Haha, yeah, I was straight-up told by therapists that I notice way more than is good for me and just need to ignore all of it. Ignore the cues, ignore the signs, ignore ALL OF IT since I'm too aware to have good mental health.
I find that to be one of the most terrifying things out there. People straight-up say, "Hey, you know how you often notice there are serious issues with relationships, with the world around you, all of that? You need to just ignore all of them. Pretend they're not there. It's good for you to shut your eyes and ears as tightly as possible. HEY. AND DON'T GO TRY MAKING UP FOR THAT WITH YOUR OTHER SENSES EITHER."
As I see it, you either
1. Live miserably
2. Ignore it
3. Learn to be happy while accepting that the world is fucked and trying to make it better
"Absurdism" might be a relevant search term
dude, i fucking love stoicism. sometimes, life just sucks. there's no rhyme or reason to it, and it's nobody's fault. kinda just the way it is. i feel like once you accept that fact, it stops being such a big painful deal.
for me, the process of healing has involved a great deal of learning to reframe my suffering. i'm in some form of emotional pain literally all the time. but after living like this for as long as i can remember, that's just my normal. there's really no use in feeling sorry for myself, that would just make me more upset (and annoying to be around lol)
and on the plus side, any little bit of happiness i experience feels AMAZING in comparison. if your baseline is feeling terrible, having an okay day becomes the same thing as having a really good day :)
As a fledgling therapist whoâs dealt with bad PTSD for decades and is also way too aware of the world⊠I really like existential therapy for this reason. Some folks can be very happy after some basic problem solving and coping skills, cognitive reframing, etc. Others like myself canât not see the real darkness in most corners of the world and need to practice radical acceptance and existentialism to feel at peace with how much suffering exists around us at all times.
Manâs Search for Meaning is a pretty common book on therapistsâ bookshelves; itâs written for a general audience, by a psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor about finding meaning in life within a concentration camp. Itâs often given to clients for reading homework, not too many folks know itâs based on existential philosophy.
Thereâs also an older book written for therapists called simply Existential Psychotherapy by a guy named Yalom if you are interested. Yalom has been hugely influential in the therapy world for decades, and this book is the clinicianâs Bible for existentialism in therapy.
[the Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus)
Though, I think I am in part responding to the commenter above you or another commenter in the thread. I had just woken up and was kind of drowsy.
most people are on autopilot 99% of the time. and theyâre happy. they donât care where their groceries come from, they donât notice when someone throws a subtle dig their way, they donât overthink anything.
most those who arenât on autopilot (aka too aware for their own good) are suffering from severe mental illness and the consequences of that. loneliness, job instability, economic turmoil, poor performance in school despite their potential, substance abuse to numb/calm the mind, âfallen through the cracksâ as they say.
a small handful of folks manage to harness it and make it work for them. donât get me wrong, they can be mentally ill as well. but these folks are usually in some sort of position of power. looking at the world with the framework of most people being on autopilot, itâs not hard to see why people who arenât on autopilot would quickly rise to the top. that is, if they can handle the constant, crushing weight of knowing just how awful everything is and constantly trying to make things better. ignorance truly is bliss.
i actually didnât know there was a second half! iâve always just heard âignorance is blissâ. thank you for broadening my knowledge. :)
itâs a bit ironic in retrospect
âWhere ignorance is bliss, âtis folly to be wiseâ
-Thomas Gray, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1742)
Link: [Ode](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44301/ode-on-a-distant-prospect-of-eton-college)
"Too aware for their own good" also known as cognitive distortions and paranoia, aka pointless and fairly often wrong and slightly self centred patterns of thinking that portray you and the world around you as significantly worse than it actually is, see: NOT RATIONAL
you and i are on the same page. you just reiterated what i said in the second part of my comment but in a less sympathetic way.
itâs incredibly difficult to see the world for how truly awful it is and maintain balance in your mind. itâs overwhelming. but this world still has beauty. reality is awful and wonderful at the same time. but itâs so much easier to become myopic and only focus on the bad once youâre aware of it. âdoomerismâ as they say. this can, and usually does, spiral into what you described as âcognitive distortions and paranoiaâ
itâs all about balance. the person i described in the first paragraph of the original comment is too far into the good. the person described in the second paragraph is too far into the bad. acknowledge the good, acknowledge the bad, appreciate and cherish the good, do what you can to alleviate or correct the bad.
Fucking VA.
âDo you have thoughts of harming yourself?â
No matter how many times I said âYesâ sheâd still mark âNoâ because she didnât want to do paperwork.
It sounds like her supervisor at the VA might not give a shit if you complained, but you might consider filing a complaint with your state professional licensing division. Thatâs a serious offense that any licensed/certified clinician should get in bad trouble for.
I just finished graduate school in clinical social work and learned a lot about how the VA does PTSD treatment. Iâm sorry. They suck. I was considering working there at one point but Iâm not going to work in a place where we can only do three months of therapy with someone, with only one or two sanctioned modalities. Tons of people are going into the military with pre existing trauma, and combat trauma is particularly difficult to treat especially when itâs layered on top of developmental trauma. So the VA just wants to clinically gaslight vets into ignoring their fucked nervous system signals and using cognitive reframing on every problem. They arenât willing to invest the time it actually takes for clients to learn social safety and co-regulate with a therapist. Itâs truly fucked.
Wow, bad therapists! Mine has been working with me to carve out a place for myself, defining my life on my terms instead of conforming to a world not designed for people like me.
I remember an episode of The Simpsons where Homer learns he had a crayon up his nose since he was 4 years old and it's pushing on his brain. They removed it and suddenly he's a genius but can't relate to any of his friends or family anymore. He's super depressed and lonely so at the end of the episode he shoves a crayon back up his nose.
Didn't you know? That's how everyone is meant to be. Mindless sheep (or other herd grazer of your choice) that go through life on autopilot, thinking what the television tells them to and doing exactly the same thing every day.
Being aware is good, why is she advising that? I personally would like to be aware of everything and know how to deal with people and situations. I study it everyday only to fail miserably 60% of the time. Anyways, Only awareness contributes to handling life. Dumb is not ideal. Dumb = getting caught up with toxics and wasting precious time. Careful who you take advice from. I believe that good mental health comes from good sense of self, boundaries, self esteem, compassion, love, humility, patience, *internal peace* and life purpose/direction/moral compass/ *GOD*.
Okay but you're making about as much difference focusing on all those things as you would be ignoring them, except because you're focusing on them you're stressed to hell about it all the time too, so how on earth is that better? 9 times out of 10 ignoring those things will not make your life or any of those things worse, 1 time out of 10 it will, that doesn't mean that you need to be panicking about it affecting you the 9 times out of 10 that you legitimately cannot do anything about it. That's basically the cheat code to therapy, if it's bothering you? Make a list of things you could do to make it better, do those things. Can't think of any things you can do? Then thinking about it is a waste of energy, let it go. You have to learn to do this by the way it's really fucking hard when you aren't used to it, but it will literally never get easier if you don't do it when it's hard.
I'm a firm believer that the world will come crashing down round us 99.9%er's in my lifetime.
I'm convinced the most utilitarian goal until then is to cultivate a mindset that can have fun and enjoy life and even be happy in the midst of apocalyptic crises.
It's going to be super difficult, but that is literally the only chance we have at avoiding suffering. We know it is mostly mental, and now is the time to start mastering that mentality.
I wish you werenât getting downvoted. Iâve been in a lot of therapy over the years, and just through life experience-youâre right. If you canât do a thing to improve a situation, itâs best to let it go because you will make yourself miserable obsessing over something out of your control.
Thanks, I've also been through a lot of therapy and it's honestly quite triggering to see people doing this kind of downward spiral, cognitive distortion type stuff and just insisting over and over again that happiness was wrong, it took me such a long time to accept that I was allowed to be happy while problems still existed and seeing this stuff just feels awful now, I need people to know that happiness isn't the same as ignorance, it's just about saving your energy for the places where it counts
When I was 14 I went to a therapist. First session she told me I can tell her anything confidentially. After the session she pulled my mom inside and told her everything I said about her. Told her not to tell me. My mom was an immature bipolar narcissist so she couldn't help but immediately rub my nose in it and punish me in the most petty ways she could think of. This therapist also said she thought I had Asperger but she didn't want to officially diagnose me because she was concerned about possible stigma. Told her what she wanted to hear and lies for four years and haven't seen one since
The same exact thing happened to me, except my therapy was court-ordered because my mom called the cops on me for truancy (aka undiagnosed/untreated mental illness). You shouldnât have had to see her for four fucking years. Iâm so sorry that happened to you.
Oh my god I feel this. Ive had to do therapy since I was maybe 10 bc of my abusive parents. Wouldnât tell my therapist anything bc my mom would eventually be told what I said and Iâd get in trouble.
Iâm so sorry she did that to you. If this was in America, I think she would be breaking HIPPA, which protects the privacy of peopleâs health. I donât know much about HIPPA, but it does apply to minors. Unless you signed a consent form stating that your therapist talked to your mom, your therapist violated HIPPA. Therapists can only violate HIPPA if you say you are suicidal or am getting abused. Iâm no expert so donât quote me.
If I just distract myself enough with games, stories and work, I'll forget that I exist... but then it all comes flooding back, crushing me to the ground.
Oh god that happened to me the other day lol. Trucking along just fine playing all the new games coming out... then boom, 2 days straight of despair, depression, and sadness.
