) vulnerability are supposed to be like, it's probably harder for the therapist too to deal with that but maybe I'm wrong on this and maybe I managed to take blame for this where I shouldn't have. I'm going to think more about your post.

I've read in Gottman's marriage books that there are two kinds of emotional systems physiologically. One will react fast to challenges and threats and calm down slowly, in the physiological sense, and the other one will not. The former one will feel the need to retaliate if they are being disrespected or attacked and cannot calm down without that. The latter one is able to self-soothe and not need to retaliate.

(You can guess that this was sex-related differences, though of course it's generalisations about the two sexes)

I agree, some of us probably have to deal with harder emotions, because of harder circumstances etc. But it is very hard to compare the subjective experiences of two people. Objective measurements of functioning can help compare, and help have more empathy, maybe.

That is not really what I meant by incompatibility. Assuming that you meant resistance is a willful act.

That issue certainly has made it even harder for me to feel safe before. If I can't even be sure what is meant by resistance or me having walls, whether it's true or just blaming me out of frustration. One of the posts in this thread was illuminating in this regard. Because I did not even know what it meant when I was told by some therapists that I have walls. One of them was actually nice about it, empathetic, said she wants to work with me on the wall, but another one wasn't like that.

So, it is a dynamics that can become a very dangerous power dynamics if the therapist gets to want to feel more in power or lacks awareness of their countertransference and things like that.

All that with the client opening up about the most difficult things. And them being open to taking in ideas, beliefs, guidance of the therapist even if it's wrong and incorrect or comes from tainted, unpure motivations.

Someone above said vulnerability is strength, but to me it feels like it's not taught anywhere, how to do it from a place of strength, and if the client goes into therapy without this "skill", then yeah, it's a risk and liability, IMO.

It's really hard to explain what I had in mind with that wish for the "hypnotised state". I will be responding to the other post on this too below, that is a response to you too.

But I will try to give it a little go, to explaining it here. What I have a big problem with is incredible tension where I know it is there because those "bad emotions" cannot come out and be released. It gives me very bad sensations, that extreme tension.

(Or if I finally get to have them to come out, then, it's exhausting mini crises, that take time to recover from and seriously jeopardise my day to day functioning)

And in this "hypnotised state", I would be like..... so very relaxed, and not totally conscious of what's going on, not even fully remembering things afterwards, all my normal senses and judgment suspended, as I would not be entirely conscious, so the emotions could come out.

This was just a feeling I had that this would help in some way. If I could achieve this state more easily, somehow.

I also had this feeling because I know of no person where I could just do this release and pouring out and "vomiting it all out" (if it's particularly violently coming out). Understandably, most people expect different expressions than that.

I do understand that sometimes I do have to do processing of the emotions, but sometimes it really just needs to come out without any deep cognitive processing. It would be its own emotional processing instead. This is my strong gut feeling.

I don't know if this made any more sense to you now, it's okay if you don't have any input on this, but I've put this out here just in case.

I will be honest - mentioned this in a long post above, you don't have to read all that so I'll mention it here again - I am exhausted with trying to deal with all that. Sure, raw, awful, all that, but I am exhausted by all that. That is where the above wish came from. Somehow.

You would be scaring me actually with the note that it will not be ever completely safe. Except I already accepted that no person is completely safe as no one is perfect. Unless you just meant that the rawness of pain is what doesn't feel safe in some way...I didn't understand what you meant there then, though.

Maybe for me it's not panic attacks but the unbearable tension. So that makes sense.

Being exhausted, my gut feeling says that's not a feature. I am trying to find out what's gone awry with that.



Thank you for trying to really go into this answer to explain things. Unfortunately, the things I'd like to talk about in therapy would be a burden for friends, and for me too it's harder to express myself about these issues. That is where I wondered about incompatibility.

Is this willingness a conscious decision or just how the different minds of different people happen to work?

I understand that this may take time to be able to change the behaviours, after enough internal processing of emotions and about the self etc has been done. But if I feel stuck on that phase already, that is where something feels off.

