Posted by pegasus on July 21, 2008, at 11:16:15
In reply to Leaning into the pain, posted by llurpsienoodle on July 19, 2008, at 8:39:42
Hi Llurpsie,
I've had exactly the same response to some CBT interventions in the past. It's nice to hear you articulate it so well. I hated being encouraged to distract myself from my pain, even when in "crisis". It felt so invalidating. What I wanted was someone who would let me be where I was. Or maybe even want to hear what it was like. I felt that no one would accept my pain, even my T. So I'd end up in this cognitive dissonance situation, which always ended up in self injury.
It was when I started getting serious about studying meditation (for me in the Buddhist tradition), and learned through that to try to ride the waves of my maelstroms, that I started finally getting a handle on my SI habit. Which is not to say that meditating can break me out of a serious emotional spiral when it occurs. There are certainly times that cranking up the angry music and singing along, or writing angry journal entries or, sadly, sometimes still reverting to SI, is the only thing that can "help" me. But distraction *never* does.
- peg
poster:pegasus
thread:840728
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20080709/msgs/841232.html