Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
misery
Twoapenny:
Yes, yes and yes! It makes perfect sense. My first bout of depression came when I had finally got it all - great flat, great job, nice car, plenty of cash and v good looking fiance. I had all the things that I was sure would make me happy (which also included being super skinny, naturally) and I still felt like c**p. That was when it all started caving in.
The T may have done more than it seems, in the sense he may have stripped back or opened up a few wounds which is why you feel worse now than you did when you started? I know that sounds daft but I've found my T has had to keep chiseling away at my veneer to start to let it all out. There have been loooong periods when it's felt like nothing's happened but when I look back I can see that she was chipping away at all the blocking out stuff to let the real me start to come out. My homeopath also commented last time I saw him that sometimes it's like grains of sand slipping out slowly rather than big, cathartic changes. Little tiny things are happening all the time, so small that you barely feel it. But one day you do something that you wouldn't have done a year ago, or someone says something and it doesn't set you off in the way it would have once upon a time. And then you realise you did that and think "Wow! That was different".
I think the wounds and insecurities can take a really long time to heal, and sometimes as they heal more wounds and insecurities start to show up and you have to wait for them to heal as well. I think I see it more now that I need to accept my wounded insecure self as part of who I am, I guess in the same way that people have to accept other illness or disabilities. As I've gone along, I am finding that I have longer spells of life being better, and I'm making healthier choices about people, friends, relationships etc. It's not all the time, sometimes I have really bad spells again, but my whole life used to be one big bad spell and it isn't anymore.
I don't know if any of that makes sense! I think it comes, but it takes a long time, lots of false starts and sometimes it's happening without you even realising.
sKePTiKal:
--- Quote ---Reading this over, I guess I wanted some kind of acknowledgement or validation from T that I had changed and progressed, so I could be done with my insecure and wounded self.
--- End quote ---
Gosh, Ales... we all want this! :D Even after "graduating" from therapy, I want this. I didn't get any certificate signifying that I had overcome any neuroses, that I was cured of anything, that I was done with insecurity or wounds...
Because I wasn't. Therapy was skills training for me. Learning things about myself... including what and where those wounds were... why they hurt... why "I was the way I was". I called it "emotional forensics" - where I could, with help, recreate the original "crime scene" through feeling and memory. Making some baby-steps into new things and reporting back to my T, getting validation... help looking at what I did... and whether my fears/concerns about them were consistent with the real experience.
Learning how to change from the inside out... I heard that loud & clear, Ales and you know - that's how therapy functioned for me. The process however - was me talking, talking, writing, writing, thinking/feeling, thinking/feeling, remembering and putting two and two together to finally get 4 instead of 5... until I finally realized what the "answers" were for ME. Not what someone else thought was right for me - not what was some arbitrary definition of "normal" - but who Amber is, for real. It seemed to go on forever - and then too soon, seemed to be over. I didn't have anything to say... and we just sat there comfortably looking at each other... then chatting about nothing important.
It was shortly after that, when my T said I needed to think about when it would be OK to stop meeting... that I'd be OK "finishing" all the changes I wanted on my own, without help. And you know, I did go back for 1 or 2 "update" sessions after that... it was hard for me to let go of that relationship... where I got reassurance, validation... but mostly where she gently pushed me to open up to myself and recognize my SELF - the actual details and content of which, only really matter to me, you know?
There isn't any right/wrong way to BE... and any outside changes will have to come from the center of the real you, from a "want to" place.
LOL... don't give up too soon! It'll be all right... talk therapy isn't as fashionable as it used to be, Dahling... but for my money, it's the ONLY thing that really works and gets us to a lasting difference, real change, from the inside out.
Ales2:
--- Quote ---The T may have done more than it seems, in the sense he may have stripped back or opened up a few wounds which is why you feel worse now than you did when you started?
--- End quote ---
Yes, I think this is where some of the problems are. New experiences keep bringing up wounds I have not talked about before and I can see where I get stuck and then make the wrong decision and sabotage myself. There just isnt enough time to address them all. We never get to the newer issues. I keep applying for work, but when that old stuff comes back, I will just drop whatever I am doing and call it a lost cause. I cant go back to where things were and dont have much guidance in moving forward.