Ah! Thank you for explaining what the phrasing about having walls means! I had no idea it was supposed to mean this.... This makes me feel relieved big time. Because I felt uncomfortable being told that and like something is vaguely wrong with me, but I didn't know what they meant. And so I can see now that those therapists did misread me and my intentions. I always had very high motivation, too high motivation with all this desire for change in my life, making me run myself into walls and beat my head into them repeatedly trying various things. Yes I agree, it's a biiiig handful of a challenge, no question about that.

I would be quite mistrustful of it if a therapist claimed with certainty that they had the objective point of view on my situation. Also, I feel like, instead of a shoulder, I need other things like the relaxation you talk of. And if I'm required to easily become emotional and expressive without strong help from the therapist with this, that's going to definitely make me incompatible with therapy.

I've talked to one really young would-be therapist girl (in training), who was enthusiastic and would not take an answer of "I'm okay", she kept going and didn't allow me to remain polite like that. That was when I felt, yes maybe I could try therapy in a serious way. But I never had that experience with a therapist again.

Well, I sorta did, with another young (!) one, but he was a bit detached, and did not try to pull things out of me like that with strong interest in how I am doing. He did however use some positive affirmations about me and had really decent boundaries, not overstepping them, and did seem to have a genuine intent to just help and not try to pressure me into any belief or idea or value.

He just did these positive statements about me, validating or affirming (?), upbeat, uplifting, and then challenged me a bit about asking me to talk about things. He would be there, but would not say much while challenging me about that, but he'd always also provide these positive emotions to me.

Which has helped me in dealing with the challenge. That was a positive experience and like a new experience, like I can really say something on my own and meet that challenge. But I am very sure that without his very positive, attentive, upbeat attitude towards me it would not have worked. I still did not feel very in control of meeting this requirement and challenge, ie I was not very sure if I could come up with much, but I managed each time. That was awesome. But he was not available for long, unfortunately. Again, this was a really young guy, so I think he was still in training too.

Is there a therapy approach that incorporates all this into it?


In my case it is not lack of willingness to do hard work. Yes, different therapy frameworks and picking things from them is a thing....I've done that too.

Apparently I am hard to reach though. But it's not because of unwillingness....

I think a lot of the walls are just the way my brain is structured. And then some of it is walls that I want to modify, so that would be a therapy goal.

Anyway since you said write down why I can't talk.... I tried above, don't know if it made sense. I don't expect you to try and have any deep input or solution. If you didn't mind reading it, I'm interested in your thoughts or insights, but it's OK either way.

OK, so this is hard to explain....I was not trying to say that I wanted to "hypnotise away" my mental problems.

Yes! The deep state of relaxation, modified state of consciousness, normal judgment and senses suspended, that is what interests me highly.

Relaxed enough, suspended judgment, and it can make emotions come out more easily. More safe....perhaps. I am not totally sure what to call this state. I mean a strange, unusual state where I am like relieved of "judgment", I mean my day to day judgment (my sensibilities, intellect) is good and fine and all that but yeah...this state is special.

This concept of readiness comes up alot. So.... Can I will myself, can I force myself to be emotionally ready?? If I am ready and willing intellectually?? Is a big problem of mine !

And is why I'd like the truly relaxed "hypnotised" state.... But it's just a wish. Again, I'd have to get lucky with it. Unless some therapy exists for this already.

Ahhh no no no no the thing is you see its like... When I was spontaneously in this state... I was ABLE to talk.... I was able to and it was awesome. But I had to get lucky to get there....

Hypnosis might not be the correct label for this thing, but it's definitely some suggestible state with modified consciousness and deep relaxation in a sense. Again, I know because it happened before spontaneously. I can't call this up at will is the problem. But when it did happen, that was really nice.

And I liked the partial "amnesia" afterwards, because, my normal judgment was no longer suspended, and it was easier this was. Like, I would not remember in detail what I was talking about. But I know processing did happen and it did help me. And it was not extremely painful and exhausting, but was instead relaxing and yes, a kind of safety. I don't know if that's the kind of safety therapists talk of but for me it was safety.

