Sorry...
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I'm sorry that the phone session was rough for you. It seems to me (and I do the same thing) that you are punishing yourself for even hearing, and maybe even slightly believing, that what your T is saying is true. I know, for me, if I take in a compliment from my T or anyone else, it seems like it will threaten my motivation to keep trying to do better and be better and I will ultimately fail. I wonder if it's slightly the same for you? It's like, believing that a compliment is true will almost completely eliminate the chance of me ever doing anything well again. I'm sorry if this isn't making any sense. I know it's easy for me to say, but try and be kind to yourself. Let your T know how it felt to hear him say those things - and let him know exactly how you felt. My T took a long time before she started to compliment me, because she knew that I just couldn't take it. Even now, she'll ask me if it's okay before she says anything like that.
I don't think the problem is someone else believing that you can and are doing it, but that you are scared to believe that you are doing it. Because that certainly couldn't be true, could it? That you are doing something good and honorable and right? But you are, Yaku. Just take it slowly, and maybe you can eventually believe these things, much as I'm slowly trying to believe the things my T says to me.
Many hugs to you, and take good care of yourself. ((((Yaku))))
quote:Why does it hurt very badly for someone to believe I can and am doing it?
I don't think the problem is someone else believing that you can and are doing it, but that you are scared to believe that you are doing it. Because that certainly couldn't be true, could it? That you are doing something good and honorable and right? But you are, Yaku. Just take it slowly, and maybe you can eventually believe these things, much as I'm slowly trying to believe the things my T says to me.
Many hugs to you, and take good care of yourself. ((((Yaku))))
Yes, I can relate to that, too. But I think that being afraid of losing his good opinion is something that is completely naturally and human. It doesn't make you a bad or wrong person. But as he sticks by your side as more time passes, maybe you'll realize that you've really gotten to the core of who you are, and he is still there. I hope, and really believe, that will be the case.
((((Yaku))))
((((Yaku))))
Yaku hi
Wow Yaku you’ve just said something that I experienced profoundly yesterday. On a par with your finding being told positive things about yourself not positive but painful and frightening (something I experience too, no matter how much I want to believe something good about myself that someone says, it just makes me feel utter crap) – I had a sudden intuitive realization yesterday about my stepmother that really made the ground shift inside my head – and it was really frightening because it meant that my whole basis of reality, which is founded squarely on me-as-bad and others-as-good, would be profoundly undermined. And yes it was like I was having to step into an alternative universe where everything I’ve believed for most of my life is the opposite.
Now considering that this would be a GOOD thing (it would mean that I was no longer bad and that my stepmother, at least, if not everyone else involved in my past, was no longer good and well intentioned) it seems surprising that it not only didn’t make me feel good or positive but actually scared the hell out of me. It’s not so simple to say well of course if everything you know and is familiar suddenly becomes alien and unfamiliar and therefore threatening, though that’s there too, I think it’s much more that it challenges my (our?) fundamental experience of myself as bad, which permeates everything I say and do and think and feel, so that challenging it, having that consciously and unconsciously known sense of self destroyed (even if that’s what my goal is, to change me-as-bad to me-as-good), plunges me not only into the terrifying chaos of an alien unfamiliar universe, but also taps into what I like to call existential agony. Like, in my case once again, (as this has happened to me before, where my initial sense of self as ‘good’ got turned completely into me-as-bad) not being able to rely on my own automatic and intuitive perceptions of the world and other people – being without foundation so to speak so I end up freefalling in a void that seemingly has no bottom, where nothing is as it seems, where everything I thought I knew turns out to be wrong, false, a lie.
Phew sorry that’s getting a bit wordy and pretentious, it’s that I’m trying to put into words what I glimpsed yesterday which was basically a perceptual/emotional thing rather than thoughts. The point of it anyway is to say to you that maybe the incredible resistance and bad feelings that come up whenever someone tries to reflect you as good, or you try and see yourself as good in some way, is because of the reality-challenging effects of it reverberating away in the background. Easier and much much much safer to stay with what you know to be ‘true’ (in the case I’m talking about with me that’s ‘other-people-are-fundamentally-good-and-well-intentioned’) than it is to face the emotional fallout of having such certainties challenged and overturned.
Not sure if that’s going to mean anything to you, but wanted to reply as so much of what you say about your struggle with taking in the good things that your T is trying to convey to you reflects so closely the struggles I have with trying to believe good about myself.
Lol you also have the dubious distinction of being the first person I’ve tried to reply to supportively (yes that’s me trying to be supportive) since I decided today to start posting on forum again. If we haven’t met before (and I’m not sure we have though I’ve read all your posts and feel like I know you
) – hello to you.
LL
quote:the real expectation of meaning is like a shifting of gravity, like trying to live life on a different planet where the weight of everything I thought I knew has fundamentally altered, and I my sense of perceiving what I am holding is lost in this otherwordliness.
Wow Yaku you’ve just said something that I experienced profoundly yesterday. On a par with your finding being told positive things about yourself not positive but painful and frightening (something I experience too, no matter how much I want to believe something good about myself that someone says, it just makes me feel utter crap) – I had a sudden intuitive realization yesterday about my stepmother that really made the ground shift inside my head – and it was really frightening because it meant that my whole basis of reality, which is founded squarely on me-as-bad and others-as-good, would be profoundly undermined. And yes it was like I was having to step into an alternative universe where everything I’ve believed for most of my life is the opposite.
