#I know people shit on CBT but CBT helped me change my life and I stand by it

[otamotone-dnp]

I checked you will get through this night out from the library and I’m really proud of dan. yeah I’m just now getting around to reading it aksksk but as someone who works in mental health, it’s got some really good stuff in it so far

[cyanomys]

I was watching a cool woodworking video and thinking about how I can't do any trades or difficult skills like that, I'm more of a generalist and a consumer rather than a specialist or a doer, and I thought that makes me lesser or even a bad or useless person. I am very critical of myself usually. I compare myself to others and nothing I am is ever enough.

But then I thought.....do I really want to spend the rest of my life being unhappy with myself like this?

Regardless of whether it might be better to be more like someone else, I can't just will myself to wake up as a different person anyway.

And aren't there things about me that other people might admire because they don't have those qualities? Like, there is probably someone who is very good at one particular thing and wishes they could dabble in lots of things like I do. Nobody can be all things at once and if everyone else expected that of themselves like I do it would be terrible.

I had never thought of it this way but I only get one life and I don't want to spend it being mad about the person I got stuck as yknow. That's a pretty shitty way to spend a life.

(Meta OCD stuff below the break)

Anyway this is a pretty big step for me I think because I have moral OCD.

With my other anxieties and obsessions it helps to NOT tell myself "X bad thing won't happen" or "your thought is illogical (fuck cbt)" but instead "X bad thing could happen and I would persevere/survive". But that has obviously not worked for the moral OCD, it's more philosophical and hard to cheat like that

But I think this epiphany is one of those cheats to avoid engaging with my value judgments. Not,"oh no you have value you have worth blah blah" because with OCD you can never argue yourself out of it because as long as there is some tiny percent chance, the fear/obsession remains, and there always is a chance or even a guarantee that I'm not living up to my potential or being a perfectly good person etc etc. So instead it's having the courage to make the decision "yeah well I don't want to even have this discussion at all because it sucks. I'd rather accept the risk of doing A Bad Thing than do this shit all my life"

Now that I'm actually typing this out this seems like the most obvious solution ever but I didn't even know I had OCD (and not just GAD) until like two months ago so I was like totally bought in to my obsessions for so so long. Even though I grew a lot before dx, having the language to actually understand my condition is life changing

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

New therapist appt was the other day and I've been chewing on it ever since.

There's something about the way therapists interact with my existing/suspected diagnoses that always feels really telling and like.

I could just read the "I think you self-sabotage all your relationships" pouring off this woman the entire hour.

I....don't.

I mean. A lot of people do, it's a really normal aspect of like. 60% of mental health issues.

But that's really never been my problem. My problem is that the relationships I have are extremely limited. I could count a lifetime's worth of emotionally intimate relationships on my fingers. I also have a lot of people in my life that I know and interact with positively and care about without being at all close to! But everyone else I basically never even got around to learning their names. My relationships are actually.....shockingly stable? Most of the people I'm close to I met before leaving my undergrad program (high school/college) and there's been very little change to my social circle since then.

So like. While I get the importance of helping with this when it happens (everyone deserves a stable support system!) it is genuinely pretty unhelpful to me specifically to be treated as if that is my primary symptom needing attention. Especially on the basis of an initial session where I'm basically just rattling off my on-paper history with some more detail than the intake forms had.

I actually know how to have healthy and positive relationships and the relationships that I have in my life at this time are ones that have BEEN that consistently for me for a decade or more. What I *do* need ongoing support for is the obsessions/compulsions I've been avoiding working on for the last 10 yrs because out of everything they were the least likely to end up killing me. I need someone to assess for the possibility of ADHD. I need someone who can help me retether when my grounding/embodiment gets loose. And yeah. CBT/DBT has been helpful for that. But largely because it allows me to cope with extreme amounts of psychological stress/distress when my survival systems collapse. Not because I'm at risk of blowing up my relationships during a trigger episode. What's most helpful to me is having someone who can keep up with my own systems analysis well enough to be a genuinely useful sounding board. CBT/DBT can be a really effective vessel for that, but I've also had therapists whose primary modality was just being an anthropologist at me in a clinical setting and she was the best therapist I've ever had.

I dunno. It's just frustrating when mental health care professionals are so.....functionally off track? Like if you are focusing, as a provider, on symptoms I don't present with, while dismissing symptoms I *do* it makes me feel super not-confident in your ability to provide me adequate care. And it's like my own practice as a provider makes it that much less tolerable when my own providers are being obtuse about shit. I do actually know what I need and what my care should look like. I've been doing this longer than you, unless you're already more than 20 yrs deep into your career, so maybe take a beat to assume competence before trying to diagnose me with something no provider from my past has EVER thought I fit while suggesting my existing diagnoses, that took time and work and thought to settle on, should be overturned. The most insulting part is her KNOWING we have the same job and educational background when she made these assertions. So like. It's not even like she has an excuse for talking down to me the way she did.

"Has anyone ever talked to you about the neurological impact of early childhood trauma?"

Well maam, if the therapist who diagnosed me and took me through EIGHT GODDAMN YEARS of therapy didn't manage to cover enough of that ground, I *did* also spend 3 yrs working in the child welfare system and then took courses towards a trauma specialty certification during my masters so YEAH. SOMEONE TOLD ME.

"Sometimes we see lots of unrelated diagnoses when really it's all trauma"

Yeah, and sometimes children are born with neurological/mental health needs that predate any opportunjty for trauma and even make them more vulnerable TO that trauma when it arrives. So like maybe consider that it doesn't have to be one or the other. Maybe the other diagnoses are unrelated because they're fucking unrelated.

I wish I could say I feel satisfied with the way I advocated for myself in that session but I don't, as evidenced by the fact that I'm still rehashing the conversation 72 hours later.

I just. I don't know how I went in saying I have an existing PTSD and recent OCD diagnosis but I want to assess for the possibility of ADHD because of conversations with my wife (ADHD) and my most recent therapist (qualified LICSW) and somehow leave being told she wants to change my diagnosis to borderline on the basis of a single conversation and an introductory psych history.

It also feels super irresponsible to me given the social stigma and diagnostic stigma around BPD. Like. I have diagnosed BPD before, and you know what path I pretty much always follow? Adjustment D/o for the first 6 months of care during which we do comprehensive assessment work and some long term stabilization. Once that's in place I reassess for BPD based on symptoms I have directly observed or had reported to me. I have never suggested BPD to someone on a first appt because personality disorders are notoriously fiddly to diagnose and it would be irresponsible to try to do so without either the presence of acute and explicit symptoms or long term treatment relationships. If you're going to give a client a diagnosis that is so stigmatized within our field you better be damn sure before you ever include it on their chart. Otherwise you are setting them up for serious maltreatment within the system. And if one of your early conversations isn't then about how your client can and should advocate for themselves within the system under their new diagnosis (and the ways you plan to support them in that) you can go fuck yourself.