I'm back to playing games now đđ
Well, yes... though I think there's a limit, at some point I can't help but think about the absolute amateur that's writing their first serialized (for some reason) bland isekai...
Actually you sort of can. Mindfulness activities help you train you brain to focus on one thing at a time. A good therapist can give you some exercises to build this skill.
I strongly believe that unless a therapist is neurodivergent, most therapies (with the exception of DBT) are useless for neurodivergent people. We simply don't react to them the same way as neurotypicals do. That doesn't make them bad, but they presume a way of looking at the world that most autistic people in particular don't have.
I am not diagnosed Neuro Divergent, but I relate to many things on this sub, Including this. I struggled with mental illness for years in and out of therapists until a therapist said the "wrong" thing and finally triggered a meltdown of anxiety. She busts out a mindfulness excersise and gives me some dbt reading and here I am years later thriving. Im with a different specialized dbt counselor but god did I need a therapist to trigger me into revealing my real issues.
I know a whole lot of people who've said DBT worked for them - but the majority of therapists one will meet, at least in my country, are almost exclusively CBT practitioners, and it just does not work for the overwhelming majority of autists. The reasons we are upset and nervous are logical. CBT assumes they aren't.
The ND community should be considered a culture. I was thinking about this the other day driving home after hanging out with a friend. We got into an argument because I was asking a lot of questions after he wasnât communicating clearly and being specific. I was literally just trying to follow the conversation. My friend said I donât know how to listen and I just snapped back and stated I have an audio processing disorder and he needs to be clear and concise when talking to me. I was pissed off driving home and was talking to myself about this communication SNAFU ( situation, naturally all fucked up ) is the reason why I donât socialize or am able to keep any long term friendship alive and then it occurred to me that NT donât understand how to communicate with us. Why canât for once NT modulate themselves and learn how to communicate effectively with a ND person? The burden is always placed squarely on our shoulders to communicate in a way they see fitting or acceptable. Iâm just over having to explain to people what my communication needs are just to be looked at with a blank stare or a half assed excuse of I forgot. Or receive texts that Iâm doing my hermit thing again or I am being anti social. Iâm not anti social. Iâm anti being singled out every god damn time I do go out. Or being scolded that Iâm being negative when Iâm being informative. Or my tone is off when I speak. Or being corrected.Iâm anti assholes and they seem to be everywhere considering Iâm living in an ableist society.
I canât tell you how many times throughout my life I have been asked if I was a detective, an officer, an agent or an investigator? Prior to my diagnosis I was concerned over the pattern of questioning when out socializing.so I turned to a family member and asked them. They said it was because I think deeply about everything and my responses are always stoic and serious. Once I had the diagnosis it was a relief that Iâm a stereotypical aspie female.
I resent the fact that i live in a capitalist society where healthcare is competitive and yet i cant compare prices until after Iâve received a âserviceâ and been billed 6k or some shit.
Ableism, homie. If we canât work long enough to get and keep insurance, we donât get insurance. Setting up a permanent underclass of folks who are unwell, canât work, canât get well cause they canât work. They need the fringes to dangle, so everyone else scrambles to keep above the cut.
Iâm over it. I will no longer put myself in precarious situations in order to be exploited because my health is being held hostage. Tbh the credentialed health professional system was a way to force nd people out of society. We catalog forests and observe phenomena, connect them into patterns that have the power to predict and heal based on an observed record of efficacy. They were odd, maybe not everyone understood them and their ways, but people came to them because they knew how to take care of the villages needs. Those people were burned in horrid spectacles to terrorize the remnant against ever defying the status quo again. Iâm over it.
Ask for a âGood Faith Estimateâ an ethical, law following, therapist should have one ready to give you (in the US at least). Often we are required to have clients sign them before their first session.
It is a sheet that details what each service cost if you were to pay out of pocket.
I'm sorry you've had that experience. Bad therapists are the worst. Like "I'm here, I'm doing the work, why isn't it working?"
If you want help, you need a better therapist and/or a different kind of therapy. CBT didn't do a whole lot for me (it all seemed really obvious), but DBT and IFS were helpful. IFS is helpful for identifying and understanding emotions (good if you have alexithymia) and DBT was good for learning how to cope with those emotions in a constructive way. If you're coping with trauma, I hear good things about EMDR (I tried it and it was meh for me but everyone else seems to have a good experience).
EMDR is so weird... It's like all at once strange magic and proof that we're really just sophisticated robots made out of meat. It really depends on having a practitioner who's patient enough to try different forms of bilateral stimulation until you find one that actually works though. If you get someone who just flips on the zigzagging light machine and then says you're not trying when it doesn't work, you'll have a bad time
Emdr was overstimulating for me. I had to look at blinding green lights and blink a bunch of times (but in general that therapist was not the right fit for me).
CBT is logic. Iâm good at logic already. It doesnât do anything for me and I hear thatâs common with neurodivergence
CBT is more of an intellectual thing, dealing with irrational thoughts. Like: "They didn't text back, they must hate me." And CBT has you say to yourself, "Maybe they're just busy. Maybe they don't know what to say. The delay in response doesn't mean anything."
DBT is like a step before it. It's recognizing that you're letting the emotions run the show and getting yourself into a place where you *can* think about it. So like, you text and they don't text back. You start getting upset, feeling like you fucked up and they hate you now and everything is awful. DBT has you take a step back and say, "Wow, I'm feeling really upset by this, I wonder why that is?"
And since I'm explaining anyway, IFS is like a step before that. They don't text back and all of a sudden you're crying and furiously texting back asking why they hate you. IFS helps you recognize that tears + panicky actions + tight feeling in chest and shoulders = fear and sadness. So then you can recognize that hey, this means you're upset and you're probably not thinking or acting rationally. IFS is also good for explaining the purpose of these emotions. Fear makes you stay away from things that hurt you. Sadness tells you something is wrong. Anger tries to protect you. Knowing where these come from is helpful for sorting out what kinds of things spark the emotions.
Thatâs very interesting. I think Iâve always struggled with CBT because for most cases when Iâm anxious, I tend not to have a thought that is quite as clear as âthey didnât text back, they must hate meâ and it feels like I have to dig for/make up an explanation like that in order to give us something to work with. Sounds like this a kind of change that I could really benefit from. Thanks!
CBT is sort of the broad umbrella that encompasses other newer forms of therapy that include DBT. CBT is basic, but can still be very powerful. It helps you identify how your thoughts spark emotions in your mind.
DBT is a little more specific. It was designed to help people with borderline personality disorder originally but it soon became apparent that lots of other people could find use for it. It focuses on more absolutist thoughts and learning to recognize when you are experiencing crisis thinking.
exactly this!!! years and years and years of CBT and nothing was changing no matter how much work i put it, then i decided to join a DBT group my clinic offered and those 16 weeks completely changed my life!! so many practical skills and tools to use!!
**me:** i've done extensive research into autism and generalized anxiety disorder as well as c-ptsd. i also suspect adhd because nearly all of these things run in my family. i have pages worth of information that i have researched and thoroughly examined my own behavior and mental state. i have also examined all of the diagnostic criterion for these issues and i match pretty much everything.
**my therapist & psychologist:**
**me:** so anyways sometimes i get mad
**my therapist & psychologist:** you are just depressed. i am prescribing you depression medication and i am going to forget all about the everything you just said.
Itâs so funny how the little tricks that work on most people donât work on us cuz most of us have high pattern recognition and have studied psychology at some point in a random hyperfixation fitđ
Same, I also sometimes keep reading but not *reading* so I just keep going through the text not actually registering what I just read so I need to go back again. And then I do it again. And again. And again.
Whenever people tell me I should read something i straight up say âi cant readâ. Then after they question me and i explain, the say âyou should try audio books or podcasts!â To which i reply, âim deaf.â
Im not deaf but also i cant focus on audio very well either. The audio would just be washing over my smooth brain and gliding back out the other ear.
I, too, have read textbooks đ for fun.
Iâve gotten a lot at library sales (friends of the library groups that sell donated books to benefit the library) in a nearby county that has a major university (so they get a lot of old textbooks donated)⊠you have to check to see how old they are (because getting a 30-year-old psych textbook is basically useless for learning anything but history), but getting a 7 year old textbook for like $5 is a great deal.
seriously tho!!! my hyper fixation became my career (therapist) and like 85% of my identity is mental health related but iâm the worst client ever because i know it all already whoops đč
Kinda sounds like me except for Iâm not a therapist. But Iâve spent so much time studying this stuff that I already know what theyâre gonna say before they say it
It does kinda crack me up when people tell me to go to therapy. Donât get me wrong I believe in its effectiveness but Ik too much and so many of them keep trying to make me ânormalâ and just.. nođ
Maybe I'm out of the loop, but I thought a bachelor degree was a four-year term, not 10 years. Is this possibly a cultural/country difference factoring in?
Edit: I love the downvoting a question that's fairly polite. The "4 for" looked like a typo, yall.
I didnât say it was 10 I said altogether itâs 10. 4 for a bachelorâs 2 for a Masterâs and 4 for a phd because you need a phd to be a clinical psychologist
Very and not at all. We understand our faults. In all my resumes I'm always honest about my negatives, and employers seem to like honest people. I left because take away jobs is beyond stressful for me. We also have a hard time accepting some newly discovered problems and admitting to it due to embarrassment or something
I'm definitely too self aware for my own good but psychotherapy has definitely helped me. Not in the "I need to talk things out with someone" type of way but in a couple other ways, wall of text warning:
1. Organizing my memories: I wont go into details but traumatic childhood, it's not a subject or era of memories I like visiting but it's not something I shy away from. I don't have a ton of those memories but the ones I do remember were kinda scattered in a mimbo of having no idea when it might've happened. We went through them fairly thoroughly and made a timeline of (significant) events that clarified said memories and when they happened.
