My ongoing therapy dilemma

[Daniel E.]

OTOH, from a BPD perspective:

Ruptures are regarded as strategies to deal with the tension between self-definition and relatedness to the other (Lingiardi, Holmqvist, & Safran, 2016).

https://www.researchinpsychotherapy.org/index.php/rpsy/article/view/348/366

From a OCD/anxiety perspective, people with anxiety tend to have weaker boundaries in some ways and can feel "emotionally contaminated."

Of course, every therapist-client dyad is different.

 

[Daniel E.]

"relational trauma" and while I may not relate to that term I do relate to their descriptions of the daily pain of therapy ruptures etc.

From my perspective, anxiety, being so future-focused, is like memory loss. Someone who is very anxious or depressed often has relatively little memory of overcoming the traumas/hurts/pains of the past. (Of course, too much focus on the past is not good either. But one problem with CBT is it can gloss over the past compared to more psychodynamic therapies.)

 

[gooblax]

Yes I might have a bit of trouble handling the "what is his opinion of me" ambiguity but it doesn't seem like the whole picture. It remains that my feelings about my therapist are pathetic and I should not be having them. What other way to correct that than cold turkey quitting therapy? But because I like him I don't have the appetite for the necessary pain.

 

[Daniel E.]

It remains that my feelings about my therapist are pathetic and I should not be having them.

Almost univerally, though, thoughts and feelings are not isolated from behavior, which is more manageable. And by changing behavior, thoughts and feelings can eventually change to a meaningful degree.

Most therapists I have seen have made this same point to me multiple times

 

[Daniel E.]

On the more cogntive side, so what even if it really was pathetic? So what? (That is my []Albert Ellis[/[wiki]] impersonation.)

Also:

[url="https://forum.psychlinks.ca/showthread.php?27202-The-Four-Questions-to-Rid-Automatic-Negative-Thoughts&highlight=Byron"]The Four Questions to Rid Automatic Negative Thoughts[/url]


And regarding behavior, sometimes the easiest thing is to just be more distracted/active/busy. Or just to have more awareness of what we are already doing, as in mindfulness.

It can also help, as with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, to remember your values, which gives you a stronger sense of indentity/resilience.

In any case, the idea is to be proactive rather than reactive. Like managing diabetes on a daily basis. That is one of the more surprising things I have learned in therapy.[/wiki]

 

[Daniel E.]

Another reminder:

Defusion: Getting Rid of Painful Thoughts

We can't control what we think, but we can choose whether to buy into it or not...

By defusion, we mean that we no longer take our thoughts and feelings as literal "truth."

...It's not important whether a thought is true or not. The main question is workability: if I buy into a thought, what kinds of actions will I take? Will following that thought take me in the direction of a life I value? Sometimes the answer is yes, but often we can become so caught up in these experiences that we aren't able to live our lives as we would like.

 

[gooblax]

The simple behavioural change would be to stop seeing my therapist, to align myself with my values about being strong and self-sufficient that I've been failing at living up to for half my life. My first instinct is to leave this forum as a first step. Who I was when I was better dealing with my stuff alone, was better than who I am now. The long-term utility in relationships and interaction is a slippery thing to grasp, when I allow it to keep me stuck in place.

Instead I have joined a facebook group which has been set up for practicing a certain type of conversation. After getting up the nerve to post to ask people if they wanted to practice with me, I am hugely anxious about responding to their responses. I don't know that this is any better.

 

[gooblax]

Had my first "practice conversation". Ughhhh crawling out of my skin at the moment but I think it went ok other than me really struggling to come up with words and stuff, especially at the end. Now to do a bunch of pullups to try and stop being so anxious.

I have 2 more calls set up for the weekend, and then another one the following week where this lady didn't listen to me that I can't do this week and is trying to do it tomorrow so I have to re-confirm that. There's another person that I have to ask to reschedule because she picked a time that I'd organised with someone else. This is why I made a calendar, with the hopes that people would just use that (apparently nope, but I should've made fake bookings for the non-calendar-using people to avoid this double scheduling).

Good grief.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Are these with potential new therapists?

 

[gooblax]

Nope, it's just a facebook group where you practice 1:1 conversations with random people about whatever you want to share about your relationships, conflict, things you're learning about yourself etc. while the other person practices reflective listening... then you swap. There are certain exercises to do as a rough agenda to the conversation.
Basically, practice being authentic with real people where it's not therapy.

 

[gooblax]

My therapist and I made a tentative booking for next Thurs. Noting that he might have to look after kids during school holidays but wasn't sure of his schedule yet (especially with COVID-19), he asked for some flexibility around the booking which is fine for me.
Since my workplace has swapped to week at office / week at home, I'll be working from home next week so it'll be fine for me if the session needs to be earlier in the day compared to normal. I'm currently wondering if it would be weird to email to tell him that, or just wait for him to tell me if the tentative time is no good.