Now considering that this would be a GOOD thing (it would mean that I was no longer bad and that my stepmother, at least, if not everyone else involved in my past, was no longer good and well intentioned) it seems surprising that it not only didn’t make me feel good or positive but actually scared the hell out of me. It’s not so simple to say well of course if everything you know and is familiar suddenly becomes alien and unfamiliar and therefore threatening, though that’s there too, I think it’s much more that it challenges my (our?) fundamental experience of myself as bad, which permeates everything I say and do and think and feel, so that challenging it, having that consciously and unconsciously known sense of self destroyed (even if that’s what my goal is, to change me-as-bad to me-as-good), plunges me not only into the terrifying chaos of an alien unfamiliar universe, but also taps into what I like to call existential agony. Like, in my case once again, (as this has happened to me before, where my initial sense of self as ‘good’ got turned completely into me-as-bad) not being able to rely on my own automatic and intuitive perceptions of the world and other people – being without foundation so to speak so I end up freefalling in a void that seemingly has no bottom, where nothing is as it seems, where everything I thought I knew turns out to be wrong, false, a lie.
Phew sorry that’s getting a bit wordy and pretentious, it’s that I’m trying to put into words what I glimpsed yesterday which was basically a perceptual/emotional thing rather than thoughts. The point of it anyway is to say to you that maybe the incredible resistance and bad feelings that come up whenever someone tries to reflect you as good, or you try and see yourself as good in some way, is because of the reality-challenging effects of it reverberating away in the background. Easier and much much much safer to stay with what you know to be ‘true’ (in the case I’m talking about with me that’s ‘other-people-are-fundamentally-good-and-well-intentioned’) than it is to face the emotional fallout of having such certainties challenged and overturned.
Not sure if that’s going to mean anything to you, but wanted to reply as so much of what you say about your struggle with taking in the good things that your T is trying to convey to you reflects so closely the struggles I have with trying to believe good about myself.
Lol you also have the dubious distinction of being the first person I’ve tried to reply to supportively (yes that’s me trying to be supportive) since I decided today to start posting on forum again. If we haven’t met before (and I’m not sure we have though I’ve read all your posts and feel like I know you
) – hello to you.LL
Yaku,
Found this thread to be so timely because T and I just had this discussion this week on being able to accept a compliment. I've had the same compliment from two people, my H and someone else. I can accept it from the other person but not from my H and we were trying to figure out why I can't accept it from my H. It's because the one from my H comes with strings attached, as in please say the same thing about me and/or please don't leave me. There's an extra burden added to it.
I was trying to think about how I would feel if my T started to compliment me like your T did and I thought I might feel like he was telling me I didn't need him, as in what a terrific person you are, what are you doing in therapy, what do you need me for? How did it make you feel? Like he was pushing you away? Or you just weren't sure what he was really up to?
Found this thread to be so timely because T and I just had this discussion this week on being able to accept a compliment. I've had the same compliment from two people, my H and someone else. I can accept it from the other person but not from my H and we were trying to figure out why I can't accept it from my H. It's because the one from my H comes with strings attached, as in please say the same thing about me and/or please don't leave me. There's an extra burden added to it.
I was trying to think about how I would feel if my T started to compliment me like your T did and I thought I might feel like he was telling me I didn't need him, as in what a terrific person you are, what are you doing in therapy, what do you need me for? How did it make you feel? Like he was pushing you away? Or you just weren't sure what he was really up to?
Yaku,
Just reread your original post and the other replies, which were awesome. I also thought of something else though. I am assuming that you are a people pleaser. Almost all of those compliments he gave you were about you being good to other people. In the back of my mind, I could almost hear me, (pretending my t was saying those things to me) hear the real me, saying, what about me??? Who is going to do and be all those things to and for me??? I am always giving, giving, giving. Which is guess is along the lines of what LL was saying, as in if we are good, then it means that these other people in our lives must be ______.
Just reread your original post and the other replies, which were awesome. I also thought of something else though. I am assuming that you are a people pleaser. Almost all of those compliments he gave you were about you being good to other people. In the back of my mind, I could almost hear me, (pretending my t was saying those things to me) hear the real me, saying, what about me??? Who is going to do and be all those things to and for me??? I am always giving, giving, giving. Which is guess is along the lines of what LL was saying, as in if we are good, then it means that these other people in our lives must be ______.
hugs, low on words, but high on hugs.
S
S
quote:as so much of what you say about your struggle with taking in the good things that your T is trying to convey to you reflects so closely the struggles I have with trying to believe good about myself.
LL you couldn't have said it better.
Yaku, I so get this. I actually have severe adverse reactions when I get complimented. I get completely nauseous and go numb. It's an automatic response, and I really don't like it, but have no other coping mechanisms. I so don't feel deserving of anything good coming back to me, it's my job to send the good out to the world. Hopefully, when I'm in a better place of being able to receive "good" things, there will still be some out there for me.