Safe with being with the emotions and talking about them and not having to crash deep inside myself and pulled low - it was negative emotions for sure, terrible emotions even, yet I was not pulled so low and deep inside my head.

And I know when it happened spontaneously then I was also getting help with having some good mood around me, and that also added to the safety. It was a kind of acceptance, but also I could feel the mood as *tangibly* positive.

BTW, those two young therapists in training were the only two psychologists who cared to try and make it somewhat positive at least. I'm convinced that that contributes to gaining and maintaining some degree of emotional safety for me with these things.

(To be clear, this special state, I did not experience around these two therapists. It was on another occasion, quite randomly.)

I'm consciously willing to, I just can't. All I want with this is to be able to deeply relax about all those emotions. Doesn't mean I'm going to be able to.... definitely not at will. Forcing it never worked, naturally, but I tried to force it anyway until I saw that that did not work. Motivation is not the issue here.

But anyway just closing my eyes and taking some deep breaths will not put me in that state either....

So what is this willingness to deeply relax again... If you can do it at will and if this is required for therapy then that's where I am incompatible with it!

I am sorry, if this didn't make much sense to you, I don't expect you to have the answer or solution for all this.

I am just trying to talk about this here so I look at it more myself and be more open to the whole thing....

And perhaps, someone else finds it useful now or sometime in the future, who knows.

The length of your reply is fine with me. The way I see it, sometimes the scenic route is what gets you there fastest (or at all).

What I now see as the common theme in what I was saying about school and therapy, is that I thought my job in life was to decide what situations (external or internal) I should or shouldn't subject myself to because of the effects I could reasonably expect those situations to have on me. Simplistic example: if I were to hang out with that handful of thievish kids I knew from school, I figured I'd be more likely to become a thief myself. I didn't care much for the idea of becoming a thief so I made sure to avoid them. If I were to associate with kids who made fun of me it would probably lower my self-esteem (which was in short supply already), so anyone who made fun of me was on my **** list too. There turned out to be lots of people like that, so over time my **** list grew pretty long. If I were to join some notoriously-strict military organization I might develop some (more desirable) habits and get freed from other (less desirable) ones. Of course I might also get killed or injured, or become a killer myself. If I were to dig into my unconscious (with or without the guidance of a therapist), stir up all the memories that had ever bothered me, and send them to wherever bad memories go when they die, I might end up with only good memories and live happily ever after.

I eventually arrived (by the scenic route, of course ) at what seems like the polar opposite of that approach, and it now seems like the only approach that's ever worked for me. I guess it could best be summarized as "Start from where you are." I might look around, notice what I'm aware of and what my options are -- and then notice what I ended up choosing. Here are a few places where I've posted about the process in a little more detail:

• Procrastination - self-help recommendations ?

• Sorry to disappoint anyone

• Determined? Disciplined?

Several years ago I learned that a group of psychologists including Steven Hayes and Marsha Linehan had been writing about similar approaches and even developing therapies based on them. Here's a book by Hayes that's oriented to the general public, not to psychologists in particular: https://www.amazon.com/Get-Your-Mind.../dp/1572244259

Does this happen to ring any bells, push any buttons, pull any triggers, etc., for you?

I have not yet begun to ramble!
-- John Paul Jones FooZe

(Ramble, continued)
It sounds from here as if where the idea that you have a wall is located, is not in your own experience. I guess it could conceivably be located in your therapists' experience of you, but it sounds just as likely that it's part of a story about you that they've been telling themselves and each other -- for therapeutic purposes, of course -- something like this:


1st Therapist: I've said all the right things but she's not responding the way she's supposed to. It's as if there were a wall between us or something!

2nd Therapist: Yeah, some clients are like that -- so well defended that you can't do a thing with them. It's not your fault. Just tell her you can't work with her if she won't open up and become more vulnerable.


