harasgenster
11-03-11, 13:09
Hi
Some of you will have seen that I have been posting here regularly recently and a lot of my posts have been quite confused and rambling, mostly because I could never put my finger on what was wrong and was just grasping for reasons, I just didn't know why I was upset.
I've just done the deeper thoughts exercise from CBT which Robin Hall, who posted about his book here recently, helped me with. I'd done something similar before but I was asking myself the wrong questions, I think, because I just couldn't seem to get to the bottom of it.
But I've had something of a revelation today that has given me a lot of hope that I can get to grips with my illness and begin to understand why I feel the way I do. I've had such problems with low self-esteem and I haven't known why because I seem to at the same time think I am "great" and "terrible" (which has led me to be diagnosed as bipolar, but this doesn't seem right because I don't have mood swings).
I also wrote the other day that I needed to be told I was special or people needed to use hyperbole with me (tell me I was "the best" or "amazing" etc.).
I've been told by my parents that when I entered primary school I went from being an extremely confident and happy toddler to a really stressed and unhappy kid - my character completely changed. The reason for this was that I was immediately outcast and I couldn't bond with the others, everybody was so different from me. I got through it by telling myself that different meant "special" not "wrong", but as I got older I needed to see more and more evidence of this to support that belief. Recently, through a few bad patches in my life, that belief has been questioned and I stopped feeling like I was special. Because of the dichotomy I'd put together when I was about 5, I suddenly reverted to feeling "wrong" or just massively beneath everyone else, but at the same time, inside, I was still trying to tell myself I was special, which is how I can be so confused about what I think of myself all the time.
I didn't think I thought about any of this anymore. I thought it was in the past. But everything psychotherapists have told me about my parents hasn't struck a chord with me and this really does. I can easily connect this very simple dichotomy to almost every worry I have! It explains almost everything and what's most important is that I can see it is absurd. I've struggled to not believe my surface thoughts because they seem so real, but this, while ringing many bells, seems like something I could challenge.
Anyway, massive post but I feel really excited about this. This is the first time in ages I've felt like I know what's wrong, instead of just feeling a general "upset" that I find it difficult to connect with anything - I just kept trying to justify it with a different thought each week :)
Of course, I could be wrong, and tomorrow I might suddenly realise that its far more complex than this but I feel like I've got a starting point now.
Long live CBT! (And thank you Robin)
Some of you will have seen that I have been posting here regularly recently and a lot of my posts have been quite confused and rambling, mostly because I could never put my finger on what was wrong and was just grasping for reasons, I just didn't know why I was upset.
I've just done the deeper thoughts exercise from CBT which Robin Hall, who posted about his book here recently, helped me with. I'd done something similar before but I was asking myself the wrong questions, I think, because I just couldn't seem to get to the bottom of it.
But I've had something of a revelation today that has given me a lot of hope that I can get to grips with my illness and begin to understand why I feel the way I do. I've had such problems with low self-esteem and I haven't known why because I seem to at the same time think I am "great" and "terrible" (which has led me to be diagnosed as bipolar, but this doesn't seem right because I don't have mood swings).
I also wrote the other day that I needed to be told I was special or people needed to use hyperbole with me (tell me I was "the best" or "amazing" etc.).
I've been told by my parents that when I entered primary school I went from being an extremely confident and happy toddler to a really stressed and unhappy kid - my character completely changed. The reason for this was that I was immediately outcast and I couldn't bond with the others, everybody was so different from me. I got through it by telling myself that different meant "special" not "wrong", but as I got older I needed to see more and more evidence of this to support that belief. Recently, through a few bad patches in my life, that belief has been questioned and I stopped feeling like I was special. Because of the dichotomy I'd put together when I was about 5, I suddenly reverted to feeling "wrong" or just massively beneath everyone else, but at the same time, inside, I was still trying to tell myself I was special, which is how I can be so confused about what I think of myself all the time.
I didn't think I thought about any of this anymore. I thought it was in the past. But everything psychotherapists have told me about my parents hasn't struck a chord with me and this really does. I can easily connect this very simple dichotomy to almost every worry I have! It explains almost everything and what's most important is that I can see it is absurd. I've struggled to not believe my surface thoughts because they seem so real, but this, while ringing many bells, seems like something I could challenge.
Anyway, massive post but I feel really excited about this. This is the first time in ages I've felt like I know what's wrong, instead of just feeling a general "upset" that I find it difficult to connect with anything - I just kept trying to justify it with a different thought each week :)
Of course, I could be wrong, and tomorrow I might suddenly realise that its far more complex than this but I feel like I've got a starting point now.
Long live CBT! (And thank you Robin)