#therapyposting

[croutoneater69]

the thing about leaving therapy and going into real life is that nobody wants to study you anymore

[gameclam4]

i accidentally added my therapy sessions to my family calendar instead of my personal one AND MY GRANDPA DELETED IT

[fagdinner]

4 or 7

4. Tell me about your most vivid memory, good or bad.

This is really tricky. The first thing that comes to mind, though, is probably one of the funniest things that's ever happened to me, and the beginning of my memetic obsession with the beatboxing part from Freak on a Leash by Korn. I was at a mall in the suburbs of my hometown, and I was 12 years old, on a date with my middle school girlfriend. This was when malls could still be kind of crowded; it was pretty busy. We were on a double date with one of our classmates and her sketchy 17 year old boyfriend. They had left, and we were wandering around when we came across this scene dude, probably in his mid 20s, selling fushigis and doing fushigi tricks. He got our attention, and did not say a word to me, and he started telling my girlfriend about how he had, over the summer, been on tour playing guitar with Korn. He started asking her a bunch of invasive questions. His closer was telling us that he could do a flawless impression of the beatboxing part from Freak on a Leash, which is not a song I had ever heard before. Immediately following this, he broke into said impression, completely unprompted. "I sound just like Jonathan Davis, right?" He starts doing it again. Admittedly, it was pretty damn close. I lost my virginity in the parking lot of that mall that day. Anyway,

7. What is your fatal flaw?

Probably deep insecurity and need to have lots of my big feelings and major decisions externally validated. Like, I think a lot of why my last relationship fell apart was because I was realizing that I didn't actually have very much respect for my ex-girlfriend anymore, and towards the end I was actively seeking reasons to justify not wanting to be in a relationship with her or be close to her anymore, which only solidified negative feelings towards her, because most of my thoughts about her revolved around confirming in my head whether such and such reason we weren't good for each other was True And Valid™. Constantly thinking about shit like that turned her into an antagonist in my brain, which is really counterproductive to making any kind of interpersonal relationship work. If I thought about this harder and weren't typing on my phone and were proofreading this at all I'm sure I could find a better way to phrase that, but whatever. Hopefully what I meant comes across.

I'm also generally pretty self-centered, and despite deeply caring about a lot of people, I tend to be kind of neglectful of my international relationships just because if I'm not talking to someone all the time or seeing them irl on a regular basis they'll very seldom pop into my head.

Also I'm lazy and a coward etc etc etc

[bowtiepastabitch]

I could fix her (my mother)

[aspennntree]

hey gamers im on tumblr dot com during therapy again

[cats-coffee-cannabiss]

therapy is like “in order for u to get better u need to do that which you least want to” and i think “why did i pay $200 to hear u say this again”

[bayoudusion]

Went to therapy and exposed a man with kids and a job to chroniccally online syndrome. If ur dad asks about shane dawson's hang ups on sociopaths im sorry.

[realfactsnlogic]

on apologizing, grovelling and sympathy-fishing

This is a bit of a trauma-dump. But this is my blog and I do what I want with it. And I also want to share my story to the world.

In this post I will talk about my uneasy history and strained relationship with apologies and forgiveness.

Note to self: Share this with the therapist. This is a juicy topic.

CW: I will be talking about abuse I went through as a child (physical, emotional, emotional neglect). Please love and care for yourselves and don’t read if you feel this will bother you.

Then

I was probably 3 or 4 years old. I don’t remember doing this--I don’t have the photographic memory of it burned into my brain, but apparently I hit some kid. My mom took me home, stood me on a chair so that I could reach her height--

And she slapped me. I was in tears, in that ‘child sobbing’ voice, trying to repeat what she tells me.

Something like, “(name), I am sorry.”

Of course, when you’re talking to a child, you need to break the sentence down into pieces. 

So it was more like, “(name) -- I am -- sorry.”

Between those dashes, I would repeat what she said.

The day after that, I literally forgot what she told me.

So when I went back to school, she took me to a rug where the kid was and got me to recite what she told me. I couldn’t remember, so I repeated what was prompted.

I don’t have this memory unless I’m in a certain state. Sometimes I don’t think it’s mine. I still need to accept that regardless of anything, I did it. I did it in this body, so this memory should be considered mine.

