Is there anything I can *actually* DO to?

[neufena]

I've been depressed all my life, been in therapy (again) for at least a year, this time with a proper clinical psychologist and not just CBT with a councillor but still nothing is changing.

We just talk about how my childhood bullying has affected my feelings and self perception. Everybody I've ever met was bullied so this means I have failed to deal with it correctly.

I need to learn to accept that I am a worthless failure and find a way for that to not hurt.

Think id it seems there is NOTHING I can actually do. There's no plan of action, workbook or steps I can take. It's just going over and over talking things through.

Is this it? Is there nothing I can do and I'm like this forever?

[Fargin]

Best advise I can give is keeping at it.

Calling myself worthless, helped me survive the abuse and bullying I went through and because it was a question of survival, letting go of this self-image felt dangerous and impossible. I don't think you can make the pain go away by accepting, that you are worthless, because feeling worthless is unbearable. Try to accept that you were made to feel worthless instead, change the blame from you, "the victim," to the people who made you feel worthless.

Keep retelling your story about bullying, maybe even here and if you tell it to the right people, their reactions might at some point, allow you to understand, that the way it decimated you and your self-image wasn't acceptable or okay. Maybe through their/our reactions, you can experiment with the scary thought, that you didn't truly deserve the bullying.

For me acceptance was a key component, but I had to accept the impossible, that I was victimized and not to blame by people close to me. That's almost as painful as feeling worthless, but when I started thinking more compassionately about myself and the things I went through, it began to make sense, why I needed to tell myself that I was a worthless failure to feel safe.

I told myself, I wasn't allowed to bully myself anymore, I still do, but when I realize it, I've become better at stopping the negative and mean thoughts.

Keep at it, changing your perception/reality takes time, courage and usually another person's(therapist) perspective too.

If I tell you, there's hope for you, maybe there is hope for me too.

[neufena]

Thanks for your kind words. I can't accept that I was 'made' to feel worthless by bullying. Everybody I've ever spoken to has experienced bullying and I'm the only one who still has problems because of it even at my age (35). Everybody else came out the other side stronger and better. I failed to do that. The only person to 'blame' is myself.

I guess what I'm looking for is a roadmap, or set of instructions. A workbook or anything. Something I can actually DO rather than wasting my time talking and trying to do meditation/breathing exercises. These aren't getting me anywhere.

[Fargin]

I wish I had better advice, but I don't know any alternatives to allowing yourself to develop some kind of compassion and kindness for yourself and what you went through, no matter how minor or insignificant it feels. I spent almost forty years telling myself, everything wasn't really that bad and it was only through telling it and retelling it in therapy, I grew an understanding how much damage my developing personality took.

Like me, you've had 35 years of experience living and thinking one way of yourself, getting better might even mean you'll have to change the very way you think. Anyways my solution might not work for you and I'm far from my end goal myself, I wish you the best of luck with your search.

[manuel_moe_g]

Fargin is awesome, as usual.

I relate to what you said, neufena. I am 44 and just realizing how broken my brain is, how damaging my development was, and what that meant towards not realizing what I thought were my highest goals in life. With an unbroken brain and a better development in my youth, I might have realized my highest goals in life. But it was not meant to be, and that is where I am right now at 44.

So I am working on compassion for the person that I really am, not the one I formerly fooled myself that I was. When I think about my past, I try to have compassion and acceptance and love for my past selves, instead of dreams of magically fixing my past self, which is damaging.

Neufena, you are not a failure, and you are deserving of love and compassion and acceptance, for your present self and all your past selves. For myself, a realistic view of myself was so terrifying that I denied myself love and compassion and acceptance, which was myself being cruel to myself.

Please take care, you deserve peace and love and compassion and acceptance.

[neufena]

Interestingly there was a lot of talk of 'working on' accepting yourself etc in this weeks podcast but still I've not found what work I'm supposed to do.

I feel like everybody else has the manual or the course notes and I have nothing.

