Beginning Therapy Again

[neufena]

Since my last thread was one of the ones that went missing and We have decided to begin my therapy from scratch I thought it was time for a new thread.

Firstly I want to say sorry if this is too long or boring. If my grammar or spelling is bad. Or if it's just not worth reading. I'l try my best but I'm just not that interesting a lot of the time.

So a bit of background. After years of waiting I finally got an appointment with a clinical psychologist. We looked at my past, especially how I was bullied throughout school. I understand how that can affect me and allowed me to develop coping strategies that aren't always useful. However I still can't see this as abuse or that it's anything but my fault. Not my fault I was bullied but the way it effected me is down to how I handled it and tried to cope. Almost everybody I know was bullied during childhood. Nobody else was effected like me.

We then began to look at a system or model for the way our mind works. I'm sorry if I get the names of things wrong. I believe there's several different names for both the model and there parts but we often referred to them as the Threat, Drive and Soothe systems. It was explained to me that we need all 3. Threat system alert us to threats around us, help us to keep safe and not take unnecessary risks. The Drive system makes us do things, active things. The soothe system allows us to calm ourselves and feel connection to others. All systems interact and all are like muscles, they need to be 'flexed' to grow.

I have a very over developed Threat system. I see attack all around me and as such look for ways to combat that threat. To do so I have developed a large Drive system that makes me people please, try to better myself, impress people and reduce the threat by doing. I have an underdeveloped Soothe system, unable to be compassionate with myself or reduce threat from within.

All the work we did was focused on trying to reduce my drive while introducing mindfulness meditation. The intention was to make me have more time to soothe myself, do things for my self etc. However this just raised my Threat higher and higher. I tried to stop doing things for other people. Or in my words I stopped being nice and was a dick to people. I felt guilty and ashamed for wasting my time meditating when I should be trying to achieve things to improve my social standing, to make people like me.

So I basically failed. Or the therapy didn't work but I suspect it was me not doing it right. In medical terms (and not the first time a therapist has said this about me) I 'failed to respond to treatment'. However unlike previous therapists I've not be referred back to my family doctor. My therapists says he's not letting me go until “he's cracked me”. So we've agreed to start again from scratch. This time we'll leave the Threat and Drive systems alone. Instead we'll work on building my Soothe system by teaching myself to have compassion for myself. The hope is the Threat and Drive will shrink of their own accord as the Soothe grows.

I must admit I'm scared, I don't really know what I'm doing or how to achieve this. All I can find online about how to have compassion for yourself is just a list of things to stop doing. This is much easier said than done. I hope there's some techniques I can learn to actually learn compassion while not just blindly 'believing' things, especially things that I logically know are not true.

Anyway I'll try (when I can) to update this.

[manuel_moe_g]

Thanks for keeping us informed, neufena. Best of luck on this different path in your therapy. Self-love is a difficult one to crack - like peeling the skin of an onion, I feel I uncover new self-hatred all the time, myself, in my own therapy.

[neufena]

Thanks for being there. I'm still hoping one day I'll find the thing I need to do or change to have compassion. I still feel I need to do something to earn or deserve some compassion but I guess the point of the therapy is to find something I already have done that has earnt it.

I still stick by what I said at my first session. I need to learn to say/believe "ok so I'm a failure, I've done nothing of worth. But I can accept that and live out my days without too my h pain.