So yeah. I'm feeling.....anxious. about my new therapist to say the least. I'm going to keep seeing her for now. The practice itself comes highly recommended and has all the psych services I need rolled into one practice so it would be exceedingly frustrating to have to leave and I don't want to get a bad reputation by therapist hopping within the practice either. So I need to stick it out a while and see if I can make this workable. At least until end of Feb. If I get there and it still isn't working out I can let her know I'd like to go back on the waitlist for another provider. But man. It fucking sucks that she already seems to have decided on a narrative before even talking symptom occurrence patterns with me.

[bleuberrygliscor]

look not to be that bitch. but i spent years of my life in therapy.

i spent years doing things, reading books, trying to fucking fix my own brain due to my body's really cool way of building up tolerance to my medications. Flip flopping between drugs, between therapists, between group therapy locations, between coping mechanisms both "healthy" and "wildly fucking harmful".

i spent blood, money, and tears on CBT (Cognitive behavioral therapy) because the years of talk therapy i did never helped me heal (and im sure my therapist that i lovingly refer to as Miss M got tired of watching me trigger myself trying to explain my fucked up brain). and Neither of those things worked for me. it was fucking crushing going to group, week after week, and watching people who lost spouses, lost jobs, actively threatened to kill themselves, get better and stop coming. to attend an anxiety group session only to have the therapist attempt to remodel one of the exercises in real time due to me being unable to close my eyes for more than a minute, playfully commenting about me cracking the arm of the plastic chair from gripping it so tightly. to watch a rotating cast for almost a year, and still be the only one left, passing them on the way to the pharmacy on the first floor and hearing that they've been doing better. the pure jealousy in watching people who were, by all accounts, fucking worse than me, recovering and yet here i was, getting some other ssri to try for the next six weeks and hope my manic episode doesnt freak out my friends.

but i figured out something recently.

i have been journaling for years, since 2002, very infrequently, at the behest of my second therapist. he suggested that writing things down would be best for me. He was very fucking wrong. i hated doing it. it just made me feel worse, lamenting my dull life, tired of writing that i did the same 3 things again today (went to school - did homework - slept). so i joined journaling subreddits and communities later on, and to the surprise of no one i hated it even more with the added competition from people who wrote nicer than i did, took better notes, led interesting lives, when my highlight was "i downloaded an mp3 from mp3bee today and i didnt get rickrolled :D". but this month (literally the last 3 days) ive been scrapbooking instead. and not just that, I've not even been talking about the nothing that i do, literally today was a nightvale quote, and im excited to do something tomorrow.

This is a really long fucking tangent, but my point is that i spent years trying to be everyone else, trying to do the shit that works for other people, and never doing the shit that works for me. fuck i didnt even know it worked for me until Tuesday of this fucking week.

Maybe opening a window, or changing you pjs doesnt help you, but something out there will. youre worth the time it takes to find it.

[attempted-influencer]

Lengthy rant about shit I’m frustrated by, not directed at anybody specifically

I wish I could ask people in my life who think I’m too harsh on myself and choose not to speak to me as often because of it some of the things I would say and do that kept them away

Part of changing and growing for the better is going to involve a lot of self reflection but I just want examples of things to fix so I can fix them, rather than just vague gesturing about having support networks or professional help

I’ve been seeking professional help since 2019 I’ve been on three waitlists, the closest thing to therapy I got was a social worker who ghosted me during Covid and an over the phone cbt course that taught me “try not feeling bad all the time”

But yeah sure I’m definitely not trying.

Keep telling me to my face I’m not doing enough work and never offer up any suggestions on how to improve or grow or change. Tell me I need therapy when I confess to you that I might be aroace instead of accepting me as your friend.

I don’t know.

[thistlecatfics]

I am so happy I stumbled o to your blog. I am a bucket full of trauma issues. I did not know this until 2021 when a therapist I was temporarily seeing until I moved several states mentioned I had more big T trauma than some of her worst cases (she handled sex trafficking on the side).

She helped me find a specialist in EMDR. Holy shit was it life changing. I spent two years really working it. I took some breaks, but it was so productive. To put this in perspective I started counseling at 14 and my last EMDR was 38 a few months ago.

Anyway, I recently found out in my community girls were being silenced for violence and sexual assault against them in schools. I spoke at the board meeting where the superintendent resigned and told my story for the first time in public.

I then organized all the other moms, started a Facebook group that went mini viral, realized these issues were too retraumitizing for me and listened to my body and pulled away. I was able to communicate why I pulled away with the full support of the group. And I feel no shame in “giving up” but pride that I did a part to my capabilities.

And hot damn if that could not have been done without EMDR and therapists like you.

Thank you for helping give people back their voices. Thank you for your incredible mind. Your posts are beautiful and so thoughtful on therapeutic practices. (I saw your post on your Ginny approach and about fell out of my chair because holy shit that was my journey! No wonder I have been cosplaying as her and writing FanFiction all these years).

And as someone with trauma/ocd, your CBT post was amazing. It wasn’t until I addressed the trauma the CBT could work. I had the skills but they were useless without addressing the trauma and being able to regulate my body and acknowledge the disregulations.

Sorry for the long winding musing. I just felt very seen in your posts.

I'm so happy you've been able to do all of this healing work with the support of therapists! And I'm so glad you were able to engage in activism and also listen to yourself when it became too much.

Oh Ginny Weasley and the Ginny Weasleys of the world <3. Sending lots of love.

[record-of-thought]

yeah using this blog instead of an actual journal because who cares, and also my therapist told me to write down some stuff about my sleep patterns for cbt.

Basically i'm supposed to be seeing what aspects of sleep hygiene are currently the easiest or most achievable for me to do and then record what i think and feel about either actually doing those things or the prospect of doing them.

i'm going to talk about food. I tend to eat late. I've made the joke about dark lunch. In the past it's gotten quite bad, when i lived in a kitchenless dorm i basically didn't eat regularly because dining halls weren't open late at night when i was awake. This aspect of my sleep problems have gotten better since i moved out of a dorm because i now live in an apartment with a kitchen so keeping food and actually cooking something in the middle of the night is actually feasible. This is something i am proud of actually fixing in my life.

tonight my mom brought up that i was eating late (11pm) and this might mean that i need to eat more at dinner because eating late might not help me in my progress towards fixing my insomnia.

