Lokakisa wrote: ↑Thu Jan 10, 2019 4:22 pm
I have been in touch with my doctors, though I don’t walk in and say “yo I’m too unworthy to be with my god” lol.
I have chronic illness and we’re trying to get that under control first so I can move on with my life. No amount of antidepressants will stop the negative events from happening.
I’ve had counseling and hypnosis in the past to no avail. But haven’t tried CBT yet.
I totally get that. When life is harder than it “should” be—than most other people’s time is—that is so destructive and defeating.
And, yeah. I not only endorse but recommend not bringing Loki into a medical conversation. Sadly that often doesn’t go well for people who are do not adhere to a majority belief system. Although the non-Loki thoughts could be fair game.
But if you’ve been up that alley, and that doesn’t cut the mustard, then it doesn’t cut the mustard!
I do think there’s some merit to the sludge idea in regards to thought patterns, even if you don’t think there’s been physical harm from a similar being. But I am guessing it’s not a sludge-only situation. And I also think that seeking help from someone like Marbas is a stellar idea!
I still recommend CBT, even if it’s only a few sessions or a book. Once they get the hang of it, some people can do it on their own, with a lot of benefit. The idea is the same as things like The Power of Positive Thinking (which omg my dad played the audio tape of in the car in king trips,) except it’s a bit more direct and practical. Good ol’ Normie (Vincent Peale) in that book is talking to people who really could just do a better with a few tweaks. For instance, he recommends spending just a few minutes thinking about words like “tranquility.” Not meditating. Just saying it to yourself a few times and noticing the effect l. However, CBT is more of a way of learning how to catch the thoughts, identify the specific category of harmful thought (they call it thought distortion) it falls under and then reply to it.
Two bits about this. One that shows you a good experience with it, and another a rather more problematic experience with my CB therapist.
First, my SO and I had some long term issues with physical intimacy at one time. I know we are more direct in our wording here, but it feels more respectful of his feelings to err on the delicate side. I caught myself really dwelling on the misery i was having in the situation and really just blaming the hell out of myself. I wasn’t attractive enough or didn’t do things well enough or didn’t try enough. But in my head I knew that they had some physical issues that were interfering and some mental health issues too. Through the CBT process, I learned to catch the harmful thought and then talk to my brain about why it was wrong about that thought. I was self-blaming for somethimg that was objectively outside both our control. I was ignoring all the amazing bits of the relationship and only seeing the thing that hurt. I attempted to read my partner’s mind and discount the evidence. I could go on with all the things that made this not only a problematic thought but also a true thought, but it covered a wide chunk of this list:
https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/c ... stortions/ The more I practiced catching and talking back to catastrophic thinking, the less I suffered. Did the negative life circumstance go away? No. Did I stop beating myself up so that I could enjoy our relationship and not live in fear of my own brain? Yes. And that relief was major! The *unnecessary* component of the problem dropped away over time.
Now. An abjectly terrible experience with my CB therapist. After having several months of good progress, I went in in total crisis about having to visit my father, who lived several states away. The therapist poked and prodded about why this was such a problem. And that was good because I needed to hash that out. However, when I started listing off all the ways I thought my father would judge me, I guess the therapist thought he was hearing my opinion of myself. He got rather worked up for a therapy session and delivered a seven minute diatribe about how my self esteem was too low and that we needed to work on that. He handed me some worksheets, advised me not to bother someone who upset me so much and sent me home with sole worksheets.
And that was understandably the last time I scheduled a session with him, because identifying the problem as my self esteem made me feel like I had one more personal failing instead of giving me tools to deal with how I perceived my father’s view of me or using the process to identify how my supposed self esteem issue was a lie my mind was telling me.
All that is to say that, it’s a highly helpful system that breaks down into simple tools what other self esteem and positive thinking books try to advocate with fuzzy ideals, and that you do not necessarily have to see a therapist to do this beneficially. All it takes is the mindfulness to catch the thought and the link I gave above to deconstruct the thought’s basis in reality. The only remaining step is to then also tell yourself the thought that would have been true there instead.
So. If the thought is, “I do not merit someone to love me because I’m ugly, so I will never have someone,” then we can go down the list and see that some possible distortion are over generalization, fortune telling, catastrophizing, emotional reasoning, mislabeling and control fallacies. Then you say what would have been true. “I don’t have anybody right now, but there can be someone later. I do not look how I wish I looked, but no one else does either.”
That’s perhaps piles more than is helpful for you, but I don’t like to see you hurting and sad, so I’m all about finding you more spaghetti to sling at the wall in that something sticks by turning out helpful. <3