There was another incident like this:

In Kindergarten, one end of recess, I followed my friend group back to the building. I did not know that they hid some kid--one that was way older than us, but very sensitive. He might have been of a protected classification, I think. But that’s none of my business. Anyways, my friends had to line up and shake his hand, saying “I’m sorry, Aaron” (was that his name?)--but I, stubborn I, would refuse to. I remained on the couch and shook my head because I did not hit this kid. Still, I walked with these friends and so I pay their consequences.

I actually wrote about this incident in high school. I’ll see if I can dig up the full story to post about it here.

There’s more to this. About how I got M-RTU’d in 2016 because I couldn’t handle too much collective punishment, about how I fucked up real bad with a small fandom in 2018, so on and so forth.

From what I learned in therapy, childhood memories are factors in tendencies in adulthood.

Now

So as I grew up, these memories and other factors made a ‘person’ (more like a dead man walking) who has the reputation of being hard on himself. Yet, he remains to be a hard worker. He’s all about that Sigma Male Grindset, all about that T Guy Swag...but something about him is always missing. Always off. And we wouldn’t know until the bad things happen, and then we start calling him selfish.

All of these are true. Almost. They’re only true if you refuse to hear his side of the story.

“WAH WAH! I DON’T WANNA HEAR IT!”(Or: The Part Where I Look Like I’m Self-Victimizing)

I’m almost always the first one who’s apologizing (which is fine, if I know I started it). When people come to me to apologize, what apologies do I get back? Short sentences when I deserve paragraphs. Okay, that’s a little entitled, but I’d rather get an insight on their feelings in the moment and their intentions than...whatever the hell I got.

I don’t do “short and sweet”. I do “long and bitter”. I was taught that to apologize, you have to name your wrongdoings and either offer a way to rectify it (if appropriate, otherwise make a small promise of stopping a habit and how). No asking for anything, not even for forgiveness itself, not even for the deletion of things you made for each other.

The fact that my values don’t align with some people says and said a lot about how I conducted myself around people I once considered a friend until they didn’t want me to anymore.

Then again, they don’t owe me anything. They don’t need to walk me through the whole process of their wrong doing like I did (albeit without their consent. I have a habit of over-explaining.)

People who really don’t like you aren’t worth your time trying to please. I had to learn that the hard way. I also had to learn that I have to accept people’s opinions of me, regardless of the negativity--not to wallow in the negative ones, but to either move on from them (if destructive) or learn from them (if constructive.)

And in this case? It feels like the middle. I know I can’t change those opinions. That’s fine. I don’t need or have to do the work to convince that change. Change is a choice and it’s their choice as to change their opinion of me.

What Craving External Validation Does to MFs (Or: The Part Where I Attempt to Get Introspective)

Let’s not get started on how I have difficulty forgiving myself. Especially when I knew I was at fault for an occasion. Even if other people forgave me, I couldn’t forgive myself.

That’s what craving external validation does to mfs.

Just as how I’d have unusual methods of self-harm, I had an unusual method of sympathy-fishing via self-victimization. Before I go into that, however, I will say I have engaged in classical self-victimization ala “i’m gonna tell everyone i know what happened so i can get their sympathy!” or “i’m gonna put passive-aggro lyrics in my Discord status to show these mfs how i feel!” and whatever else I can’t think of in the moment.

The “going around telling everyone” thing is really done with the intention of getting different opinions, actually. Still, two things can be true at the same time. So I can understand where outsiders come from when they say I look like I’m self-victimizing. And they’re right. It does appear like that regardless of intent. Also, nobody likes a broken record.

This time, however, the way I went about self-victimization/sympathy-fishing was different. I’m still trying to wrap my head around how self-demonization counts. I think I have an idea, where it’s like: “Wah, it’s all my fault! You should pity me now.”

I acted like I was the villain for everything. I acted like everything was my fault, whether I really did anything or not. In my mind, inaction is action. I let my guilt and shame take over whenever I start craving that sympathy fix.

Hell, I wasn’t even thinking that the kind of attention I wanted was sympathy. Then again, how would you know when you’re at an unstable state?

Conclusion

If any readers stumble upon this, and feels it is familiar: maybe it is--for you.

And if you read this and know (almost) exactly what I’m talking about: What are you doing on my page, and I will once again apologize. Perhaps a thousand times.

I can wait 1000 years to be apologized to and much more to be forgiven, no matter how severe the damage. But some people can’t and that’s okay.

Fuck this shit, I’m gonna play a different game now.

[supernovasolace]

My therapist: Tell me about a time that you were able to help a friend when they really needed it.