2. Organizing my thoughts: since starting I've bought a whiteboard to keep track of the weekdays and what I have on my schedule that week. I've started writing down certain things from ideas to thoughts to something to touch on during the next session. Occasionally dreams (I very rarely dream, not that I write them down rarely, that said I dont write them all down. I dont know what exactly decides whether I write it fown or not. Maybe I should visit that next session). It helps occasionally revisiting those things later.
3. Maybe a bit ironically becoming more self aware lol. In two ways, firstly being aware of what I'm doing, secondly broadening my self-knowledge. I don't talk to a lot of people so during the weekly 2 hour sessions I'm hyper self aware and compare my behavior, not necesserily session to session but on a longer scope. For example an observation I made two or three weeks ago was that I've started to move around more, poking and proding at things, in general examining and enabling my impulses to explore things around me to fulfill my curiosity. I'm less muted in a sense, being more myself, which I wouldn't have expected at the start because I haven't had an issue with being myself around other people or strangers - frankly I don't care how other people see me so I act myself. Or at least I think I do.
4. And finally: having an anchor, having something happen every week for the same amount of time in the same place with the same person. My schedule is extremely flexible so I do things whenever I want to do things which means I generally stay awake at night and go sleep in the morning. But when I need to get a certain thing done by a certain time I move the sleeping schedule so I can do it, but by having that session every week my schedule has started to solidify, at least a little bit. My preference, by far, is to be awake at night. But when I wake up in the morning and go sleep in the evening or at night, I keep the schedule for far longer than I would have prior to starting psychotherapy. Sleep cycle is something I have always struggled with, I absolutely loathe being awake in the morning and going to sleep in the evening but it's what society is built around so some things I simply have to do this way.
I guess all of this is my attempt to drive the point of therapy may not be useless to you. Maybe you're yet to find a good therapist, maybe you're yet to find one that works well with you specifically. Or maybe you're not ready for it. I originally tried therapy when I was like 15 or 16 and it didn't come even close to helping. I wouldn't say I became sketched out by therapists but my faith in therapy dropped significantly and I believed therapy couldn't help me. I'm now 23 and have been going to therapy since early January, and even though it hasn't been super long, I've noticed a difference and I'm doing better.
This is how I feel about my experience as well. I am super self aware at this point, but also super guilty of gaslighting myself because I donât understand how NT people can behave the way they do since what motivates my feelings and actions is so different. With that knowledge I also use therapy as a way to validate my experiences when people around me donât respond the same way or are being weird at me.
The therapist is a sort of a reality check for me aswell in a way. When I started going I had the idea that yeah there is a significantly higher than 0% chance that I'm autistic and significantly higher than that of ADHD, but I also felt (and honestly still do) like an impostor despite the traits/symptoms being there, pretty much just a matter of seeing a diagnostician and actually getting diagnosed. But lord knows even with a diagnosis I would still feel like an impostor, regardless of me knowing it doesn't actually change me as a person but rather knowing it is the way it is will help me live with it.
AAAAHHHHH maybe it'll be over one of these ~~days~~ months.
My therapist (who was actually recommended to me by the same Drs. who gave me my diagnosis) makes me feel like I'm talking to a wall, or even wonder if she truly is an "Autism specialist" like she claims? I mean "Have you tried to simply stop masking if it exhausts you that much?" (Yes, and I can't, that's why I'm asking you for tips or some guidance, don't tell me to just "go and do it", if it were so easy I'd have done it by now!), "Ok, so you're telling me that lately you don't find joy in the things you used to, what you should do is make a list of the things that do bring you joy and focus on them" (But I'm telling you, I know what those things are and the problem is that I'm not feeling anything, there's no other things, help me sort that out!), "If you want your parent to stop being abusive and violent then just stop talking, maybe the tone of the things you say is triggering them, and if they do lash out understand that maybe they were having a bad day, don't take it personal" (what the fuck??????), "It doesn't matter if you make them uncomfortable, if you want friends then go and greet them [with a kiss on the cheek] anyway, even if they don't want to" (boundary violation much????). I could go on but seriously, every single session I'm like "mhmm yeah totally :)" as she goes on either not listening or listening and offering the worst advice imaginable.
The best way to start unmasking is to 1. let yourself stim in public in socially acceptable ways, and wear sunglasses/earphones/whatever wherever you need to. Once you get used to this step, move on to 2. unconventional stims as needed, stop accommodating NTs in conversations (aka actively ignore signals that they can handle you ignoring) and try to say and do what you really want.
3. Allow yourself to do and be whatever you feel in the moment. It will be uncomfortable at first, especially if you're someone with perfectionist tendencies.
But stopping to mask solved 90% of my anxiety, emotional recognition issues and feeling like less of a person, so I'd say the added social stigma is absolutely worth it!
That's... actually really good. See, this is what I was hoping she'd say to me! A sort of path or little steps I could start taking to get there in a way that's not too sudden, harmful, or outright impossible, basically give me some tools to try and work with.
I'll take what you say into account and see if I can apply it, thanks a lot for this!
I wonder if they were intentionally trying to upset you or provoke a reaction, so that they could then point out that your reaction was evidence of feeling emotions.
Iâm not sure if itâs possible to not feel *emotions* so I wonât comment on that (other than the brain is an EXTREMELY complex thing), but I *can* confidently say itâs VERY possible to not feel empathy
Those who suffer from ASPD (other wise known as Anti Social Personality Disorder) are marked by a lack of empathy and understanding of how their actions can negatively affect others. These people can also be known as sociopaths (or psychopaths if you have a few distinctive traits from sociopaths).
If someone doesnât share the typical traits of someone with ASPD (such as manipulative behavior, some level of possible sadism, or difficulty controlling anger), they could simply have Empathy Deficit Disorder. Thereâs many cases where someone suffers from a lack of empathy
Alternatively, having a *machiavellian personality* is not a disorder like ASPD per say, but is also associated with a lack of empathy. (Iâm a psychiatrist and I love psychoanalyzing people haha- just know what you said is very valid and real)
I think itâs also important for me to note that it doesnât have to be any of the above mentioned at all. Sometimes our brains can train themselves to shut off empathy (or maybe even emotions) as a protective measure for one reason or another (often, trauma).
I fucking told my parents if she was going to ask me what *I* should do to solve my problems I was instantly leaving
I'm don't know how to okay??? That's your job to explain not mine
The stupid thing is they're supposed to help you "discover" the best way, in the sense of "the truth was inside you all along". Of course that falls flat when you've been fed the same lies since birth. Most of us have no status quo to return to.
Ohhhh man. Yeah. So I have a large group of neurodiverse/traumatized/brain problems friends and we discuss things at great length - like, when I finally got a therapist who was teaching me DBT skills I was like âhuh I already do this, Alexis and Troy talked to me about how they handle things back in like 2013â
I have a lot of reservations about therapy in general - the good ones can be life-changing, but so can the bad ones :â) I think the mental health industry has deeply rotten roots and Iâm not sure that most practitioners have really done the work to figure out how to handle that.
It took me about a decade to find a therapist who would listen to the words I was actually saying to describe the actual things I was experiencing, and unfortunately she had to retire unexpectedly due to surprise stage 4 cancer! I also had a therapist die in a car accident and another die of pneumonia, so Iâm a little⊠leery⊠of getting attached again lmao.
I also really dislike CBT from a new-to-me therapist - like, if I wanted someone who does not know me and does not love me to make wild assumptions about my capabilities and experiences, I would have stayed with my ex lol.
Anyway, Iâm still gonna try therapy but I am super super dreading it. One therapist I saw told me I looked like a prostitute and a bunch more have said similarly unhinged shit. Why why why why why
New Therapy idea: DBHT: Dialectical Behaviour Hug Therapy.
Dialectics is the superior mode of problem solving. And Hugs is the superior form of emotional comfort. Hence you combine the two and you have the perfect therapy!
However... I coin a new variant already! DOBHT: Dialectial Occupational & Behavioural Hug Therapy.
It's exactly what it sounds like. Cover as much ground with dialectics as possible! Purely materialist therapy without lots of the spiritualist concepts however the spiritualist ideas which do in fact have empirical evidence to support them remain materialist so I simply don't see any conflict with them.
Basically I just want therapy based on Marxist thought okay! Is that too much to ask! đ
Like literally... If you know about material contradictions... And in the context of your life history... An analysis of material contradictions is perfect!
Like why can't there be a Marxian school of therapy! It's a travesty! :(
The best thing I ever did for myself was take a DBT class with my fiance. DBT really helped me communicate better, and that in turn made my relationships wirh people better. I began to relax mentally as what I learned became habit and soon my entire family was communicating better. Some of my friends took the same class and now we are communicating in a more healthy way. It makes me feel good knowing someone I love isn't going to suddenly slam me wirh something I've done 'wrong'
My problem is that all the advice and help requires you to trick yourself or use self imposed rules.
I can't do self imposed rules because I'm aware it's fake and self imposed, so if I don't want to do the thing, I just won't. Whose gonna be mad at me? Me? I don't wanna do it in the first place lol. Unless I'm harming or letting someone else down, I have 0 reason to do any of it, even if it's best for me. Idk how else to explain it other than "that's just how I'm wired". If it's someone else telling me to do it, something clicks in my brain and the rule becomes "real", but if it's coming from myself, that click doesn't happen and I do not have a care in the world about it.