I also don't know how much Paul Simon was speaking for himself here as opposed to portraying a "don't-be-like-this" character as a cautionary tale for his audience:
To pick up a previous thread for a moment:
When I was in my teens I was worried about what relationships (with girls) I should or shouldn't subject myself to. If I found someone I liked and I was able to approach her confidently and warmly, I figured I'd obviously be better prepared to win her heart (or at least her interest) than if I hung back defensively. And of course, having "won" once, I'd feel that much better prepared going into subsequent encounters. However (and here's the rub): if I chose the wrong person, or approached her wrong and she happened to reject me, I'd be burdened with the hurt feelings from that encounter going into the next one, and the next one, and the next.

It took me quite a few years to discover that I could approach someone just because I was choosing to, not because I could tally up more good reasons to, than not to; and that if she happened to reject me and I was satisfied that I was there by my own choice and had done the best I could, it would feel to me like a win, not a loss.

Hey. Glad you didn't have an issue with the long post.

OK, so. Do you mind giving me a label to refer to this approach you were doing that wasn't working for you? Some kind of judgmental approach with biases and expectations formed in advance? And would you say the opposite approach - that did end up working for you - is related to mindfulness? The second link (to the thread about disappointment) seemed like outright mindfulness.

I see one of the threads was also titled discipline & determination. I feel like that's very the opposite to mindfulness, but maybe I'm not following you here, let me know what you think about that. (See more below)

And I'm not sure if you were referring to how mindfulness can help get things flowing rather than there being walls and blocks in the way. ?

I've looked at the book before, I did not have the time to read it from start to end, just sampled stuff from it, some of it was interesting, some of it over my head; but really, what rang any bells or pushed any buttons or whatever we could call it, was that, where I thought about discipline & determination vs mindfulness and that overall relaxed and non-forceful approach you described. Like again, the two are really opposite and I don't know whether you were trying to ask me if I'd think one of them would work for me better.

Let me know if I'm totally off track though.

Yes. That makes a lot of sense. In that, the first one is like, trying to oversimplify the issue. And the second one is, well yeah they have their own idea of what walls I may have. But, in reality; regardless of whether I have strong thick boundaries that can be called walls, that would not have anything to do with my level of motivation and willingness to find solutions for my issues.

BTW someone else in this thread noted that therapy isn't for everyone. What would usually be meant by that? Do you agree with that thought?

That vulnerability issue, I'll open a new thread on it sometime because I have some big questions about it.

That's just the thing. If that wall was built up somehow a long time ago in the past, which it was, yes....Now I don't know if I want to keep it as is or not. The one useful nugget of line I've ever read about this so far was, you cannot go and try and tear down walls, it would be harmful and it just doesn't work like that anyway. I can wholeheartedly agree with that note.

I think I understand you there with it being a win and not a loss whenever you took action assertively. I am not sure how we relate this to this thread? As this seems like specifically romantically oriented.

At the moment I can only think of flippant labels like, "What we've all learned to do, all the time". Oh, and I've heard it described as living in the "story" we tell ourselves. And yes, "mindfulness" seems to be the umbrella term for many different variations on focusing on what's so for us here and now.

As I recall, the other poster seemed to be asking why discipline and determination didn't always seem to get her where she wanted to go. I suggested looking at (for example) how she knew that was where she wanted to go.

While "getting things flowing" could be a way to describe the process in hindsight, if you were to focus on "I want to get things flowing" it would be no different from "I want to break through that wall [that my therapist apparently can see but I can't]". In either case you're dealing with something that you experience only in the form of a concept or story; for instance, if you decide to believe you must have a wall, can you then point to it or describe what it looks like, feels like, sounds like, smells like? If you decide you don't want to have a wall and you try to resist it -- stop thinking about it, or move it aside, or chop a hole in it, or shatter it with cannon fire -- any of those would most likely just make the concept of the wall more, not less, real for you.
As for how it could be "harmful", here's one way I imagine it.


Suppose that someone, perhaps in collusion with a therapist or other authority, were to agree that they really did have a wall and that their job was to break through that wall at any cost. How might they go about determining (and informing their therapist) if they were succeeding at their task or not?

Possibility 1: Everything goes wonderfully well, just like in a storybook. Client quickly discovers that they have no need for a wall and never did, ships the rubble off to the landfill, and goes on to live happily ever after.