Me: Oh, I've got something from this morning actually! *recounts this story*

Therapist: Wow, it sounds like you're willing to drop everything when you recognize you can do something kind for someone who's having a hard time. Have you ever thought about why you have difficulty doing the same thing for yourself?

Me:

When life gives you lemons, sometimes it takes a while to find out what kind of lemonade you can make with them. That, or sometimes it's not the kind of lemonade you can drink yourself, but the kind you can share with others when they need it most.

I'm no stranger to lemons. I got hit by a bus on Christmas in 2016, which both injured me and totaled my car. I was then plunged headlong into the overwhelmingly complex, years-long aftermath that is the insurance/legal process. I was woefully unprepared to deal with this and I made a lot of mistakes, but I also gained a lot of experience navigating the system. Later on, I was able to make unexpected lemonade by leveraging that experience into a job at an insurance agency, which got me out of retail and was a nice gig for a couple years.

In 2022 I got rear-ended, again totaling my car and injuring me to the point where it cost me a manufacturing job I loved. You'd think I'd have at least had the benefit of a more positive outlook on dealing with the fallout, given the wealth of experience I'd gained. NOPE. If anything, this time I felt infinitely worse, because I knew what a nightmare scenario I had ahead of me. I'm still dealing with the mountain of paperwork this incident created, and I likely will be for years.

But today I found another opportunity to make lemonade. A friend got in her first accident yesterday, and a multi-car pile up at that. She's fortunately not injured, but her car got pretty mangled. The timing was horrible as her honeymoon is only two weeks away. She was totally lost on how to get her car fixed and panicking about her non-refundable plane tickets.

I saw her post and I knew exactly what to do in that moment. I reached out and reassured her that everything was going to be okay. I told her I'd been through this process twice before, and she wouldn't need to figure it out alone. I walked her through everything she could expect to happen over the next few months, answered all of her questions, and helped her set up a free consultation with an attorney later today. Basically, I just tried to be the friend that I wished I'd had to guide me after my first accident.

My friend felt so relieved that she didn't need to worry about rushing to find a body shop or having to reschedule her honeymoon, and she's excited that her lawyer will be able to handle everything for her so she can relax and enjoy her trip. I'm sure the paperwork will still be miserable, but it can wait.

I'm glad I could make an unfortunate circumstances a lot less stressful for a friend in need. The lemonade wasn't for me this time, but it still tastes just as sweet.

[ganja-hq]

By the way my villain era started at 6 when they taught us about children's rights as defined by the UN in school and one of them was the right to a non-violent upbringing and I told my UN agent parents that my dad's not allowed to hit me. Because I thought obviously they must've somehow missed this memo and if I just clarified it would stop but instead they laughed at me and I learned to simply not trust other people ever again and also that the UN is fake and gay :)

[gameclam4]

obligatory i want therapy sooner post.

[lapsko]

going to therapy is just. listening to yourself talk and going I Cannot Keep Thinking Like This

[femmefaggot]

they also seem surprised when i said it was my first one which i will take as a compliment (:

other notable things:

we were going over intake stuff and they mentioned mandated reporting and it not being a second resort but a last one and i was like yeah you dont strike me as the type to be a. narc for lack of a better term and they laughed (:

told them I felt more comfortable w them and also like making them laugh it's like im getting a good grade and they were like yeah that's the goal of therapy! the gold star <33

they said they don't work on sun+mon and then laughed again when I was like got it no emergencies those days. then followed up with I know it was a joke but dont email me about emergencies either like yes I know but thank you I love to clarify jokes one of my favorite things to do honestly (genuine)

something beeped when they said the word "pathologize" and it was really funny. hit the "a" perfectly.

madison liked my collage

[fencesandfrogs]

therapy today and my therapist actually took a moment to like. directly tell me what he thought about my childhood. or. a specific memory. he doesn't do that very often. but he took the time to tell me liek. hey no that shouldn't have happened. you were a child and that wasn't fair to you. and i'm like. oh so it was that bad then.

[beateveryteamintheleague]

talked to our therapist about the thing toby was venting about yesterday. she has to fucking talk to her consultant about it fuuuck. ma’am we have known you for basically only a few hours (just stretched out over time) and backed ourself into a corner of talking to you about our fetishes and how it interacts with our sex life and trauma. yeah yeah the way it interacts is normal but ermmm it’s not supposed to happen to us! auuu

[vampyroteuthid]

therapist asked me if i knew about birds aren't real. well as a matter of fact i am 25 and online so yes i know but the fact that you a semiretired buddhist guy also know about it is extremely funny