gooblax
MVP
Favourite line: "I don't need advice from my doubts right now, end of conversation."
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gooblax
MVP
Hooray for mega anxiety over the thing I sent. 
From "phew OK done" to "hmm probs overreacting, but no big deal" to "well that was a hugely exaggerated thing to send, wtf was I thinking and how dumb can I be" to "if xyz then xyz and [insert unfavourable thing here]" to "OK clearly I was right, I shouldn't be talking to him or anyone, I just need to stop being so self absorbed and blah di blah blah blah".
Counterpoints: He hasn't been dismissive of stuff I've said before. Maybe he'll appreciate the info because it might help him do his job, and regardless of what other thoughts I'm having I'm confident that he cares about his job. This current set of thoughts is the exact same pattern of stuff I just emailed about so it's pre-explained and makes sense that I'm having them again. If I don't want to talk about some of the stuff by the time I get in the session, he can't make me talk about it (as my previous sessions 10yrs ago can attest) and he seems ok with me taking my time to talk about things (even when there's no things to talk about). If I just get stuck in shut-down mode it will suck but will be ok. If he decides to terminate with me I'll be sad but will find a way to be ok, but all I've done is provide more info about a problem I'm having and despite it being convoluted and rejectable in my head it might not be that bad from an outside professional perspective.
Four days til the session seems like half a lifetime at this point. :facepalm:
From "phew OK done" to "hmm probs overreacting, but no big deal" to "well that was a hugely exaggerated thing to send, wtf was I thinking and how dumb can I be" to "if xyz then xyz and [insert unfavourable thing here]" to "OK clearly I was right, I shouldn't be talking to him or anyone, I just need to stop being so self absorbed and blah di blah blah blah".
Counterpoints: He hasn't been dismissive of stuff I've said before. Maybe he'll appreciate the info because it might help him do his job, and regardless of what other thoughts I'm having I'm confident that he cares about his job. This current set of thoughts is the exact same pattern of stuff I just emailed about so it's pre-explained and makes sense that I'm having them again. If I don't want to talk about some of the stuff by the time I get in the session, he can't make me talk about it (as my previous sessions 10yrs ago can attest) and he seems ok with me taking my time to talk about things (even when there's no things to talk about). If I just get stuck in shut-down mode it will suck but will be ok. If he decides to terminate with me I'll be sad but will find a way to be ok, but all I've done is provide more info about a problem I'm having and despite it being convoluted and rejectable in my head it might not be that bad from an outside professional perspective.
Four days til the session seems like half a lifetime at this point. :facepalm:
David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
Print this and keep it in a pocket or somewhere close so you can re-read it when the negative stuff starts inserting itself again.
gooblax
MVP
The one thing that I don't have any good comebacks to is the "I'm making this up / exaggerating" train of thought. The moment I get into that line of thought, there's no way for me to prove that things really were as I said they were before I restarted thinking that.
Whenever I find an account of someone who mentions similar thoughts/feelings about some stuff, that person is able to point to some kind of trauma that they've experienced and in a way that explains the existence of those thoughts/feelings for them. Thankfully I can't point to any traumatic experiences. Which just leaves the explanation that I'm soft, weak, pathetic and over blowing everything. Just because these thoughts are part of a pattern I have doesn't make them right or wrong, but logical rules of cause and effect says they're right.
Whenever I find an account of someone who mentions similar thoughts/feelings about some stuff, that person is able to point to some kind of trauma that they've experienced and in a way that explains the existence of those thoughts/feelings for them. Thankfully I can't point to any traumatic experiences. Which just leaves the explanation that I'm soft, weak, pathetic and over blowing everything. Just because these thoughts are part of a pattern I have doesn't make them right or wrong, but logical rules of cause and effect says they're right.
How about just ignoring?
gooblax
MVP
It's the sort of info that prompts a certain course of action/response and is important not to ignore. Somewhere between ignoring that your shoes are on the wrong feet when you're going on a hike, and ignoring that there's a car coming when you're crossing the road.
The hike one is probably the most apt because over a long duration at any point you could stop, admit the truth, and fix the problem, but the longer you go on ignoring it the worse you will have messed up your feet/ankles/legs from the way you were walking to compensate for the problem.
Then aren't you are already buying into it? That it's important?
An alternative to thought-action fusion is cognitive defusion (as in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy).
Defusion: Getting Rid of Painful Thoughts
Take OCD for example. People with OCD don't have OCD because of the thoughts themselves. It's how they react to the thoughts that can be debilitating -- taking the thoughts at face value (to some degree -- as opposed to seeing the thoughts as just thoughts), trying to "fight fire with fire" like trying to ruminate away the thoughts, or doing some other behavior to get the thoughts to go away in the short term.