[manuel_moe_g]

The way I work on accepting myself is that I imagine being loving and accepting and listening and honoring to my daughter. This is easy for me to do because it is what I do in real life. Then I imagine being loving and accepting and listening and honoring to a younger version of myself. The important part is not to try to "fix" my younger self, just be accepting. Then I progress through the ages of my life until I get to near present day.

[Fargin]

Don't forget there's a big difference between accepting yourself and "working on" accepting yourself.

For me acceptance is very difficult in the moment, when I in some way are confronted with thoughts of imperfection or failure, but I've become better at cutting myself a little slack, when I've distanced myself from the situation. Ideally I'd like to practice acceptance in the moment, but when I feel threatened in even the most minor way, my instinct always goes to flight/freeze by default. Sometimes I can calm or shorten the freeze, other times I can just accept that it's all I can do and then there's the times, when I just go deer in headlight and all I can do is wait for the eighteen wheeler to either hit or miss me.

What helped for me was listening to the podcast, for a long time I didn't connect the compassion and acceptance for the people on the show with my own story, but at some point, I started flirting with the idea, that if I could feel compassion with people in similar situations as my own, maybe I could also feel compassion with myself.

However whenever I allow myself to feel compassion/pitty/sorry for myself, I often think, this will lower my guard/shield and put my in some kind of danger.

In a sense feeling anything positive about myself is against my survival instinct, which is why it's so hard and scary to do.

[neufena]

I get that it's about acceptance. I keep saying here, to my therapist, to my wife, to anyone who'll pretend to listen. I need to learn to give up, accept I'm a failure and have no worth. I need to stop clinging to the the hope that if I keep trying I'll make myself a good person and just settle down and wait till I die.

But nobody can even begin to point me in the direction of HOW to start to accept this? How to stop trying? How to come to terms with what I really am.

[oak]

I offer the following sincerely, without irony.

You state:

"...there is NOTHING I can actually do"

Taken literally, that is untrue: you actually did do something: you set out to start a new thread. You clicked the appropriate button, typed words that made sense, and then "submit".

I'll admit that is not a huge deal, except that it is: your actions say one thing and your words say another. Ergo, you need not trust your words.

This, no joke, can be the foundation for you to build a new life. If you don't truly know your own mind, then you can evaluate everything from this point forward.

Does anything above make sense or help you? If not, then don't think about it further.

Another thing that may not make sense or help you:

Remember in Homer's The Illyad the Greeks spend ten years trying to enter the city of Troy? They try everything, many heroes die, and they are no closer ten years later.

Then, as you know, the Greeks leave and the Trojans find a big wooden horse, as a gift. They bring in the horse, celebrate their "victory" a little too much, and then the hidden Greeks exit the horse and beat up the hungover Trojans.

Maybe...maybe!...that is what your bullying experience is like. It is like a medieval castle: moats, boiling oil, drawbridge.

You may need to get around this situation.

You say that you desire a workbook; may I hear that as "the instruction booklet that everyone else seem to get" as I myself often consider my own life?

I don't know of any bullying workbooks.

You say you have a wife. Okay. Is there any area you can improve your relationship with your wife?

How's your health, your finances, your career? Do you need to work on winning friends and influencing people?

If so, there are workbooks for each of them:

John Gray for wife-communication, the American Heart Association for health, Dave Ramsey or Jerrold Mundis for finances, Richard Bolles for career, and Dale Carnegie for winning friends and influencing people.

Oftentimes it helps the main problem (Troy's walls for the Greeks, bullying for you) to take care of outlying problems, indirection (a horse for the Greeks, finances or wife-communication for you).

That is, perhaps bullying at this point in your journey is like that castle with the drawbridge up, the moat below, and the boiling oil above. Even if you get an emotional battering ram, it may not be your time.

Maybe you've got to sneak around the back of the castle, and bribe the cook to sneak in your friends. Just like Han Solo did when they snuck onto the Death Star.

Then again, if this doesn't make sense or help you, don't think about it.