In other news, I have the beginnings of a sore throat. I think I just haven't really shaken the thing from the week where I wasn't sleeping well. I'll see how today goes. This week is dragging on very slowly - hard to believe it's only Wednesday.

 

[gooblax]

Sore throat has decided to stay. The office is extra cold with half the number of people in it. I was planning to change the temp setting a degree or two in the morning tomorrow but I might not go in to avoid spreading a cold. They tried to stagger the seating so that people wouldn't be sitting next to each other, but my desk is in the wrong spot on the seating map so I am actually sitting beside someone who is in my 'week'. He stayed home with a cold for 2 days this week so it's only polite to return the favour.

A positive is that I got stairwell-ambushed by my neighbour who wanted to tell me something, but I warned her about the sore throat and she told me to shoo :lol: Had to tell me over the phone instead haha

I discussed the therapy scheduling thing with my bf and he helped me decide not to bother unless my therapist tells me he needs to change it. As I thought it through, I realised:
1) my reason for telling him would be because if I were in the situation of having to reschedule with someone, it would completely stress me out and I really would appreciate having all the information at hand in order to make the optimum decision... But most people aren't like that (hence the disgustingly inefficient way everyone still books appointments with each other without sharing calendars!).
2) trying to determine whether he might need the information is an 'engineer trait' of trying to identify all the variables to create a situation envelope within which everything will occur... And again, that's fine for an engineering task but not what most people do for stuff like this.

So apparently I'm just going to chill and not engage in levels of complication, for now.

 

[gooblax]

My brain has come up with another "reason for a reason" that I should quit therapy. Back along the 'I don't need/deserve help in comparison to _____' line. I've reread my notes from 2 sessions ago where my therapist said that he doesn't want me to quit based on what I think he thinks in the context of me being self critical and this does meet that criteria... But it's not so much whether I actually quit or not, its the moral responsibility of not wasting resources I don't need, of dealing with things I should deal with instead of being weak pathetic and disgusting.
It's not just whether he thinks it, it's whether I know it yet let my stupid feelings decide what I'm doing instead.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

@gooblax

Throughout all of this is this repeated thought/feeling/worry:

dealing with things I should deal with instead of being weak pathetic and disgusting.

You accept that as a given when your mind goes down that path. Anyone else can see that it is an old script handed down by your parents that was never true or correct to begin with.

In other words, any other thoughts or feelings that are based on you being "being weak pathetic and disgusting" are based on a flawed and false premise. Consequently, any conclusions that you may draw based on that premise are necessarily also flawed and false.

That phrase should be a red flag for you, one to reject outright whenever it pops its ugl;y head up.

 

[gooblax]

It's so hard to see it as false though. I don't know if it's possible. The "who would I be without that belief" question gets stuck because if I wasn't guarding myself against being that, I would be that even more than I am now. I think it's something that everyone self-polices, and if someone turns off their police force to the extent where they become obviously weak and pathetic then they deserve pain and to suffer.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

if someone turns off their police force to the extent where they become obviously weak and pathetic then they deserve pain and to suffer.

So if someone else you know or someone else on this forum were to seek help, is that how you would think of them? That they were "obviously weak and pathetic" and "they deserve pain and to suffer"?

 

[gooblax]

So if someone else you know or someone else on this forum were to seek help, is that how you would think of them? That they were "obviously weak and pathetic" and "they deserve pain and to suffer"?

Yes if:
- they didn't actually need the help;
- the help they tried to get was disproportionate to what they actually needed;
- they sought it in a way that was disproportionate to the amount of distress they were in;
- they were using it as an excuse to let themselves off the hook for their responsibilities.

I think that covers all the yes scenarios. Otherwise no.

 

[Daniel E.]

Seeing a therapist is not about dependence but about growth. It is often about becoming less dependent on anxiety and depression-producing behaviors, including worry behaviors.

Ideally, scrupulosity would encourage people with anxiety to do more and take more risks rather than to mostly inhibit behavior. But it is the latter that usually takes place, causing a decrease in socialization, etc.

Scrupulosity - Wikipedia

The term is derived from the Latin scrupulum, a sharp stone, implying a stabbing pain on the conscience. Scrupulosity was formerly called scruples in religious contexts, but the word scruple now commonly refers to a troubling of the conscience rather than to the disorder.

 

[gooblax]

Unbelievably, I just ****ing pocket-sms'd my therapist. I haven't even saved his phone number in my phone because I don't want it there, but I do have the message history from scheduling stuff. Somehow in my pocket, my headphones and phone conspired to get into that particular set of messages and send a bunch of punctuation.

He replied while I was still trying to figure out what to say as a "please disregard" message and it's all sorted out logistically. I've now deleted the message history so there should be no way of it happening again any time soon.

But mentally it's still messy and I'm trying not to overreact with self harm. Or considering whether it's an overreaction or justified. Or both. I was less upset about having accidentally called my plumber in a similar fashion a couple of months ago (although I managed to stop the call pretty quickly so I don't think it rang on his end).

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Really there’s no harm done, right. Everyone has pocket or purse dialed someone v