Thought-action fusion across anxiety disorder diagnoses: Specificity and treatment effects
Thought-action fusion across anxiety disorder diagnoses: Specificity and treatment effects
Funny, I didn’t come to the same conclusions as you did gooblax...
Part of the reason you could be thinking that you are “soft, weak, pathetic and over blowing everything” might be because you have depression or anxiety...
It may *feel* that way, but it’s not true. A chemical or behavioral issue is Real. So you’re not weak. You aren’t making this stuff up. You’re not pathetic.
In fact people with mental illness are some of the strongest people I know. They have to work two or three or ten times as hard to have a semi-normal life. They sometimes put on a “regular face” and go out into to the world to work, have relationships, and work in themselves.
I would like to know if you have a different definition of trauma. Is trauma when something bad happens to anyone else but yourself? If something bad happens/happened to you, do you figure it doesn’t matter, it was no big deal, everyone has their own pain, why am I any different...? Because then you’re minimizing something traumatic that happened to you, or maybe just don’t even think of someone treating you badly as being abusive.
On the other hand, even if there was no trauma outside your head, maybe, like I said before, you may have a chemical imbalance. I don’t know if you’ve had the grey matter/hormones/blood tests etc that could find something physically wrong that might be causing or worsening what’s going on in your head, but any of that stuff is also trauma. It’s physical/chemical trauma.
Mental stress causes a lot of subtle changes to the physical body: it can affect organs including the brain. It can actually shrink the brain in a few areas by millimeters.
Anyways, I am just trying to illustrate that you have every right to be taken care of/take care of yourself whether or not you’ve endured any kind of childhood or more recent trauma.
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BTW, one of my favorite books was the The Selfish Gene. It's really about memes. To apply it to, say, depression, depression comes with a number of common memes such as "I'm a loser."
These downer emotional states are still around because they have some survival value in limited situations -- like feeling defeated enough not to fight back. But it's all-to-easy to take these memes personally -- when they are really just crude mechanisms for trying to cope/survive: Evolutionary Psychology: Depression as a survival tool?
In any case, a point made in various therapies including CBT is that no matter what you are feeling, thinking, or what you have done in the past, your self-worth is exactly the same as everyone else, e.g. everyone should have unconditional positive self-regard. To think otherwise is to enter the self-esteem trap where one's self-regard is conditional on behavior, etc.
These downer emotional states are still around because they have some survival value in limited situations -- like feeling defeated enough not to fight back. But it's all-to-easy to take these memes personally -- when they are really just crude mechanisms for trying to cope/survive: Evolutionary Psychology: Depression as a survival tool?
In any case, a point made in various therapies including CBT is that no matter what you are feeling, thinking, or what you have done in the past, your self-worth is exactly the same as everyone else, e.g. everyone should have unconditional positive self-regard. To think otherwise is to enter the self-esteem trap where one's self-regard is conditional on behavior, etc.
gooblax
MVP
I knew that however it went was going to end up being difficult, but (outside the termination scenario) I didn't anticipate being so sad.
Good therapy does come with unanticipated effects. Grist for the mill, ideally.
In any case, I would let your therapist know.
In any case, I would let your therapist know.
David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
gooblax
MVP
Discussing the stuff I'd written, particularly around how I feel about him, how he feels about me, how I think other people think /feel about me etc.
No, didn't terminate, but I didn't expect to be this sad unless I did. On my end I'm still tossing it up a bit as usual (now with some new reasons), on his end he's not planning to.
Yeah. Sometime.
How are you googoobear? If I may call you that with only fondness.
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Sent from my Hollycopter using SlappaSquawk
gooblax
MVP
LOL you may, as long as you don't need me to keep a straight face while responding.
I'm doing much better thanks.
Oh! Great to hear!!
Nope, no mandatory poker faces necessary!! [emoji38]
Sent from my Hollycopter using SlappaSquawk
Nope, no mandatory poker faces necessary!! [emoji38]
Sent from my Hollycopter using SlappaSquawk
gooblax
MVP
Haha, indeed.googooroo may be more appropriate
So as usual, we didn't set another session time yet, or decide who was going to contact who to book said session. I can't afford to be that sad (or even how I'm still feeling now) while my parents are visiting so next week is out regardless. I'm still undecided about what to do cause I don't think I can change in a way that fixes my personality to that of a real person rather than a poor excuse for a robot. Or fixes the stupid feelings I have about things. Which means what's the point in trying, especially when it means inflicting my unlikeable robot self on people who could do anything better with their time than that...
I rode my bike to work today (to ride home later in the week) and feel less of a mess after that, but if I didn't have a high priority task I probably would have had the day off. Barely made it in yesterday. The team might be going out after work on Friday and I'm already 90% sure I'm going to bail.
David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
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