Posted by hffcookie on February 24, 2005, at 11:42:52
hello all
i am posting for the first time here (i have posted in "psyco...") because i have seen a new cognitive therapist about 3 times now as well as have read (over and over and over) "Feeling Good" as well as the handbook. I made copies of the exercises in the handbook and religously filled them out and yes, sometimes i think they helped me quite a bit, esp. when feeling anxiety over something coming up etc. however i am running into a problem with cognitive therapy that my therapist has not helped resolve very well. it seems that in cognitive therapy the underlying guideline of expect nothing, and/or have the lowest expectations possible and you will never feel deprived is, well, depressing in itself. my therapist suggestion was that i change my belief that love is a need (which, i think for self-actualization, is true). i told her i know it is not a need to sustain life, but i cannot convince myself that a life w/o any love is, for me, equivalent of that with... i guess i just have had problems trying to lower my expectations and beliefs to such a low point. and while that may be the way to keep from feeling disappointed, well, it is in itself disappointing to me to think that way.
Another question that i would love any advice on... I am now trying very hard to work through the aftermath of an affair which recently ended. In actuality, it ended in the best way it possibly could with his wife and my husband willing to forgive and trying to rebuild and repair and move on. However I am in the early stages of my marriage and he is in year 15+ with three kids...so, it seems he is much more focused and determined and i am the one still feeling intense lonliness and moments of desperation. the thing is, i am taking a new anti-d that has my sex drive kicking.... because of this and because of the extremely sexually charged relationship between this other man and i, i am now constantly thinking about him when i am aroused. how do i transfer those reactive emotions to someone new? is it possible? and when do i actually begin to believe it is over? i cannot believe it now. it seems unfathomable, unreal. is it just time? and my cognitive therapist doesn't seem to want to address these emotional issues, rather she seems more focused on tangiable day to day issues which, i think, would in large part be resolved if i dealt with the more important issue of the end of this affair and my emptiness. thanks so much for reading this long post and thanks again if you post. take care.
hc
poster:hffcookie
thread:462693
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050218/msgs/462693.html