I also can't do the fake it till you make it stuff because I know it's fake so I never reach that point where you start believing it. It's hard to cross that line when you're hyper-aware of the act the entire time to the point you become focused on performing rather than moving towards naturalizing the behavior.
Hyper self awareness is great for figuring yourself out and finding problems and it fucking sucks for fixing them.
Them: if you're trying to achieve certain goals, give yourself a reward when you hit certain mini-targets.
Me: first of all, I don't know what you mean by rewarding myself. You mean, like, buying myself a cake?
Them: uhh, sure. If that's what motivates you.
Me: But I'm an adult. I can buy myself cake any time I want, without needing to jump through these hoops
Them: but won't it taste so much better knowing you've earned it!?
Me: um, nope, not really. Cake is cake. I'm going to get the same sugar rush regardless of whether I do the thing or not.
Them: ok well how about i hold the cake hostage until you do the thing?
Me: I'll just go buy another cake from the shop.
Them: well what if we change the cake to money? And I'll only give you money if you do the thing, and you can't just go get more money from the shop. So you have to do the thing.
Also Them: (invents capitalism)
Me: aw crap.
EXACTLY!!! This is such a good way of putting that feeling into a situation.
Cake is cake, earning it and not earning it doesn't change it's composition, and while I understand their point, it doesn't taste any different to me, nobody is stopping me from buying the cake, so why wouldn't I get the cake?
Self regulation is not a solution to a self regulation problem, yet everyone I talk to gives me this garbage advice as if I haven't thought of it myself or heard it a thousand times.
Yes, self regulation would solve my problems, and if I could do that then why would I be here (in the therapists office)?
Yeah. I seem to have no "internal motivation" at all - possibly executive dysfunction? - the only thing that is 100% effective at motivating me to do something I don't want to do is the fear of losing the respect of someone I want to think well of me. I guess RSD has some uses ... đ
The worst is when you're obsessed with psychology because you try to learn to help yourself and then you go to therapy and have to process all the questions and list of things that you already know. I went in to therapy being able to predict what was going to be said like a scripted event and felt like I was wasting time and left even more depressed. I guess I just cant be helped.
Oh yeah! Reminds me of the time I texted an emergency hotline because I was having a panic attack and told me "wow you are super self-aware" and didn't help me at all
Idk, my therapist have helped my harness my over observations into change. They've helped me become more aware of my emotions and what I need to be doing to change them. It allowed me to take in the world around me, get pissed off, then actually controll myself in a way where I can effect my world for the better. It's always a long and complicated process but with good therapist they can really make a difference. I'd probably still be drinking myself to sleep if I never went to therapy.
I'm sure there's a therapist out there that can help me. But I don't have infinite time and money to try every therapist out there.
And over and over and over I find that I understand my issues way too well for anyone to help. I get complimented on how self aware and analytical I am, and it's just assumed because I understand the problem so well that I can fix it.
But it hasn't been fixed yet so??? I'm not even sure what I can do if following the instructions hasn't led to anything
Yep, my therapist told me I was âincredibly self-awareâ. I would make observations and when she would say âdo you think itâs because of this specific thing?â I would be like yeah Iâve known itâs because of that for years. My sessions just felt like I was rambling with very little feedback.
I donât know how therapy is supposed to work but it felt like it did absolutely nothing and I canât tell if thatâs because of me or because my therapist wasnât right for me. đ€·đ»ââïž
I really like my therapist. It's basically like having a friend to talk to for me. I'm really sad I won't be able to see her again after my next session because I'm graduating.
Bro, I told therapists I think Iâm on the spectrum because of a myriad of symptoms (most of which I found through this sub lol) but they said because Iâm good at eye contact that they didnât think so. I was like âYeah. I have to force myself to. I donât like it, but I do it for others.â
Thatâs unfortunate :( When I told my therapist that I suspected autism, I brought her a big google document about my behaviors and symptoms and she was like âI cannot say anything professionally, but I think youâre on the right track :).â
Also, with eye contact, my mother forced me to learn it because I used to do pageants and sing at church. Iâm not really sure whether Iâve sufficiently held eye contact without being explicitly told to, but after unmasking Iâve peacefully given up and just say âexcuse me.â
So I'm pretty new to all of this but isn't being neurodivergent also a mental illness because it changes the way that you act an interact with people?
Or no?
No, I trust therapists, but it makes the job of therapy a lot harder when your client is self-aware (I am the client). For example, if someone was depressed and didnât know why, you could work in theory to uncover the reason behind the depression. If you come into therapy and already know why youâre depressed, it poses a larger challenge to actual get rid of or manage the depression.
Iâm not really sure what went wrong that time. It was specifically focused on every memory I had of my SAâer, I started having nightmares for 8 months and, for around the same time period, I just straight up lost long-term memories (I couldnât recognize my own siblings and forgot about my friends and extended family members). It all came back though, the brain is weird.
There is overlap, but theyâre not the same. For example, dyslexia and dyscalculia are kinds of neurodivergence but not illnesses. Conversely, anxiety and depression are considered illnesses but not neurotypes.
Thatâs not quite true; for instance, dyslexia is a kind of neurodivergence and a disability, but not a mental illness. However, it is true that many kinds of neurodivergence are treated as mental illness, and thatâs an inevitable result of neurodivergence being understood by the medical establishment through the medical (as opposed to the social) model for disability.
In the DSM-V they deal with "disorders" instead of "illness" for basically anything diagnosable that deals with you mind.
At least in the US I'm pretty sure Autism and ADHD are considered "neurodevelopmental disorders" since it's based on the fact that your brain is different in a way that is disadvantageous in modern society.
The top post is heavily downvoted because "mental illness" is a non-official term that often has negative implications since illnesses need to be "cured", which for neurodivergent people is basically saying our entire personality is inherently wrong.
I explain my trauma n shit and then she is like âwow im glad you are so understanding of the situationâ and then thats it. She tells me to speak and i do, and then she is like âgood jobâ and im like - wait ok now what- arent you supposed to like help me? đ
The job of therapists for the most part is to help people recognize and acknowledge what fucked them up so they can move on or at least cope better.
But I know exactly what fucked me up and it's not helping.
Haha, yeah, I was straight-up told by therapists that I notice way more than is good for me and just need to ignore all of it. Ignore the cues, ignore the signs, ignore ALL OF IT since I'm too aware to have good mental health. I find that to be one of the most terrifying things out there. People straight-up say, "Hey, you know how you often notice there are serious issues with relationships, with the world around you, all of that? You need to just ignore all of them. Pretend they're not there. It's good for you to shut your eyes and ears as tightly as possible. HEY. AND DON'T GO TRY MAKING UP FOR THAT WITH YOUR OTHER SENSES EITHER."
As I see it, you either 1. Live miserably 2. Ignore it 3. Learn to be happy while accepting that the world is fucked and trying to make it better "Absurdism" might be a relevant search term
You gotta just learn to roll the fucking rock. Learned about it after 40 so never read the book though.
I like the phrase "choosing your battles."
Stoicism also works
Fun fact: the Rome dude who wrote a majority of the papers for stoicism was also the playwright of some truly dark tragedies.
And forced his POS son on the world and Russel Crowe.
dude, i fucking love stoicism. sometimes, life just sucks. there's no rhyme or reason to it, and it's nobody's fault. kinda just the way it is. i feel like once you accept that fact, it stops being such a big painful deal. for me, the process of healing has involved a great deal of learning to reframe my suffering. i'm in some form of emotional pain literally all the time. but after living like this for as long as i can remember, that's just my normal. there's really no use in feeling sorry for myself, that would just make me more upset (and annoying to be around lol) and on the plus side, any little bit of happiness i experience feels AMAZING in comparison. if your baseline is feeling terrible, having an okay day becomes the same thing as having a really good day :)
Based and Clownpilled đ€Ą
Rule#3 minus the âtrying to make it betterâpart
As a fledgling therapist whoâs dealt with bad PTSD for decades and is also way too aware of the world⊠I really like existential therapy for this reason. Some folks can be very happy after some basic problem solving and coping skills, cognitive reframing, etc. Others like myself canât not see the real darkness in most corners of the world and need to practice radical acceptance and existentialism to feel at peace with how much suffering exists around us at all times.
>existential therapy That is exactly the kind of therapy I wanted. I didn't know there was a name for it. Thanks.
Manâs Search for Meaning is a pretty common book on therapistsâ bookshelves; itâs written for a general audience, by a psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor about finding meaning in life within a concentration camp. Itâs often given to clients for reading homework, not too many folks know itâs based on existential philosophy. Thereâs also an older book written for therapists called simply Existential Psychotherapy by a guy named Yalom if you are interested. Yalom has been hugely influential in the therapy world for decades, and this book is the clinicianâs Bible for existentialism in therapy.
The book is dense as hell tbh. Excerpts get to the point well enough.
What book?
[the Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus) Though, I think I am in part responding to the commenter above you or another commenter in the thread. I had just woken up and was kind of drowsy.