--- Quote --- I think the wounds and insecurities can take a really long time to heal, and sometimes as they heal more wounds and insecurities start to show up and you have to wait for them to heal as well.
--- End quote ---
- TRUE TRUE
--- Quote ---There isn't any right/wrong way to BE... and any outside changes will have to come from the center of the real you, from a "want to" place.
--- End quote ---
I was hoping that I would grow in therapy, but didnt - even if I know there is no way to be, I know I cant be the way I am and expect to have anything good change in my life.
--- Quote ---don't give up too soon! It'll be all right
--- End quote ---
I did give up. Last time I went in it was all about anti-depressants, so I cant go back. I had not seen him in six months. I canceled the last appointment because anti-ds was all he wanted to talk about. When I left he told me please dont cancel, because he knew I would. cant go back now. I'm probably a "troubled" therapry patient now. Like I wasnt before.
Thanks for the input everybody. Its just another dreary sunday and I'll muddle through.
BonesMS:
It seems that either these "professionals" try to continuously ram drugs down our throats that are useless to us or they try to ram us into a "pigeonhole" for their own convenience. It begs the question: "When do these 'professionals' really LISTEN and HEAR what we are saying or are we just as VOICELESS in their offices?" What gets me is that these "professionals" ARE BEING PAID TO LISTEN and they ARE NOT LISTENING!
The last psychiatrist I saw was obsessed on me "getting a man and having sex" because, in his view, that would solve all my problems. (Yeah. Right! Fool! :P Just what I need. Someone else's baggage on top of my own!)
I kept repeating: "If I can't have a healthy relationship with myself, how in the hell can I offer someone else a healthy relationship?!?!? (Dumb jack-ass!)
He simply did NOT want to hear that from me because, "in his country", all women are supposed to have men. He kept ignoring the fact that we are NOT in HIS country and American women don't think the way he decrees women should think!
He also tried to go the route of pushing anti-depressants on me after the first batch stopped working and blew my weight up like crazy. Then he told me that I was fat from eating too much! (Can we say set-up for eating disorders?) He was also aware that I'm a recovering alcoholic and recovering drug addict. His response to that was: (a) trying to order me to stop attending AA because he's "jealous", (WTF? :?), and (b) trying to push benzodiazepines on me with the excuse that he "will control my addiction for me!" I managed to maintain my sobriety because I ripped up his prescriptions and gave the confetti back to him. Finally, I realized that he would NEVER hear me and fired him!
Made me wonder how many of these so-called "professionals" have delusions of god-hood?!
Bones
sKePTiKal:
--- Quote ---New experiences keep bringing up wounds I have not talked about before and I can see where I get stuck and then make the wrong decision and sabotage myself. There just isnt enough time to address them all. We never get to the newer issues. I keep applying for work, but when that old stuff comes back, I will just drop whatever I am doing and call it a lost cause. I cant go back to where things were and dont have much guidance in moving forward.
--- End quote ---
OK... maybe each of these experiences contain different issues; that together just feel overwhelming ... until you find someone with the patience to help you unravel one color of yarn from the tangled ball, at a time. You don't have to solve everything all at once, ya know... and your T should know this, and tell you the same, too.
Maybe there is a "common thread" or theme in all these experiences, too... a way in which a very small moment of each of the experierences involves the same kind of action, emotion, or response from you. These can be important "forensic" clues in your quest to start with a.) why am I like I am?? and b.) how do I start to change that?? There is a feeling; a sensation or awareness of a switch being flipped in ourselves... when we are able to finally stop telling all the story/experiences... and find a big enough table to put it all out on at once - like a thousand pieces of stained glass - and reassemble it into a coherent picture. THEN, it's possible to move forward...
and then, there's practice - like you're doing with running - only with emotional things. You can definitely apply that kind practice to mental/emotional habits... (which a lot of our responses to life are, really)... and get to something new and different; the kind of new and different you're looking for.
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