Posted by Dinah on September 1, 2003, at 18:01:44
In reply to Re: Exercise is way overrated » Dinah, posted by fallsfall on September 1, 2003, at 11:51:15
Ugh. I just wrote a long post, and hit some button I shouldn't have and lost most of it. :(
> Can I make a copy of this and send it to my old therapist? She honestly believed that everything would be all better if I would get some exercise. That was ALWAYS her first solution.
I hate CBT. I really do. I use it, but I hate it. The answers seem so simple. But in reality, they seldom are. Does exercise make you feel better? Or can you only exercise when you are feeling better so that it looks like the exercise worked?
>> Are we the only ones who have things that people don't want to hear? Do the healthy people not have secrets and pains and shame? Is that what makes them different from us? Or do we just want someone to understand our pain so we don't have to be alone? Do they have pain that doesn't make them lonely?
>
> My therapists (both of them) tell me to spend more time with "healthy" people. But I am drawn to the "unhealthy" ones because they care and want to understand. Do the "healthy" people have the same pains that we do, but they just ignore them?
>
I suspect they may be better at keeping the secrets from themselves. Or at least that's true if my husband is "healthy". Which of course he isn't, but maybe no one is. I'm trying to remember if the subject ever came up in late night chats with my healthier school friends. I'm thinking maybe it did and they stared at me blankly. One called me long after - when she heard I had a baby. She remembered those talks and wanted to share her experiences postpartum, in case I was having trouble. I think that was extraordinarily nice of her. We kept in touch sporadically. She's dead now. One of two of my relatively small circle (ten or so) of friends who died by age forty.And maybe that's the advantage of friendship with people who aren't "healthy" in the traditional sense. No one got it at all. And here was someone who I hadn't heard from in fifteen years, calling to share her pain so that I could talk about mine if I needed to. And we ended up laughing about things that weren't funny in the least. She had been sick for a while by then, but had such a great attitude towards both her physical illness and the emotional problems caused by it and by the drugs she had to take.
> Or is it that when you are NOT productive, they don't care about anything except making you productive? CBT still feels to me like "play act the role and you'll eventually fool yourself into thinking that it is true." Your husband has many wonderful qualities, I wish he could understand a little of your pain.
I think he may understand that I feel it. He just doesn't like it. It frustrates him that he can't fix it.
>
> > About how the only place I can really be honest about who I am and what I feel is in therapy. And about how very sad that is.
>
> Make a bunch of "crazy" friends and expand your circle! (Join a support group, lol)
>
I'm not even sure my "crazy" friends want to hear it. :) It's no wonder that therapy is so important to me....
> >
> > I suspect that maybe the internal energy that shows itself as anxiety also is somehow protective against the low mood that flourishes when increased physical exertion depletes the energy.
> >
> > Just a theory.
>
> What a sentance! I had to read it 4 times before I understood. But I think you could very well be right. I think that anxiety is protective. All I can think of is labor pains - and when you tighten muscles (i.e. anxiety) against the pains that it makes you feel like you are in control. But really the way to get through it is to "accept" the pain (wow, this is as close as I will ever get to mindfulness!).
>
Can I enjoy it vicariously? I'm not sure I'll ever get that close. :) I'm still balking at the very idea of wise mind.> I'm very impressed with what you got done. I think you should now enjoy a well deserved rest.
>
> (and I'll go take my dogs for a walk because you made me feel guilty about exercise.)
>
>
How did the walk go? I didn't get as much done as I had hoped. But partly that was because I decided to spend some time with my poor son, who's been entertaining himself while I worked.
poster:Dinah
thread:256067
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030829/msgs/256176.html