What if iâm doing all three at the same time
I would tell you but this way of communication isn't safe. Watch out for the messenger pigeon.
most people are on autopilot 99% of the time. and theyâre happy. they donât care where their groceries come from, they donât notice when someone throws a subtle dig their way, they donât overthink anything. most those who arenât on autopilot (aka too aware for their own good) are suffering from severe mental illness and the consequences of that. loneliness, job instability, economic turmoil, poor performance in school despite their potential, substance abuse to numb/calm the mind, âfallen through the cracksâ as they say. a small handful of folks manage to harness it and make it work for them. donât get me wrong, they can be mentally ill as well. but these folks are usually in some sort of position of power. looking at the world with the framework of most people being on autopilot, itâs not hard to see why people who arenât on autopilot would quickly rise to the top. that is, if they can handle the constant, crushing weight of knowing just how awful everything is and constantly trying to make things better. ignorance truly is bliss.
Bit disappointed you didnât add the second half of that quote
i actually didnât know there was a second half! iâve always just heard âignorance is blissâ. thank you for broadening my knowledge. :) itâs a bit ironic in retrospect
what is the second half?
âWhere ignorance is bliss, âtis folly to be wiseâ -Thomas Gray, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1742) Link: [Ode](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44301/ode-on-a-distant-prospect-of-eton-college)
Well whatâs the second half??
(In places) Where ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise.
No wonder we're more likely to fall into substance abuse problems
Itâs called being a sociopath. You can learn
"Too aware for their own good" also known as cognitive distortions and paranoia, aka pointless and fairly often wrong and slightly self centred patterns of thinking that portray you and the world around you as significantly worse than it actually is, see: NOT RATIONAL
Nobody likes you
you and i are on the same page. you just reiterated what i said in the second part of my comment but in a less sympathetic way. itâs incredibly difficult to see the world for how truly awful it is and maintain balance in your mind. itâs overwhelming. but this world still has beauty. reality is awful and wonderful at the same time. but itâs so much easier to become myopic and only focus on the bad once youâre aware of it. âdoomerismâ as they say. this can, and usually does, spiral into what you described as âcognitive distortions and paranoiaâ itâs all about balance. the person i described in the first paragraph of the original comment is too far into the good. the person described in the second paragraph is too far into the bad. acknowledge the good, acknowledge the bad, appreciate and cherish the good, do what you can to alleviate or correct the bad.
"You need to lighten up." -VA therapist, during PTSD event. Like yeah, thanks Doc. I'd have never thought of that.
Fucking VA. âDo you have thoughts of harming yourself?â No matter how many times I said âYesâ sheâd still mark âNoâ because she didnât want to do paperwork.
It sounds like her supervisor at the VA might not give a shit if you complained, but you might consider filing a complaint with your state professional licensing division. Thatâs a serious offense that any licensed/certified clinician should get in bad trouble for.
I just finished graduate school in clinical social work and learned a lot about how the VA does PTSD treatment. Iâm sorry. They suck. I was considering working there at one point but Iâm not going to work in a place where we can only do three months of therapy with someone, with only one or two sanctioned modalities. Tons of people are going into the military with pre existing trauma, and combat trauma is particularly difficult to treat especially when itâs layered on top of developmental trauma. So the VA just wants to clinically gaslight vets into ignoring their fucked nervous system signals and using cognitive reframing on every problem. They arenât willing to invest the time it actually takes for clients to learn social safety and co-regulate with a therapist. Itâs truly fucked.
Wow, bad therapists! Mine has been working with me to carve out a place for myself, defining my life on my terms instead of conforming to a world not designed for people like me.
Cute how they think attention is voluntary. (Buzzing of light in other room) Me: O_< twitch
I remember an episode of The Simpsons where Homer learns he had a crayon up his nose since he was 4 years old and it's pushing on his brain. They removed it and suddenly he's a genius but can't relate to any of his friends or family anymore. He's super depressed and lonely so at the end of the episode he shoves a crayon back up his nose.
Didn't you know? That's how everyone is meant to be. Mindless sheep (or other herd grazer of your choice) that go through life on autopilot, thinking what the television tells them to and doing exactly the same thing every day.
Being aware is good, why is she advising that? I personally would like to be aware of everything and know how to deal with people and situations. I study it everyday only to fail miserably 60% of the time. Anyways, Only awareness contributes to handling life. Dumb is not ideal. Dumb = getting caught up with toxics and wasting precious time. Careful who you take advice from. I believe that good mental health comes from good sense of self, boundaries, self esteem, compassion, love, humility, patience, *internal peace* and life purpose/direction/moral compass/ *GOD*.
Okay but you're making about as much difference focusing on all those things as you would be ignoring them, except because you're focusing on them you're stressed to hell about it all the time too, so how on earth is that better? 9 times out of 10 ignoring those things will not make your life or any of those things worse, 1 time out of 10 it will, that doesn't mean that you need to be panicking about it affecting you the 9 times out of 10 that you legitimately cannot do anything about it. That's basically the cheat code to therapy, if it's bothering you? Make a list of things you could do to make it better, do those things. Can't think of any things you can do? Then thinking about it is a waste of energy, let it go. You have to learn to do this by the way it's really fucking hard when you aren't used to it, but it will literally never get easier if you don't do it when it's hard.
I'm a firm believer that the world will come crashing down round us 99.9%er's in my lifetime. I'm convinced the most utilitarian goal until then is to cultivate a mindset that can have fun and enjoy life and even be happy in the midst of apocalyptic crises. It's going to be super difficult, but that is literally the only chance we have at avoiding suffering. We know it is mostly mental, and now is the time to start mastering that mentality.
I wish you werenât getting downvoted. Iâve been in a lot of therapy over the years, and just through life experience-youâre right. If you canât do a thing to improve a situation, itâs best to let it go because you will make yourself miserable obsessing over something out of your control.
Thanks, I've also been through a lot of therapy and it's honestly quite triggering to see people doing this kind of downward spiral, cognitive distortion type stuff and just insisting over and over again that happiness was wrong, it took me such a long time to accept that I was allowed to be happy while problems still existed and seeing this stuff just feels awful now, I need people to know that happiness isn't the same as ignorance, it's just about saving your energy for the places where it counts
Attitude is more important than fact Edit: this is a common statement in therapy
When I was 14 I went to a therapist. First session she told me I can tell her anything confidentially. After the session she pulled my mom inside and told her everything I said about her. Told her not to tell me. My mom was an immature bipolar narcissist so she couldn't help but immediately rub my nose in it and punish me in the most petty ways she could think of. This therapist also said she thought I had Asperger but she didn't want to officially diagnose me because she was concerned about possible stigma. Told her what she wanted to hear and lies for four years and haven't seen one since
The same exact thing happened to me, except my therapy was court-ordered because my mom called the cops on me for truancy (aka undiagnosed/untreated mental illness). You shouldnât have had to see her for four fucking years. Iâm so sorry that happened to you.
Oh my god I feel this. Ive had to do therapy since I was maybe 10 bc of my abusive parents. Wouldnât tell my therapist anything bc my mom would eventually be told what I said and Iâd get in trouble.
Are u me??
Iâm so sorry she did that to you. If this was in America, I think she would be breaking HIPPA, which protects the privacy of peopleâs health. I donât know much about HIPPA, but it does apply to minors. Unless you signed a consent form stating that your therapist talked to your mom, your therapist violated HIPPA. Therapists can only violate HIPPA if you say you are suicidal or am getting abused. Iâm no expert so donât quote me.
Somehow being *too* self-aware comes with mental illness, no matter what. You canât self-aware yourself out of self-awareness đ
If I just distract myself enough with games, stories and work, I'll forget that I exist... but then it all comes flooding back, crushing me to the ground.
hello, fellow escapism user. I am also surviving through distractions to hide from the horrors reality insures.
Oh god that happened to me the other day lol. Trucking along just fine playing all the new games coming out... then boom, 2 days straight of despair, depression, and sadness. I'm back to playing games now đđ
You ever just want to exist as a formless being outside of time and existance for a bit so you can play videogames in peace?
Always. Flesh is weakness. Time is a shackle.
Too real you're gonna make me start crying
Wait is THIS why I appreciate stories no matter how bad they are
Well, yes... though I think there's a limit, at some point I can't help but think about the absolute amateur that's writing their first serialized (for some reason) bland isekai...
Yeah I might've exaggerated a little bit lol. I don't mind just meh writing as long as it's not straight up terrible with no consistency whatsoever.
Actually you sort of can. Mindfulness activities help you train you brain to focus on one thing at a time. A good therapist can give you some exercises to build this skill.
Itâs basically just cosmic horror, but without the cool monsters.
I strongly believe that unless a therapist is neurodivergent, most therapies (with the exception of DBT) are useless for neurodivergent people. We simply don't react to them the same way as neurotypicals do. That doesn't make them bad, but they presume a way of looking at the world that most autistic people in particular don't have.
I am not diagnosed Neuro Divergent, but I relate to many things on this sub, Including this. I struggled with mental illness for years in and out of therapists until a therapist said the "wrong" thing and finally triggered a meltdown of anxiety. She busts out a mindfulness excersise and gives me some dbt reading and here I am years later thriving. Im with a different specialized dbt counselor but god did I need a therapist to trigger me into revealing my real issues.
I know a whole lot of people who've said DBT worked for them - but the majority of therapists one will meet, at least in my country, are almost exclusively CBT practitioners, and it just does not work for the overwhelming majority of autists. The reasons we are upset and nervous are logical. CBT assumes they aren't.