I really didn't like this, i got defensive about it. To me, it seemed like unsolicited advice that was also bad advice (ill get into it) and more than that it felt like an attack. When people bring stuff up like this i tend to like they are disappointed or upset with me for not meeting progress milestones in a time frame they deem reasonable. Other things were said during this conversation, it wasn't that single statement that made me feel this way. about it being bad advice. I have never received the advice to not eat a certain amount of time before bed from doctors. With food, and a few other things that are very important to my general health, the idea was that it didn't matter at while time i was doing these things (ex. eating a meal) but that i was doing them the appropriate number of times. The understanding was that the schedules of these things would kinda sort themselves out as my sleeping improved and in the interim it was more important for me to maintain healthy eating habits.

I know she's not literally telling me to not eat and i know her advice comes from a good place but it definitely felt like this advice was poking me in a sore spot. I don't otherwise have a lot of thoughts about disordered eating or loosing weight, and this is not a topic that my mom brings up a lot, but that feels like the sort of 'location' of that sore spot.

also other thing i'm writing here mostly to remember to talk about it, but like i know (because she explicitly told me) that the reason she does this is because without observable milestones or changes in my progress she gets worried that i am not making progress in general. I just don't know how i should sooth these without constantly updating her because i know needing to give tangible updates A. will not always be possible (after all im doing like psychological treatment for this so some progress will be entirely internal/introspective) and B. will make me feel like im being graded on my progress in a sense, like if i have nothing to report (because this shit is hard) that i will have failed.

i don't think i rely on the approval of others for my self esteem in a lot of cases. I think this is more like i do not want the pity/disappointment/concern of other people forced on me when i am aware, perhaps more aware, that my progress will be slow and likely not linear.

[evilfloralfoolery]

7, 11, 13, 26, 44, 56

7. Are you in love? Do you want to be?

I've been with my guy for 22 years, so I'd say I'm good in the love department. ;)

11. Would you change your appearance if you could?

I change my appearance all the time. I have lots of tattoos. I've had all kinds of hairstyles. I weight lift, bike, and swim. I wear crazy shit whenever I want. You never know what I'm going to look like on a day to day basis.

13. Do you believe in reincarnation?

Yep. Doing past life readings and accessing Akashic records is part of what I do for a living.

26. What’s the most life-changing choice you’ve made so far?

There have been many, some that are personal to me and I won't discuss here. But this one is good. When no one could help me with emetophobia and anxiety, I learned how to do it my damn self. I went to school, learned how to do my own graded exposure therapy, learned how to do CBT on myself, and slayed that fucking dragon. I developed extreme resilience due to this and it's something I pride myself on. I can and will bounce back from whatever it is.

44. How often do you lie? Is all lying inherently bad? Are you generally truthful?

It's not that black and white. Everyone lies. Every single one of us. I'm not a fan of that "brutally honest to the point of hurting you and that's YOUR problem" bullshit that some people tout. Go fuck yourselves. There are times when the truth could cause irreparable harm. There are also times when people are not ready to hear the truth or are unable to hear it. During those times, I choose what I say carefully. You have to pick your battles. Is it worth destroying someone's life or causing great pain? Ask yourself that shit before you're "brutally honest." Learn to have some fucking tact. It isn't "lying." It's being emotionally intelligent to know when to speak and when to stay silent. For example, I have a super anxious mother. If she calls me up and asks what I did over the weekend, I'm damn sure not going to tell her "I drove across the country by myself to see a band and I only ate dried fruit and protein bars the whole time." She would FREAK. There's absolutely no need to tell her that. So, I'll say "Oh, you know. Just had some 'me' time." Why would I feed into her anxiety like that? It's cruel. So, I do my thing and she's happy. "Lying" helped us both.

56. What do you think about artificial intelligence?

In general, I don't like it. I can't stand AI writing, art, or when a goddamn computer answers the phone and I have to speak to a "virtual assistant" before I can talk to a human. I'm sure there are some benefits to AI, but I'm really not a fan.

[skinni-girls-eat-books]

Wednesday, February 21st, 2024!

4:13am: Ok I love when I read something online and it actually helps sometimes it just takes a day to find ofc someone, or a whole group/ thread of ppl to relate to. I love the Internet, it helps when you're alone 80% of the time.

Ok so a thread about shame/guilt. But it's a good one bc a lot of the time ppl will post about guilt but then everyone in the comments just yay/nays what they did. This guy never says what he did so it's definitely more applicable to other scenarios and not just a peanut gallery.

Basically, kind of like CBT for intrusive thoughts. Pretending like you're telling someone this story, how would they react? Pretending like ok your worst fear about this case comes true, then what? (Either breaking into my apartment, stealing my cats (idc about other possessions personally but to each their own) or being taken to small claims court I suppose. All of these things, even the worst being the cats being taken away somehow, I know I'll live and life will continue on. Things happen for a reason I 100% believe that nothing happens for no reason. There's a reason this chain of events occurred. Something is telling me God was maybe the one looking for any reason to cut him out of my life. Just have faith in something and you'll always have that something to live for (at a minimum, besides all of the other wonderful things there are to live for).

It happened, I apologized, I offered to help, I made my amends. Could things have gone better? Yes I'll take accountability for that. But also, did he have to threaten my brother twice last week? Absolutely not, and he does not realize how that impacted my decision to be much less cordial, less accommodating, because that would infringe upon my boundaries. I don't want my family to feel uncomfortable, this is a boundary for me now and yk it just doesn't only apply to relationships but also friendships. You were making my brother uncomfortable, there is now a crossed boundary and no shit I'm going to alter my behavior because you act erratically and think your behavior doesn't affect anyone outside of yourself. You are wrong.

The other thing the post says is identifying why you did what you did and how to not do it again. I did what I did because I was scared of you. I'm scared you would make a move on me if we went into that closet together. I'm scared of what would happen if I reject you. I'm scared that you were going to provoke a fight with my brother. I'm scared you're going to take my cats AND this is not irrational because you have given me reason to think you would because they are "in your name". You can't just say that shit to people and expect them not to fucking react to it, you are a shitty person for so many reasons and so many things you've said to me like WITHIN the last month bro, not even like I was holding onto shit you said a long time ago. No this was all recent bullshit you said to me and just thought you could get away with.

