Posted by Daisym on October 20, 2004, at 10:54:48
In reply to Re: It's raining, inside and out (trigger potential) » daisym, posted by mandinka on October 20, 2004, at 3:00:28
Thank you for the nice words and support. I think the exercise your therapist did with you is impressive and I can see how it would be effective. But bluntly, I'm in no shape to see a list of my flaws...even if the list is self-selected. And fundamentally, my intellect doesn't match my gut about why I'm flawed in certain ways. For example: I can say I'm not genuine with most of my friends because it is too scary to be vulnerable. This comes from csa. My head knows this. BUT, my gut says that I'm a coward and afraid people won't like me if they "really" know me. This goes along with those old feelings that the csa happened because I was "bad" or fundamentally flawed in someway. Which is the reverse of my head saying "you are like you are because of csa..." and around the circle we go.
I'm working on all of this. I never even realized that at my core I felt so flawed, so knowing this is progress (I think?). It has been a painful process to get in this far and discover this secret guilt. And it is really hard to hear my therapist say back to me everything I've just said, sometimes it feels like he is agreeing with me, confirming it all. He has figured out that arguing with me outright, appealing to my logic, won't work. (OK, he might say, "you know this already, children are never at fault...")What works is that he will then say what he believes, using "I" statements. "I don't think you are bad, or ever were," "I think you dad must have tremendous guilt about what he did," etc.
And he refuses to let me argue with him, pointing out that I don't have so much power that I can control his thoughts or feelings. (ouch, ego blow)I'm going to tell him about the exercise though, and see if we might want to work on it when I'm stronger. I think you were very brave to do this. I worry a lot about my therapist deciding that I'm too hard to work with. Giving him this list would feed that fear too...geez, I am a mess!
Thanks for the support.
Daisy
poster:Daisym
thread:405006
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20041016/msgs/405104.html