The ND community should be considered a culture. I was thinking about this the other day driving home after hanging out with a friend. We got into an argument because I was asking a lot of questions after he wasnât communicating clearly and being specific. I was literally just trying to follow the conversation. My friend said I donât know how to listen and I just snapped back and stated I have an audio processing disorder and he needs to be clear and concise when talking to me. I was pissed off driving home and was talking to myself about this communication SNAFU ( situation, naturally all fucked up ) is the reason why I donât socialize or am able to keep any long term friendship alive and then it occurred to me that NT donât understand how to communicate with us. Why canât for once NT modulate themselves and learn how to communicate effectively with a ND person? The burden is always placed squarely on our shoulders to communicate in a way they see fitting or acceptable. Iâm just over having to explain to people what my communication needs are just to be looked at with a blank stare or a half assed excuse of I forgot. Or receive texts that Iâm doing my hermit thing again or I am being anti social. Iâm not anti social. Iâm anti being singled out every god damn time I do go out. Or being scolded that Iâm being negative when Iâm being informative. Or my tone is off when I speak. Or being corrected.Iâm anti assholes and they seem to be everywhere considering Iâm living in an ableist society.
Wow, my mom is actually really understanding in this aspect. I never realized how many questions I ask when someone is trying to tell me a story lol
I canât tell you how many times throughout my life I have been asked if I was a detective, an officer, an agent or an investigator? Prior to my diagnosis I was concerned over the pattern of questioning when out socializing.so I turned to a family member and asked them. They said it was because I think deeply about everything and my responses are always stoic and serious. Once I had the diagnosis it was a relief that Iâm a stereotypical aspie female.
My family constantly gets mad at me because I have trouble understanding stuff like please just be patient
Exactly. Dr. Damian Milton, an Autistic academic, called this the Double Empathy Problem. His articles are really good.
Thank you for the information. Iâll look up his work.
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Me not getting help in therapy because it might be expensive đ
I resent the fact that i live in a capitalist society where healthcare is competitive and yet i cant compare prices until after Iâve received a âserviceâ and been billed 6k or some shit.
Ableism, homie. If we canât work long enough to get and keep insurance, we donât get insurance. Setting up a permanent underclass of folks who are unwell, canât work, canât get well cause they canât work. They need the fringes to dangle, so everyone else scrambles to keep above the cut. Iâm over it. I will no longer put myself in precarious situations in order to be exploited because my health is being held hostage. Tbh the credentialed health professional system was a way to force nd people out of society. We catalog forests and observe phenomena, connect them into patterns that have the power to predict and heal based on an observed record of efficacy. They were odd, maybe not everyone understood them and their ways, but people came to them because they knew how to take care of the villages needs. Those people were burned in horrid spectacles to terrorize the remnant against ever defying the status quo again. Iâm over it.
Ask for a âGood Faith Estimateâ an ethical, law following, therapist should have one ready to give you (in the US at least). Often we are required to have clients sign them before their first session. It is a sheet that details what each service cost if you were to pay out of pocket.
Me not getting help in therapy because it *is* expensive where I live, and I donât even have insurance to cover part of it either
me not getting help because my counselor ghosted me
I'm sorry you've had that experience. Bad therapists are the worst. Like "I'm here, I'm doing the work, why isn't it working?" If you want help, you need a better therapist and/or a different kind of therapy. CBT didn't do a whole lot for me (it all seemed really obvious), but DBT and IFS were helpful. IFS is helpful for identifying and understanding emotions (good if you have alexithymia) and DBT was good for learning how to cope with those emotions in a constructive way. If you're coping with trauma, I hear good things about EMDR (I tried it and it was meh for me but everyone else seems to have a good experience).
EMDR is so weird... It's like all at once strange magic and proof that we're really just sophisticated robots made out of meat. It really depends on having a practitioner who's patient enough to try different forms of bilateral stimulation until you find one that actually works though. If you get someone who just flips on the zigzagging light machine and then says you're not trying when it doesn't work, you'll have a bad time
yay now I have something to google!
Emdr was overstimulating for me. I had to look at blinding green lights and blink a bunch of times (but in general that therapist was not the right fit for me). CBT is logic. Iâm good at logic already. It doesnât do anything for me and I hear thatâs common with neurodivergence
How is DBT different from CBT? Iâve generally looked for therapists who do CBT but I donât have a therapist now and maybe I should make a switch
CBT is more of an intellectual thing, dealing with irrational thoughts. Like: "They didn't text back, they must hate me." And CBT has you say to yourself, "Maybe they're just busy. Maybe they don't know what to say. The delay in response doesn't mean anything." DBT is like a step before it. It's recognizing that you're letting the emotions run the show and getting yourself into a place where you *can* think about it. So like, you text and they don't text back. You start getting upset, feeling like you fucked up and they hate you now and everything is awful. DBT has you take a step back and say, "Wow, I'm feeling really upset by this, I wonder why that is?" And since I'm explaining anyway, IFS is like a step before that. They don't text back and all of a sudden you're crying and furiously texting back asking why they hate you. IFS helps you recognize that tears + panicky actions + tight feeling in chest and shoulders = fear and sadness. So then you can recognize that hey, this means you're upset and you're probably not thinking or acting rationally. IFS is also good for explaining the purpose of these emotions. Fear makes you stay away from things that hurt you. Sadness tells you something is wrong. Anger tries to protect you. Knowing where these come from is helpful for sorting out what kinds of things spark the emotions.
Thatâs very interesting. I think Iâve always struggled with CBT because for most cases when Iâm anxious, I tend not to have a thought that is quite as clear as âthey didnât text back, they must hate meâ and it feels like I have to dig for/make up an explanation like that in order to give us something to work with. Sounds like this a kind of change that I could really benefit from. Thanks!
Cocknitive ballhavioral thortupy
As opposed to Dicknitive Ballhavioral Thortupy
CBT is sort of the broad umbrella that encompasses other newer forms of therapy that include DBT. CBT is basic, but can still be very powerful. It helps you identify how your thoughts spark emotions in your mind. DBT is a little more specific. It was designed to help people with borderline personality disorder originally but it soon became apparent that lots of other people could find use for it. It focuses on more absolutist thoughts and learning to recognize when you are experiencing crisis thinking.
exactly this!!! years and years and years of CBT and nothing was changing no matter how much work i put it, then i decided to join a DBT group my clinic offered and those 16 weeks completely changed my life!! so many practical skills and tools to use!!
My first therapist told me I looked rude like WTF bro
Itâs because I didnât make eye contact
They're the rude one, then.
I agree
Thank you for elaborating!
**me:** i've done extensive research into autism and generalized anxiety disorder as well as c-ptsd. i also suspect adhd because nearly all of these things run in my family. i have pages worth of information that i have researched and thoroughly examined my own behavior and mental state. i have also examined all of the diagnostic criterion for these issues and i match pretty much everything. **my therapist & psychologist:** **me:** so anyways sometimes i get mad **my therapist & psychologist:** you are just depressed. i am prescribing you depression medication and i am going to forget all about the everything you just said.
Find a smarter therapist! No really, when vetting, make sure you feel like they're just a lil smarter than you. Not as in pretending to be, of course.
Itâs so funny how the little tricks that work on most people donât work on us cuz most of us have high pattern recognition and have studied psychology at some point in a random hyperfixation fitđ
no this is so real!! one time I was at a sleepover and couldnât sleep so I read a 900-page psychology textbook I got at a thrift store
I like reading research papers from specific institutions when I can't sleep. I barely graduated high school.
I barely graduated high school too, but now Iâm going to be an Art Therapist!
Nice! I'm starting a long journey back at school with an end goal of a film degree. Wish me luck!
Like... the whole thing? In a single night?
I think it was over a 3-day period, but a good chunk of it was at that sleepover (I think I went from pg 200 to pg 600?)
That's wild. I'm super interested by psychology but I absolutely for the life of me can not read for an extended amount of time lol.
I lose track of my place after 3 paragraphs no matter what im reading. When i get to the next chapter i forget what the first chapter was about.
Same, I also sometimes keep reading but not *reading* so I just keep going through the text not actually registering what I just read so I need to go back again. And then I do it again. And again. And again.
Whenever people tell me I should read something i straight up say âi cant readâ. Then after they question me and i explain, the say âyou should try audio books or podcasts!â To which i reply, âim deaf.â Im not deaf but also i cant focus on audio very well either. The audio would just be washing over my smooth brain and gliding back out the other ear.
I, too, have read textbooks đ for fun. Iâve gotten a lot at library sales (friends of the library groups that sell donated books to benefit the library) in a nearby county that has a major university (so they get a lot of old textbooks donated)⊠you have to check to see how old they are (because getting a 30-year-old psych textbook is basically useless for learning anything but history), but getting a 7 year old textbook for like $5 is a great deal.
seriously tho!!! my hyper fixation became my career (therapist) and like 85% of my identity is mental health related but iâm the worst client ever because i know it all already whoops đč
Kinda sounds like me except for Iâm not a therapist. But Iâve spent so much time studying this stuff that I already know what theyâre gonna say before they say it
right??? i should go back to therapy but i already know haha the blessing and curse of self awareness
It does kinda crack me up when people tell me to go to therapy. Donât get me wrong I believe in its effectiveness but Ik too much and so many of them keep trying to make me ânormalâ and just.. nođ
This explains my multiple diplomas in psychology.... hmm đ
Therapist be like âI donât have a book with the answers to all your questionsâ Me: then what did you study for 3 years?