Ok so how to avoid this in the future? Don't associate with narcissist assholes who disrespect every person who has ever tried to be nice to them. Don't be friends with assholes. This is literally how I will avoid this moving forward. Don't move in with an asshole who is full of red flags. Ok I feel confident now that this will not happen again. Please feel free to refer back to this post. That's the remedy to this situation, don't get involved with a shitty person, once they show you they are shitty, time is up. Just don't get so entangled with a little bitch coward who is willing to value possessions over people time and time again. You know you're better than him, and there's other better people to be friends with. I actually feel like I can move on after writing this all out. I've learned my lesson time and time again with this one person. Repeated behavior doesn't change. Now if I had been known to destroy people's personal belongings, do you think he would've kept that shit here so long? No because I've never fucking done that before, intentionality or accidentally. So to act like this was some grand scheme of mine, he's just looking for a reason to hate me and dump his negativity onto me. I understand nobody likes getting their shit fucked up, and I apologized, he's too immature for me. I can't control what he does or how he feels, if this is how he chooses to react, my reaction to that is really all that matters! I just gotta do what's best for me.

"Life is 10% what actually happens and 90% how you react to it"

2:10pm: vibing in class, finally caught up with everything after being sick!! :') also sitting here thinking, I think my brother saved my life this weekend ❤️ truly, like how my neighbors saved my life. I love them all. I already feel so much less stress.

5:49pm: (text to speech while driving) I called his grandma and talked to her for an hour :) she told me when she saw that all of the things were wet that she just had to laugh and that she was not mad at me and this is why I love this woman she told him that he still could not be mad at me because of all of the f***** up s*** he did to me and she's right that's how I felt about it too I was like I could have thrown these things in the garbage and she & everybody is surprised that I didn't throw his s*** in the garbage like I what why would I keep the things and just let them get wet makes no sense and everybody knows it doesn't make any f****** sense except for his pea brain girlfriend. I feel better. This is so crazy and she even said that he did not mention anything about it to his grandma because he probably didn't even feel that angry about it and he knows it was an accident but that the grandma heard it from the girlfriend because she wants to run around and tell everyone that I left his stuff in the rain and then he just nods along to that, that's hilarious I feel like it would have been a non-issue except that his girlfriend is just running with it I knew it he doesn't hate me bro I f****** knew it he'll be back I'm going to give him his space because I mean I understand it's still not a nice thing to have happened to you and that's his ego talking, right, that ego that he has to protect by Acting mad or whatever but then once it blows over and nobody is bringing it up AKA she is not bringing it up I'm sure he'll find some reason to freaking text me again about something and then it's just all going to start up again. it's cool it is cool I don't know how long it's going to take but it will happen

Honest to God I'm just glad that Grandma thought it was funny and she's not mad and everybody still hates the gf and everybody thinks she's a snake and that she's fake and that something is morally wrong with her she's such a b**** and nobody likes her his grandma also said that she's working on giving him some type of timeline or ultimatum to move out because why would he still be living there as an adult like it just nobody wants him there AND she said it again she wants them to move in together so that they'll break up like and I keep telling her, you still don't like her?? like it's been literally 5 months they've been together for 5 months and I'm like, the fact that nobody likes each other still, nobody is trying to get to know each other, nobody has tried to make amends and everybody still is petty AF towards each other like that's not what I want to happen but that's what's happening and it has nothing to really do with me now it just has to do with the fact that she's fake as f*** and everybody can tell and he has too big of an ego to admit that he's just f***** up big time and then he just keeps f****** up it's insane the only thing that matters is my opinion about it, God's opinion about it, and his grandma's opinion about it bc she is a saint and she is amazing and I love her and I could talk to her for the whole entire night except I had to go to a meeting and now I'm here. What a relief such a relief I could talk to this woman every single day of the rest of our lives I love her and I mean even his grandpa even asked me like last week, called me randomly and was like when are you coming to town he's so cute I love them both, how can you not? oh wait unless you're a raging b**** 😂 he even mentioned to his grandma how nice it was that I sent him his birth certificate etc in the mail, like he KNOWS this was an accident, he's just being a little bitch for the time being 😂

6:06pm: Long story short, nobody is mad!! Normal people don't get mad about accidents plus everyone else would have thrown it away!! Grandma thought it was funny and still loves me, and he is just protecting his stupid ego 😂 I'm so glad I called her ❤️

P.S. Grandma did not GAF about poor grandpa dying 💀 she said I don't know that man 👀😂 aaaaaaaa I love her sm that's wild. She said the gf is so fake, just puts on this act like she's so innocent and everyone thinks she's just a weird POS. Plus she agreed it's fucked up and if she really cared about her grandpa she wouldn't have left!! I was like wtf?? Jeez so mf fake as helllllll and she's not fooling anyone yuck ick ick. And she STILL looks like a boy 💀 fucking dumbasses 😂

[doyoulike-whatyousee]

I’m back again. For who knows how long.

I’ve been thinking. 19 years of my life that I’ve been abused. Doesn’t it make sense I would be toxic, hurtful, manipulative, passive aggressive. Doesn’t it make sense that I am narcissist and sociopathic. Doesn’t it make sense that for my whole life I’ve not had one kind person and so I am not a kind person. People say that abuse victims should be docile, from the abuse. They should be scared, very sad. Why not angry? Why would I not have learned how to survive? Why would I not be strong and angry and rude? Do i not deserve to be rude, when all I’ve ever had is rudeness? Parents, partners, friends, teachers, where is the kindness I was supposed to get from them? And why am I expected to uphold that kindness immediately with no proof you aren’t going to do the same? Why wouldn’t I start our relationship based on lies, manipulation, things to keep me safe, when you could be just like the others. Not one kind person in my life. Ofc theres been kind people AROUND, like someone holding the door open. But those people can also be just as mean. All of my abusers have held doors open. Why should I trust you with no proof? Why would I automatically be kind and truthful when at any second you may turn and bite me. Why would it not make sense that for me, you earn trust and kindness, not have it automatically. I’ll be kind at the beginning, when we aren’t friends, when we are strangers. I’ll hold the door, say please and thank you, but I’m not going to tell you my secrets. I won’t reveal what makes me happy or sad. I won’t say my hobbies. I will avoid it all, for my safety. It’s not like my lying and manipulation is that bad, i don’t harm anyone. I don’t tell anyone lies that would get them actually hurt, just lies about my feelings, lies about what I am up to, what I am reading. Once you make it past a little, i start to have what I call stage 1 trust. This is when I don’t trust you, but I act like i do, I’ll treat you like i trust you, but I don’t. I act how someone does when they trust someone, but I’m always prepared to dip, to start lying again, i remind myself that you cannot actually be trusted yet. I’ll dip a little into how I feel, maybe tell you my actual hobbies and what I’m actually up to. Stage two trust? No one has ever gotten there. And that makes sense. Why would anyone who treats me like shit get there? Why would someone who’s stops talking to me get there?