Possibility 2: Client struggles to get rid of their wall but it not only won't budge, it actively defies their efforts. The more they struggle with it, the taller and harder and thicker it grows. Therapist tells client what client already suspects: that they're not trying hard enough. Client redoubles their efforts and wall responds by growing even taller, harder, and thicker.

Possibility 3: Client hears or reads somewhere that it's dangerous to break down walls before one is ready. Client decides it's all the therapist's fault but therapist will have none of it. To underscore their point, client goes on a rampage in the streets, scares numerous horses, gets sectioned and written up in the tabloids. Upon being released, client embarks on a new career as poster child for the proposition that it's dangerous to break down walls.


Or: regardless of whether or not you think one or the other would work better for you -- what your experience has been with them.

I'm afraid I don't know enough about whom therapy is or isn't for, to agree or disagree. For me the bottom line is: do what works for you.

I knew that I could have carefully evaluated the situation according to whatever "rules" I was using to determine when to act and when not to...

You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away, know when to run...

-- The Gambler (Kenny Rogers, 1978)

... and steered clear, perhaps regretfully, if that was what the rules dictated; or else pushed myself into a situation I personally wasn't entirely comfortable with, just because I "needed" the practice.

What made it a win for me was that I discovered I'd proceeded not according to what I "should" do, but according to what I found I was (or wasn't) willing to do -- and that I'd been willing to accept the outcome, whatever it might be. I've also heard that called, "First I win, then I play."

Oh, by all means! When you do, though, I hope you'll illustrate as clearly as you can, what the idea of "vulnerability" does (and/or doesn't) mean to you.

That makes sense on a general level, yeah. I'm just never clear on whether mindfulness is about your internals or the external situation or both at once.

OK, I see what you intended by including that thread. I think in my case instinct can propel me forward, instinct about what I want.

But I asked that originally about contrasting discipline&determination with mindfulness because I wondered if the two are mutually incompatible sometimes. I am a very determined type of person and so it occurred to me that maybe that's why I'm having issues with understanding what mindfulness is really like.

I understand you I think, and that's what I meant by determination being possibly incompatible with mindfulness, sometimes. At least under certain circumstances. (After all, determination could also help, as you could have the determination to jump headfirst into mindfulness. If you know exactly where and what to jump into, lol!)

I will say I did not try to attack the overall wall thing directly as I did not really envision it in any form and because it seems like a too general level of conceptualisation for me personally to be able to do much with it directly, but it's like I keep being so motivated and determined about pushing myself about all these things about therapy and psychology self-help and stuff. (Except the mistrust that I've grown about therapy now, the rest I'm still pushing myself about.) And that does seem to be like doing something to the wall(s) or whatever it is. I often cannot tell if it is doing it any good or bad. And it's exhausting.

To be really clear though, I do feel more relaxed sometimes but it's hard to do that and I can't even be sure if that's real improvement, like I did not measure how often I am relaxed now, compared to before.

Haha well definitely not what I've had going down with this

Oh man, therapy gone so wrong here. Makes a bit of sense too for my case, yes. In some way.

Lol!


Hard for me to really generalise about this. Determination and discipline is a big part of my self-image and identity, and I would not want to drop it all. But I understand, emotions work in a different way and blah. You know what I mean, I think. But I haven't been able to resolve this contradiction for myself. Having therapy work somehow, work with my emotions without having to lose my actual self.

Pretty much my story with therapy. The bolded.

Mmm, yeah, that idea makes me feel more relaxed about therapy, that I should have the right to decide and know for myself when I am ready or willing to do something. Because I was told I do not have that right, and that instead I need to force myself to open up and so I did all that discipline and determination to try and force it, you know. It ended in a disaster.

A friend later told me that he is considering therapy but will only enter when he feels ready for it. I don't know what he meant by that really... He's much more in tune with his feelings than I am so he knows pretty well if he FEELS ready for something or not. I don't really know or feel it so I just push myself lol

I will give it a serious go, yes. Thank you.