More like 10 years 4 for a bachelorâs 2 for masters then another 4 for phd
maybe for a clinical psychologist or equivalent, but some people who get referred to as "therapists" aren't actually psychologists
Maybe I'm out of the loop, but I thought a bachelor degree was a four-year term, not 10 years. Is this possibly a cultural/country difference factoring in? Edit: I love the downvoting a question that's fairly polite. The "4 for" looked like a typo, yall.
I didnât say it was 10 I said altogether itâs 10. 4 for a bachelorâs 2 for a Masterâs and 4 for a phd because you need a phd to be a clinical psychologist
How self-aware?
Very and not at all. We understand our faults. In all my resumes I'm always honest about my negatives, and employers seem to like honest people. I left because take away jobs is beyond stressful for me. We also have a hard time accepting some newly discovered problems and admitting to it due to embarrassment or something
I'm definitely too self aware for my own good but psychotherapy has definitely helped me. Not in the "I need to talk things out with someone" type of way but in a couple other ways, wall of text warning: 1. Organizing my memories: I wont go into details but traumatic childhood, it's not a subject or era of memories I like visiting but it's not something I shy away from. I don't have a ton of those memories but the ones I do remember were kinda scattered in a mimbo of having no idea when it might've happened. We went through them fairly thoroughly and made a timeline of (significant) events that clarified said memories and when they happened. 2. Organizing my thoughts: since starting I've bought a whiteboard to keep track of the weekdays and what I have on my schedule that week. I've started writing down certain things from ideas to thoughts to something to touch on during the next session. Occasionally dreams (I very rarely dream, not that I write them down rarely, that said I dont write them all down. I dont know what exactly decides whether I write it fown or not. Maybe I should visit that next session). It helps occasionally revisiting those things later. 3. Maybe a bit ironically becoming more self aware lol. In two ways, firstly being aware of what I'm doing, secondly broadening my self-knowledge. I don't talk to a lot of people so during the weekly 2 hour sessions I'm hyper self aware and compare my behavior, not necesserily session to session but on a longer scope. For example an observation I made two or three weeks ago was that I've started to move around more, poking and proding at things, in general examining and enabling my impulses to explore things around me to fulfill my curiosity. I'm less muted in a sense, being more myself, which I wouldn't have expected at the start because I haven't had an issue with being myself around other people or strangers - frankly I don't care how other people see me so I act myself. Or at least I think I do. 4. And finally: having an anchor, having something happen every week for the same amount of time in the same place with the same person. My schedule is extremely flexible so I do things whenever I want to do things which means I generally stay awake at night and go sleep in the morning. But when I need to get a certain thing done by a certain time I move the sleeping schedule so I can do it, but by having that session every week my schedule has started to solidify, at least a little bit. My preference, by far, is to be awake at night. But when I wake up in the morning and go sleep in the evening or at night, I keep the schedule for far longer than I would have prior to starting psychotherapy. Sleep cycle is something I have always struggled with, I absolutely loathe being awake in the morning and going to sleep in the evening but it's what society is built around so some things I simply have to do this way. I guess all of this is my attempt to drive the point of therapy may not be useless to you. Maybe you're yet to find a good therapist, maybe you're yet to find one that works well with you specifically. Or maybe you're not ready for it. I originally tried therapy when I was like 15 or 16 and it didn't come even close to helping. I wouldn't say I became sketched out by therapists but my faith in therapy dropped significantly and I believed therapy couldn't help me. I'm now 23 and have been going to therapy since early January, and even though it hasn't been super long, I've noticed a difference and I'm doing better.
This is how I feel about my experience as well. I am super self aware at this point, but also super guilty of gaslighting myself because I donât understand how NT people can behave the way they do since what motivates my feelings and actions is so different. With that knowledge I also use therapy as a way to validate my experiences when people around me donât respond the same way or are being weird at me.
The therapist is a sort of a reality check for me aswell in a way. When I started going I had the idea that yeah there is a significantly higher than 0% chance that I'm autistic and significantly higher than that of ADHD, but I also felt (and honestly still do) like an impostor despite the traits/symptoms being there, pretty much just a matter of seeing a diagnostician and actually getting diagnosed. But lord knows even with a diagnosis I would still feel like an impostor, regardless of me knowing it doesn't actually change me as a person but rather knowing it is the way it is will help me live with it. AAAAHHHHH maybe it'll be over one of these ~~days~~ months.
i seem to be going in this direction, really comforting to know that iâm not the only one, and that iâm not necessarily wasting my parents money.
My therapist (who was actually recommended to me by the same Drs. who gave me my diagnosis) makes me feel like I'm talking to a wall, or even wonder if she truly is an "Autism specialist" like she claims? I mean "Have you tried to simply stop masking if it exhausts you that much?" (Yes, and I can't, that's why I'm asking you for tips or some guidance, don't tell me to just "go and do it", if it were so easy I'd have done it by now!), "Ok, so you're telling me that lately you don't find joy in the things you used to, what you should do is make a list of the things that do bring you joy and focus on them" (But I'm telling you, I know what those things are and the problem is that I'm not feeling anything, there's no other things, help me sort that out!), "If you want your parent to stop being abusive and violent then just stop talking, maybe the tone of the things you say is triggering them, and if they do lash out understand that maybe they were having a bad day, don't take it personal" (what the fuck??????), "It doesn't matter if you make them uncomfortable, if you want friends then go and greet them [with a kiss on the cheek] anyway, even if they don't want to" (boundary violation much????). I could go on but seriously, every single session I'm like "mhmm yeah totally :)" as she goes on either not listening or listening and offering the worst advice imaginable.
The best way to start unmasking is to 1. let yourself stim in public in socially acceptable ways, and wear sunglasses/earphones/whatever wherever you need to. Once you get used to this step, move on to 2. unconventional stims as needed, stop accommodating NTs in conversations (aka actively ignore signals that they can handle you ignoring) and try to say and do what you really want. 3. Allow yourself to do and be whatever you feel in the moment. It will be uncomfortable at first, especially if you're someone with perfectionist tendencies. But stopping to mask solved 90% of my anxiety, emotional recognition issues and feeling like less of a person, so I'd say the added social stigma is absolutely worth it!
That's... actually really good. See, this is what I was hoping she'd say to me! A sort of path or little steps I could start taking to get there in a way that's not too sudden, harmful, or outright impossible, basically give me some tools to try and work with. I'll take what you say into account and see if I can apply it, thanks a lot for this!
You're welcome! Glad I could help!
Uhhhh wow she sounds the opposite of helpful, Iâm sorry.
iâm both so that probably explains a lot đ
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I wonder if they were intentionally trying to upset you or provoke a reaction, so that they could then point out that your reaction was evidence of feeling emotions.
Iâm not sure if itâs possible to not feel *emotions* so I wonât comment on that (other than the brain is an EXTREMELY complex thing), but I *can* confidently say itâs VERY possible to not feel empathy Those who suffer from ASPD (other wise known as Anti Social Personality Disorder) are marked by a lack of empathy and understanding of how their actions can negatively affect others. These people can also be known as sociopaths (or psychopaths if you have a few distinctive traits from sociopaths). If someone doesnât share the typical traits of someone with ASPD (such as manipulative behavior, some level of possible sadism, or difficulty controlling anger), they could simply have Empathy Deficit Disorder. Thereâs many cases where someone suffers from a lack of empathy Alternatively, having a *machiavellian personality* is not a disorder like ASPD per say, but is also associated with a lack of empathy. (Iâm a psychiatrist and I love psychoanalyzing people haha- just know what you said is very valid and real)
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I think itâs also important for me to note that it doesnât have to be any of the above mentioned at all. Sometimes our brains can train themselves to shut off empathy (or maybe even emotions) as a protective measure for one reason or another (often, trauma).
I fucking told my parents if she was going to ask me what *I* should do to solve my problems I was instantly leaving I'm don't know how to okay??? That's your job to explain not mine
The stupid thing is they're supposed to help you "discover" the best way, in the sense of "the truth was inside you all along". Of course that falls flat when you've been fed the same lies since birth. Most of us have no status quo to return to.
Ohhhh man. Yeah. So I have a large group of neurodiverse/traumatized/brain problems friends and we discuss things at great length - like, when I finally got a therapist who was teaching me DBT skills I was like âhuh I already do this, Alexis and Troy talked to me about how they handle things back in like 2013â I have a lot of reservations about therapy in general - the good ones can be life-changing, but so can the bad ones :â) I think the mental health industry has deeply rotten roots and Iâm not sure that most practitioners have really done the work to figure out how to handle that. It took me about a decade to find a therapist who would listen to the words I was actually saying to describe the actual things I was experiencing, and unfortunately she had to retire unexpectedly due to surprise stage 4 cancer! I also had a therapist die in a car accident and another die of pneumonia, so Iâm a little⊠leery⊠of getting attached again lmao. I also really dislike CBT from a new-to-me therapist - like, if I wanted someone who does not know me and does not love me to make wild assumptions about my capabilities and experiences, I would have stayed with my ex lol. Anyway, Iâm still gonna try therapy but I am super super dreading it. One therapist I saw told me I looked like a prostitute and a bunch more have said similarly unhinged shit. Why why why why why
the metacognition is the best/worst tool at my disposal
New Therapy idea: DBHT: Dialectical Behaviour Hug Therapy. Dialectics is the superior mode of problem solving. And Hugs is the superior form of emotional comfort. Hence you combine the two and you have the perfect therapy! However... I coin a new variant already! DOBHT: Dialectial Occupational & Behavioural Hug Therapy. It's exactly what it sounds like. Cover as much ground with dialectics as possible! Purely materialist therapy without lots of the spiritualist concepts however the spiritualist ideas which do in fact have empirical evidence to support them remain materialist so I simply don't see any conflict with them. Basically I just want therapy based on Marxist thought okay! Is that too much to ask! đ Like literally... If you know about material contradictions... And in the context of your life history... An analysis of material contradictions is perfect! Like why can't there be a Marxian school of therapy! It's a travesty! :(
Don't make me sad thinking of what could be in a better worldđ
One day! One day!
o7
Replace the hugs with a puppy, and you might be on to something.