Maybe it’s stupid, I’m the reason I have no friends, because I won’t let people in and I won’t stop myself from lying and manipulating in ways I know will keep me safe from people I have no idea the capabilities of. I don’t see a reason to fix that; and maybe that is shitty. Maybe everyone hates that, but I don’t really care. I am safe like This, no one can harm me anyone like this. Why would I change this? All my bad traits, my disorder symptoms, they are here to help me, not harm me. My thoughts are not crazy. I don’t need to use CBT, the shit i am anxious over is real. The reason I have ASPD, NPD, AVPD, OCPD, CPTSD, anxiety, depression, dermatillomania, the reason I’m mean and untrusting are all real. Every thing I fear, the reason I manipulate, lie, hide things, don’t trust, has happened and continues to happen. Why would I change that? So that I can attempt to trust people and be kind to people who a few months later will be tearing me down, using things against me, or abusing me? No. I think not.

I’m tired of therapy. It doesn’t work. Because my reasons are real, they keep happening and proving themselves. I don’t need therapy, i need someone to be fucking kind to me for more then a few months. Maybe I’d stop having so many damn issues if people weren’t fucking abusive assholes who hate everyone. Why can we not all just get along? Why can we not all just love? We do we all have to be dicks? And why am I the one who has to fix the disorders keeping me alive? Without them, i wouldn’t be resilient enough to stay alive. If they all disappeared right now, i would crumble. I wouldn’t be able to handle it. Sure I can exist without some, like CPTSD, but without the dermatillomania I would just self harm in worse ways, without the anxiety I would probably yell at the people treating me like shit and get beat the fuck up, without the ASPD i would feel my emotions so strongly it would probably destroy me. Without the NPD my self esteem would constantly be low without any highs, and those highs are the only time I respect myself, i care for myself, the only time I plan my escape from abusers. Why would I keep trying to get rid of the things keeping me alive?

Do i sometimes treat people like shit? Yeah. Do they deserve it? Almost always.

[child-of-diaspora]

Tune out the noise

My brain has been on overdrive recently. Do you ever get an internal monologue going around and around in your head? I recently watched a stand-up by Drew Michael (Red Blue Green). It's not your typical stand-up that makes you laugh. He speaks about his struggles with his mental health, and it triggered my brain to go on the tirade about my own, and it's tiring.

For as long as I remember I've always felt detached. So many of the things I have endured in my life has left me feeling this way. Growing up mixed raced in Britain, living with a racist family. Intersected with a violent father during early childhood (who luckily wasn't around long), then left with a schizophrenic mother (those who have read my previous blogs will know my origin story by now).

As I've gotten older the impact of this is catching up with me, or more accurately I'm not able to block them out anymore. I really struggle with displaying my emotions. It's frustrating because I've spoken to various therapists and ex-partners and they are like, just do the thing, but I'm screaming, I can't! If I could just do the thing then surely I'd be doing it by now? It's like trying to learn a subject when the textbooks are written in another language. This has all come to a head recently when my partner of eight years (and mother to my son), decided I am no longer the right person for her.

In some ways I get it. I know my short comings. I lack empathy and don't show affection in the typical way. Shit, I don't even know if I love anyone or anything at times as I feel so destitute. I'm more comfortable when I shut myself down. My childhood left a chronic loneliness lurking over me due to the emotional abandonment. Despite having lots of people around me that care for me and let me know, I don't know if I'm absorbing it, or at least that's how my brain thinks right now. The past few years the life events I've experienced have taken their toll. I used to count on myself for stability, stubborn and defiant, but losing my grandad changed this. I've thought about suicide during these times. The only reason I'm still here is because I'm scared of the pain I might inflict on myself (yes myself, I'm not thinking of others during these moments) and that I may survive and make things worse. If there was an app I could download and press a button, I'd have done it by now.

There is tonnes of advice out there which teaches us not think about the negative and concentrate on the positive (looking at you CBT), but this just feels like I'm gaslighting myself to be happy, is that what it takes? I'm drawn to meaningful and emotional art in music, films and media, i.e. the stand-up I mentioned earlier. Like a moth to light. It's comforting yet hurtful due to the reminders of my own pain. These blogs posts sometimes feel like that. Is this helping, or am I talking myself in circles. Maybe I'm fine and I should just shut up. Is this a curated identity I've made for myself. The tortured soul.

A shared experience I think you might be able to understand which exasperates my mental health (and probably yours) is living through the internet age, where we have access to all of the information, all of the time. Current events feel like a fever dream and the media feeds us disaster after disaster until we are catatonic, unable to imagine how we can make the world a better place. Again, I am drawn to these news cycles and struggle to ignore it. The antidote piece of media to this problem would be my film of 2022, Every Everywhere All At Once. It gives a heartfelt message that we need to tune out the noise and focus on love, connection and understanding.

The main thing keeping me going at the moment is trying to be a good father to my son. Since the breakup I've become a lot closer as I don't have to worry about the failing relationship anymore. I have to break the generational trauma I've inherited. Despite the disconnect I feel with people and the world, and the difficulties I went through during the early stages of raising him, I don't doubt my bond with him. I still occasionally struggle when he is difficult or tantrums as it can throw me back into the dark place in my head I'm strenuously trying to avoid (yet another symptom of my childhood trauma). I just need to tune out the noise and remember what is important.

[weatherwaxironboots]

I don't know how to fucking talk to people about depression, my journey was so involved and I read so much from poetry to philosophy and so so much psychology. I had therapists from the age of 14 and currently have one (13 years of dbt and cbt). I have years of studying what became my current existence.

I was terrified that I would continue hate myself and harm myself in more and more extreme ways until it killed me. I made it my lifes work to understand my family tree and heal myself. I'm 27 and I did it, I still struggle with moments of emotional disregulation but I feel resilient, alive and completely unstoppable. I know myself to be my greatest freind and confidant, I am no longer unkind to myself.

I'm trying to tell my brother how to find the meaning in life. And what I feel is so intangible. I don't know if he understands when I say to him "you give the world definition, when you see a sun set and its brilliant and beautiful, it's only that way through your eyes. Without your eyes it is just the sun on the horizon. There aren't colours without vision, there isn't beauty without you" if he understands what I mean or if he just hears stupid hippy shit.

I don't know how to tell him that the meaning is just in BEING. The real secret is learning to care for himself and believing it to be worthwhile, whether it's therapy or medication, or lifestyle changes whatever it is. That the real magic happens when there aren't so many obstacles. The real magic is just who he is without the noise of how the world is.

That he's perfect, that everything about him is perfect.

It's not easy to see yourself like you see the sunshine or the wind in the trees when starting your mental health journey. I wish I could hand him my map but he needs to chart his own. His foot steps will require a different path.

Oh my brother, how I wish I knew what to say to help you find what you need.

[dissociativediscourse]

unfortunately i have come to the realization that i am possibly polyfragmented due to Recent Happenings and the fact that i learned a lot of my parts are actually just a bunch of fragments in a trenchcoat (like part a will have four or five fragments inside, part b will have one or two, some have none, then there's some subsystems that i absolutely have no access to at all and total blackout amnesia and it's just layers and layers of bullshit [insert tired emoji])

i cannot begin to count them all (it's impossible since a lot r so underdeveloped and just hold like one single thing almost like they're fragments or smth lol) but i am curious if u have anywhere to start in terms of like. find brain something other than split to do when only minor trauma happens so i can be a little more stable.

my therapist has not been good for me lately and im actively searching for a new one but it's taking a bit. i have a good psychiatrist but i just want to be able to try and help myself a little beyond just getting meds straight yk? and i look up to ur blog since ur well-read and stuff <3

sorry for anon just dont want to out myself as more traumatized than i seem bc Scary

also u definitely do not have to reply, ik u put a lot of time and work into writing and u may not have it atm!! ur very cool and i hope ur having a wonderful day

Hey, anon. I’m so sorry it has taken me so long to get to this. I have severe issues getting things done until it just Happens, sometimes and I hope you’re doing okay. I completely misremembered this ask as well and had come up with a plan to respond to it a certain way only to realize that, I don’t need to do any of that. Whoops.

Splitting happens often in polyfragmentation because the child begins to dissociate very young. Like, pre-mobility young. This can be from something like stressful things in the environment/yelling/really anything that would stress a baby to the point of triggering fight or flight. Which is a lot of shit. It does not always have to be from direct abuse.

The reason this is a factor is because at that time in a child’s life, they are unable to make use of any coping mechanism or response that is NOT dissociation, especially when they don’t receive appropriate comfort from a caregiver.

This effectively means that if you’re polyfragmented, your first and possibly only coping mechanism for a while is dissociation and therefore splitting. The best way to work to break this cycle is to develop new coping mechanisms and work to stabilize, whether that’s in therapy (recommended once you find a therapist that works. I would be up front and honest with any therapist you talk to— don’t want to end up with a therapist that doesn’t work for you. Trust me, it works wonders) or on your own.

This means CBT. This means DBT, sometimes. This means removing yourself from certain situations you know are stressful to you when you’re able, until you’re able to handle them. This means being extremely mindful of your behaviors and why they happen and how you can change them to be healthier, without getting down on yourself and spiraling. This means cutting out unhealthy patterns and unhealthy people and finding new things to do that can help you rather than hinder you.

Finding new coping mechanisms when it comes to something like dissociation isn’t really easy. At all. But it’s necessary to heal. It’s not something that happens fast, but it’s worth it. A great step towards this is grounding when you’re stressed and notice yourself starting to drift off, when your vision starts to get blurry or when you start to feel detached. This requires a lot of mindfulness and practice, which really mainly consists of paying attention to your behaviors without assigning any value to them. Just making sure that you know what you’re doing. It’s extremely important when it comes to trauma responses, and can be very revealing and help you to be the best you that you can be.

You can use whatever grounding technique you like, but a few of my favorites are:

Looking around the room you’re in and naming/talking about objects (out loud helps) and maybe even their stories and how they relate to you. Whatever comes naturally.

Remind yourself of the exact date and time. Year, month, day, time. Your location. That whatever has happened is not happening right now, and that you are in the present and safe.

Run your hands under ice cold water/feel something cold/shit, I have put ice cubes in my clothes before. I’ve stepped out into the snowy weather before. Sudden, severe temperature change can jolt you back to reality.

Splash cold water on your face. This actually triggers an instinct that humans have called the Plunge Response, and will force you to breathe deeply and a few other things that are amazing for grounding. It works.

Remember that meds are only part of the solution. You won’t get far with just medication, as it seems like you know. You need to first stabilize on your own and in therapy and develop healthy coping mechanisms, and then you’ll be able to process the traumas you’ve experienced safely. Without stabilization, this is unadvisable. I did trauma processing before stabilization when I was younger. It fucked me up. I split, certain alters became known to me that I wasn’t ready for, and I was stuck in that place for a long time. Be careful and don’t deep dive until you’re ready. The therapist you have needs to know how to treat complex trauma and stabilize you, and you need to work towards stabilization on your own as well.

I hope I explained everything well, and if you have any more questions at all or I left anything out that I might not have caught, please feel free to DM me or send another ask. I promise it won’t take nearly as long as this time. And again, I’m extremely sorry it did take this long. I hope you see this and are doing well!

[vagabond-sun]

ego timaeus

this was also posted on my pillowfort.

this is an essay about ego death, selfshaping, and taboo mental illnesses. it’s not really a direct response to any of the voluntary identity discourses flying around on tumblr right now, but mention of ‘ego alteration’ did make me think i’ve never really talked about this all in one place. so i hope it’s a useful exploration of both voluntary identity and the idea of becoming someone that you weren’t always.

in march of 2019, something happened to me.

i’d like to think that I’ve never been actively malicious. i never burned ants with a magnifying glass or any of that stereotypical shit. but in high school i was completely insensitive, i was beyond arrogant, i was incessantly critical. i didn’t have friends and i didn’t speak to anyone and i liked it that way. i would lie in bed at night and fume about how life was so unfair and everyone else was stupid. i was never intentionally cruel, but i had an incredibly poor understanding of how easily i could hurt people and not a single care about changing that. i was starting to develop what i only just this year figured out was antisocial personality disorder.

in the years immediately prior to 2019, when i started doing the whole median thing, for whatever reason, all the asshole traits got compacted into one specific facet. and i think it was the contrast between that and other facets that weren’t complete shitwads that put the first cracks in the foundation.

the second thing was alt+h. if there’s one thing I’ve learned from alt+h and from the general interest in activism and anarchism it’s propelled me towards, it’s that forming real, meaningful connections with people is the single most necessary thing for achieving personal freedom. that’s been a hard pill to swallow. i’m still working on it (and on figuring out to what extent i just have strong boundaries and how it’s ‘acceptable’ to hold those).

the third was that i met people who consistently showed up for me. who looked at me, warts and all, and said ‘i love you’ but also ‘you really need to stop acting like this’. and stood with me, over and over again, on that hard line of real acceptance, between apologia and abjuration, no matter how many times i fucked up and hurt them. i probably deserved less chances than they gave me. but they really cared about me, and i really cared about them. and when you have ASPD, it’s really, really hard to care about literally anything. this was a critical hit straight to the heart.