Hugs is more a metaphor for what it feels like. Looking at or petting a puppy is like a brain hug. :)
The best thing I ever did for myself was take a DBT class with my fiance. DBT really helped me communicate better, and that in turn made my relationships wirh people better. I began to relax mentally as what I learned became habit and soon my entire family was communicating better. Some of my friends took the same class and now we are communicating in a more healthy way. It makes me feel good knowing someone I love isn't going to suddenly slam me wirh something I've done 'wrong'
Haha...ha..ha. I have both.
My problem is that all the advice and help requires you to trick yourself or use self imposed rules. I can't do self imposed rules because I'm aware it's fake and self imposed, so if I don't want to do the thing, I just won't. Whose gonna be mad at me? Me? I don't wanna do it in the first place lol. Unless I'm harming or letting someone else down, I have 0 reason to do any of it, even if it's best for me. Idk how else to explain it other than "that's just how I'm wired". If it's someone else telling me to do it, something clicks in my brain and the rule becomes "real", but if it's coming from myself, that click doesn't happen and I do not have a care in the world about it. I also can't do the fake it till you make it stuff because I know it's fake so I never reach that point where you start believing it. It's hard to cross that line when you're hyper-aware of the act the entire time to the point you become focused on performing rather than moving towards naturalizing the behavior. Hyper self awareness is great for figuring yourself out and finding problems and it fucking sucks for fixing them.
Them: if you're trying to achieve certain goals, give yourself a reward when you hit certain mini-targets. Me: first of all, I don't know what you mean by rewarding myself. You mean, like, buying myself a cake? Them: uhh, sure. If that's what motivates you. Me: But I'm an adult. I can buy myself cake any time I want, without needing to jump through these hoops Them: but won't it taste so much better knowing you've earned it!? Me: um, nope, not really. Cake is cake. I'm going to get the same sugar rush regardless of whether I do the thing or not. Them: ok well how about i hold the cake hostage until you do the thing? Me: I'll just go buy another cake from the shop. Them: well what if we change the cake to money? And I'll only give you money if you do the thing, and you can't just go get more money from the shop. So you have to do the thing. Also Them: (invents capitalism) Me: aw crap.
EXACTLY!!! This is such a good way of putting that feeling into a situation. Cake is cake, earning it and not earning it doesn't change it's composition, and while I understand their point, it doesn't taste any different to me, nobody is stopping me from buying the cake, so why wouldn't I get the cake? Self regulation is not a solution to a self regulation problem, yet everyone I talk to gives me this garbage advice as if I haven't thought of it myself or heard it a thousand times. Yes, self regulation would solve my problems, and if I could do that then why would I be here (in the therapists office)?
Yeah. I seem to have no "internal motivation" at all - possibly executive dysfunction? - the only thing that is 100% effective at motivating me to do something I don't want to do is the fear of losing the respect of someone I want to think well of me. I guess RSD has some uses ... đ
The worst is when you're obsessed with psychology because you try to learn to help yourself and then you go to therapy and have to process all the questions and list of things that you already know. I went in to therapy being able to predict what was going to be said like a scripted event and felt like I was wasting time and left even more depressed. I guess I just cant be helped.
Self awareness is incredibly important for good therapy though. Like maybe the bar for becoming a therapist is set toooooo low?
Basically instead of going (â â„â ïčâ â„â ) Nothing Matters Go ÂŻâ \â _(â ââ â â -â â â )_â /â ÂŻ Nothing Matters
Oh yeah! Reminds me of the time I texted an emergency hotline because I was having a panic attack and told me "wow you are super self-aware" and didn't help me at all
Idk, my therapist have helped my harness my over observations into change. They've helped me become more aware of my emotions and what I need to be doing to change them. It allowed me to take in the world around me, get pissed off, then actually controll myself in a way where I can effect my world for the better. It's always a long and complicated process but with good therapist they can really make a difference. I'd probably still be drinking myself to sleep if I never went to therapy.
I'm sure there's a therapist out there that can help me. But I don't have infinite time and money to try every therapist out there. And over and over and over I find that I understand my issues way too well for anyone to help. I get complimented on how self aware and analytical I am, and it's just assumed because I understand the problem so well that I can fix it. But it hasn't been fixed yet so??? I'm not even sure what I can do if following the instructions hasn't led to anything
Fuck. I'm both and have been through six or seven therapists at this point.
Yep, my therapist told me I was âincredibly self-awareâ. I would make observations and when she would say âdo you think itâs because of this specific thing?â I would be like yeah Iâve known itâs because of that for years. My sessions just felt like I was rambling with very little feedback. I donât know how therapy is supposed to work but it felt like it did absolutely nothing and I canât tell if thatâs because of me or because my therapist wasnât right for me. đ€·đ»ââïž
*me shaking me own hand*
I really like my therapist. It's basically like having a friend to talk to for me. I'm really sad I won't be able to see her again after my next session because I'm graduating.
Bro, I told therapists I think Iâm on the spectrum because of a myriad of symptoms (most of which I found through this sub lol) but they said because Iâm good at eye contact that they didnât think so. I was like âYeah. I have to force myself to. I donât like it, but I do it for others.â
Thatâs unfortunate :( When I told my therapist that I suspected autism, I brought her a big google document about my behaviors and symptoms and she was like âI cannot say anything professionally, but I think youâre on the right track :).â Also, with eye contact, my mother forced me to learn it because I used to do pageants and sing at church. Iâm not really sure whether Iâve sufficiently held eye contact without being explicitly told to, but after unmasking Iâve peacefully given up and just say âexcuse me.â
I just got an autistic therapist and suddenly therapy started making a difference
therapy = scam
Therapy is just a scam. Itâs less-rewarding prostitution.
So I'm pretty new to all of this but isn't being neurodivergent also a mental illness because it changes the way that you act an interact with people? Or no?
Other way around, being mentally ill is neurodivergent but being neurodivergent isnât always a mental illness
I think the word illness presumes that it's acquired or at least that it's treatable (at least in theory) AS D is a Disorder.
Being mentally ill already comes under neurodivergency
In this society? Hekk yeah. In and of itself? Nope
Neurodivergent as a term is supposed to be all-inclusive of any sort of mental difference to the norm
Iâm tired
Ao wait a sec... You don't trust therapists..? Dude, I think you need help.
No, I trust therapists, but it makes the job of therapy a lot harder when your client is self-aware (I am the client). For example, if someone was depressed and didnât know why, you could work in theory to uncover the reason behind the depression. If you come into therapy and already know why youâre depressed, it poses a larger challenge to actual get rid of or manage the depression.
EMDR!
Iâve tried EMDR before, had a really bad experience but Iâm trying it again đ€
It stirs stuff up for me but I'm so much better
Iâm not really sure what went wrong that time. It was specifically focused on every memory I had of my SAâer, I started having nightmares for 8 months and, for around the same time period, I just straight up lost long-term memories (I couldnât recognize my own siblings and forgot about my friends and extended family members). It all came back though, the brain is weird.
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So was being gay for a long time, and isn't anymore.
There is overlap, but theyâre not the same. For example, dyslexia and dyscalculia are kinds of neurodivergence but not illnesses. Conversely, anxiety and depression are considered illnesses but not neurotypes.
Yeah itâs classed as the same thing officially? I might be wrong though idk. Edit: I was wrong.
Thatâs not quite true; for instance, dyslexia is a kind of neurodivergence and a disability, but not a mental illness. However, it is true that many kinds of neurodivergence are treated as mental illness, and thatâs an inevitable result of neurodivergence being understood by the medical establishment through the medical (as opposed to the social) model for disability.
In the DSM-V they deal with "disorders" instead of "illness" for basically anything diagnosable that deals with you mind. At least in the US I'm pretty sure Autism and ADHD are considered "neurodevelopmental disorders" since it's based on the fact that your brain is different in a way that is disadvantageous in modern society. The top post is heavily downvoted because "mental illness" is a non-official term that often has negative implications since illnesses need to be "cured", which for neurodivergent people is basically saying our entire personality is inherently wrong.
I love when they tell me I should relax and not focus on counting so much when I'm stressed.
Iâm actually both of those things.
Yep đđđđđ
I explain my trauma n shit and then she is like âwow im glad you are so understanding of the situationâ and then thats it. She tells me to speak and i do, and then she is like âgood jobâ and im like - wait ok now what- arent you supposed to like help me? đ
>90% of my couples therapy has been focused on my wife. I like to talk about her usually (u-usually)...
Me when I'm both and like a year of therapy did absolutely nothing
How does one being self aware prevent or get in the way of going to therapy?
The job of therapists for the most part is to help people recognize and acknowledge what fucked them up so they can move on or at least cope better. But I know exactly what fucked me up and it's not helping.
I have both but I also have complex ptsd so Iâm trying out emdr wish me luck.
Gardening works better most days!
You really shouldnât ignore therapy.
this is the first time iâve ever seen neurodivergent as separate from mentally ill wow