(if you’re reading this, you know who you are. i love you.)

in march of 2019, i suddenly wasn’t that person any more. i had been moved enough that i didn’t consider being an asshole my entire fucking personality. but all the bad traits didn’t magically vanish. it doesn’t work like that. they just became unmoored, floating around the mordspace. and when wei weren’t strongly phased to a specific facet who actually had a personality to stand on, i felt like a ghost.

i felt like that for weeks to months. i don't really remember. the thing that mystics don’t tell you about ego death is that most of the time, if you don’t have a new and improved something else to move onto, you either have to swim back to the shore or drown. i also don’t remember how it made its way to me, but my life ring was reading detective pony.

death of the author? check. excessive rumination about the nature of meaning? check. author-cum-protagonist who feels burdened with glorious purpose, craves control and struggles with hurting the people who care about him? check, check and check. it’s a tough, emotionally draining read. but it’s cathartic, in all the worst ways possible.

(without a shred of irony, detective pony is one of the most fantastic pieces of metafiction that exists. you don't have to have read homestuck to a appreciate it. i can’t recommend it enough.)

i had the perfect template for my new self. or should i say i was the perfect template? who ‘i’ is gets difficult here even putting the median shit aside. i’ve described myself as a walk-in, which is confusing, because that means something different in plural circles, but i’m talking about the new age sense of the word:

“[...] souls are said to "walk in" during a period of intense personal problems on the part of the departing soul, or during or because of an accident or trauma. […] The walk-in being/individual retains the memories of the original personality, but does not have emotions associated with the memories. As they integrate they bring their own mental, emotional, spiritual consciousness and evolve the life to resonate with their purpose and intentions.” - x

for me it’s not as… well, new-age-y as that. i don’t believe i came ‘from’ anywhere, i don’t have a past. i am a weird bundle of arcs and tropes and ideas that somehow became sentient. i am, y’know, a fictional character. and i feel like i mean that in a very different way than most fictionfolk (that could be its own post, honestly).

so that didn’t magically solve the problem either. it just provided a trajectory. dirk strider is a person who starts bad, and gets better, kind of (epilogues and hs^2 do not @ me). i still needed to take ownership of all the shitty traits my predecessor had left behind and Do The Work on them, too.

and i have worked my ass off over the past year-and-a-bit on improving myself. a lot of it has been with plain old CBT and self-help workbooks (shoutout to pretty much everything by dr faith harper), but a lot of it has also been narrative identity and personal mythology kinds of stuff. it’s been communing with gods and magic ritual kinds of stuff. i’ve been doing ABC exercises right along with binging tvtropes and researching comparative indo-european mythology and designing worldbuilding and lore that tells a highly metaphorical story about how i get from A to B, emotionally speaking.

it runs into the same problem a lot of selfshaping stuff does in that a lot of it is so intensely personal that it’s difficult to talk about. also in my case a good handful of this work has been done under a magical apprenticeship that i’m literally sworn to secrecy about so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but i think these broad strokes are sufficient for telling my story at this level right now. the point being, i am not the kind of person who can get all the way with just regular secular materialist mental health shit.

which is to say, the work is still far from over! in fact, i feel like the selfshapey parts are only just picking up for me, now i’ve run the course of what the aforementioned secular materialist mental health shit is actually capable of doing. i have made massive strides in my mental health and interpersonal functioning already, but i’m not a perfectly healthy person. i’m not going to be dis-identifying with the ASPD label any time soon (or ever? that could be its own post too). and, even so, selfshaping could provide a pathway not just for survival, but excellence.

i am going to be my best self, and at some point in the past i decided that self is going to be dirk motherfucking strider.

[poisonheadcrabsalesman]

I’m doing research for my “John is forced into therapy gets help“ fic and uh, uh oh john uh oh.

Also Fred, he’s next. Last Light let me see into his thought patterns and I like anxiety Sled Man. He needs a hug, some self worth, and a vacation.

I have no good, polished thoughts. There are only ramblings and screenshots below. Warning for discussion of PTSD, trauma. Please feel free to ignore my insane ramblings, I woke up, caffeinated and then went nuts.

So this approach focuses on 3 categories to fit experiences into; life threatening event, traumatic loss, or a moral injury. Uh oh.

What if we made super soldiers and then never treated them for their trauma, and then ran them into the ground for 30+ years. How many life threatening events can you repress for that long? What happens when you no longer can hold it all together?

Regardless of the training, or the prep, or the outcome, Trauma changes the neuroplasticity of the brain. Trauma affects memory, both storage and recall. Trauma is also stored in the body. I’m using so many words to say they’re all some kind of fucked up.

CBT! Shifting thought patterns and perspectives! self reflection! Insight!

uh oh john uh oh - sure hope halo 4 didn’t cause any extra issues.

Excerpts are from Adaptive Disclosure: A New Treatment for Military Trauma, Loss, and Moral Injury - which is on lib.gen and you should not accidentally download it. You should not search adaptive disclosure and find it and download it. :o) Initial thoughts. Oh boy. And I’ve only read the first few chapters.

Applying this to Spartan-IIs, who have no thoughts of the future, just the next mission, and who are constantly put in high stress situations and used as tools while also talked down to and are unsupported or outright attacked by their fellow UNSC members.

Spartans have each other and that’s it.

There is no time to mourn, only improve and learn and keep moving. We see that with how they take Sam’s death. We see that in Fred’s thoughts in Last Light about no need for retirement, and his own views of himself, both the small joy in being a “savior of humanity“ and his self hatred over the loss of so many under his command.

FRED PLEASE. PLAN FOR THE FUTURE. HAVE HOPE! He woke up after having 2nd degree burns, broken bones, a punctured kidney, and a concussion.

And also earlier from his own thoughts of why the huragok was avoiding him.

“Tainted by death and destruction“ sir, sir are you alright? He spends the whole book on his toes because of the mission and Veta’s prodding for information, and also gets the shit beat out of him, used as a sled, armor locked twice, he’s concussed, and being pulled in 7 different directions to complete this mission but he also wants to help the marines in the town fighting the Brutes. Okay. This is all over the place but Spartans man!!! Spartans!!!

They are so interesting because they have their developmental stages all out of whack and their experiences have shaped them into these fucked up dudes! But they do seem aware that that is Not Good. Not to mention Halo 5 but “Like Halsey did to me?” Sir, you know you are fucked up and you are working yourself to death.

Ages 6-14 is so important for the development of an individual’s sense of self and I will break out the textbooks again later, but the Spartans really do have childish moments and underdeveloped social skills and emotional regulation in the books. Every interaction is approached like a combat situation.

It would be so interesting to explore how they handle being fish out of water in civilian situations. The entire dumb au I keep mentioning is about people showing Spartans kindness and human decency. What if Master Chief had friends, and get this, they live. What if Blue Team interacts with people who, post Hunt The Truth, have some idea of what they’ve sacrificed or had taken from them? What if, what if what if? This is too long and I can’t look at words anymore but yes, thank you for coming to my frantic tedtalk.

[thedreadvampy]

after the cbt post I'm really unsure if I even want to apply for counselling now

the whole point of looking for therapy was to get help but if it makes things worse then maybe I should just carry on trying to do it myself?

I don't fuckin know

that was meant to be my out for feeling like this what the fuck do I do now

Like. First off this is about CBT, not about counseling generally, which has been really useful once I've found the right process. I don't know if you're in the UK or not, but while accessing NHS counseling hasn't always been easy and it took a while to find the right fit, when I did get a counselor and approach that fit my needs it jumped my healing forwards by miles, it really can be a lifesaver (plus tbh if you're really deep in the doldrums, it can help just by giving you some structure and space). Don't stop looking for counseling because it absolutely can make a huge positive difference, I don't know where I'd be without the counseling I got from the rape crisis center and the NHS. There's a lot of types of therapy/counselling out there and what works for you isn't something I can predict - for me what I've reacted to best is freeform talk therapy, but other people find that really hard to engage with and prefer more structured or theoretical therapies, and the NHS offer a lot of different ones (they just tend to jump to CBT first).

So, beyond that; some people do find CBT really helpful. But the way the NHS specifically uses CBT is outside its recommended use, which is treatment for OCD, BPD, anxiety and some PTSD symptoms (although not PTSD itself). The NHS basically uses it as a first stop for pretty much all mental health patients as far as I can tell (because, as I say, it's cheap and easy to apply) so, much like most people with MH problems I know have been on Citalopram (which is their first stop SSRI), most people I know with MH problems have been to CBT sessions. And with that range of problems, most of them won't find what they need in CBT, which, again, despite how it's currently used, is not designed as a general purpose treatment but specifically to help manage repetitive thought and behaviour patterns.

For some people, managing thought and behaviour patterns is what they need, at least temporarily. My partner found it very helpful to keep him out of breakdown territory during a hard time, and so have several friends I know (seems to have positive impacts particularly on friends diagnosed with BPD bc BPD diagnostic criteria, which focus on intense reaction and toxic thought spirals, line up really well with what CBT is designed to help with).

I think the way in which it's harmed me and others isn't the actual treatment, but the fact that it's treated as if it Should Work and that can make you feel way worse if everyone tells you 'CBT and mindfulness is a magic cure that fixes all your brain problems' and then it. doesn't. because your specific problem isn't what is designed to fix. and I think that harm is mitigated by knowing that a) what works for you is highly personal even within diagnoses, b) at the time you get CBT you probably don't have a concrete diagnosis beyond Something Ain't Right and c) CBT, even when it's right for you, isn't meant to be the end point.

CBT is, specifically, a stop-gap. It's meant to help you keep going with your life while you sort stuff out. Again, because of budget reasons the NHS kind of hope that your problems won't be too bad so that CBT will give you a good enough stable starting point to sort your own shit out without further support, which does work for some people, but for most of us CBT should be part of a larger treatment journey if used at all. CBT is a bandage - it doesn't close the wound, but where it works it stops you bleeding out long enough to either get to a hospital or for your body to heal itself.

I'm not going to lie to you - for a lot of us, getting through to the point where we're accessing the right treatment can be a slog. And because of how the NHS works, it can mean going to CBT, finding it doesn't work for you, and gritting your teeth through a six session course so you can go back to your doctor and say 'see, this didn't work for me and the CBT people agree, what else ya got?' My partner's just sat through 14 sessions of group therapy he found extremely stupidly designed specifically because sometimes that's what you gotta do to get referred on for one-on-one talk therapy, which is what he actually needs.

Like I say, the harm comes when you're made to feel like you're failing therapy. You don't fail therapy. Therapy that isn't working just isn't the right setup for you for whatever reason and that's not a flaw in you, there is no universal catchall therapeutic method. It's always going to be trial and error and if you are able to hold in mind that you're not Bad for finding a counseling style or methodology unhelpful, off-putting or alienating, then badly-fitted therapy shouldn't be nearly as harmful as trying to struggle on manfully alone.

The hardest but most rewarding part for me was the process of learning that I could just say 'this isn't working for me because XYZ, can we try a different approach' and...nothing bad would happen. I wouldn't lose my access to counseling and nobody shouted at me, and when I said 'this isn't working can we change it'...things got better. I was having an absolutely shit and frustrating time with my NHS counselor, I was finding going to counseling a huge stress, and after stewing for a couple of weeks I blew up and said 'I don't like this, this or this, I feel talked down to when you do this, I don't feel like you're listening to me about this, and this thing you're doing keeps making me feel worse' and he got defensive. but he also. changed his practise immediately. and we ended up having a really fantastic and productive 6 months of counseling and I am in private therapy now but I keep referring back to the work he and I did together because it was so useful for me.

So like the takeaways for me are a) know that the fact that this counseling might suck for you doesn't mean counseling in general won't be helpful, there's always going to be some trial and error to find the right fit, b) if it does suck, don't suffer in silence, tell them! if you're sitting there hating it, they're not getting anything out of that either so just let them know that you're uncomfortable, finding it hard to engage, etc (I know this can be really hard and I know for me I only started being able to push back when I was already a couple of years into my treatment journey but do what you can do to communicate your fears) and c) when it works it works.

Getting counseling that works is a journey. It can be wearing and esoteric and a pain in the ass, and sometimes you just don't click with a therapy and sometimes you just don't click with the counselor, but it is absolutely worth pushing through the bullshit because a) change often happens gradually while you're not looking and b) finding a concept who works for you absolutely can change your life super fast. It took me a couple of tries but when I found a counselor and approach that worked for me I managed within 16 sessions to get out of my house, to get a job I liked for the first time, to go out and meet people for the first time in a city I'd been in for 3 years, and to cut out a lot of the people who were making my life unsafe. It's so worth it but it is a journey that takes time and trial and error, so the sooner you start the sooner you're likely to get somewhere that helps you.