Well, gosh, welcome to the forum. Do tell.
I don’t really know if there is such a thing as an inner child. That sounds like pseudoscience. But I gave it a shot anyway and tried to talk to kid me as though I were a kind parent. It didn’t work out though. I’ve been trying it over and over but I don’t really feel anything.
I’ve been journaling but I don’t feel like I’m hitting any insights that shift my thinking. It’s like I put down everything I feel when I write, including things I feel as I’m writing so I don’t miss anything. But after it’s done all the problems come back. So it’s like nothing happened.
So far the internet has been more useful than any therapist.
That’s literally what they are allowed to do, don’t lie to me. The one I went to had people more or less doing that, the TV room was always busy. They didn’t really do therapy for me, just called me for meds and that’s about it. The food sucked and you couldn’t go outside unless it was for a smoke break.
Also that’s not depression, it’s literally a common theme in some philosophies I’ve read, especially the school of pessimism philosophy.
I didn’t say it made me different, I was saying it as a counterpoint to the guy on the pathway site.
That’s true, and part of me knows that doesn’t really make sense. I mean it’s not like something happened and I choose to be mad or sad.
It’s more like trying to remember what better times were so I can try to have them again. If I forget, it makes recovering feel far away.
Well if you’re proposing a philosophy that changes everything the current society is founded on and your response to what they world would look like or be like is “i don’t know” then I don’t think you’ve given it much thought at all.
I don’t think solving the nature of our reality is any help with purpose. It’s empty knowledge in my experience.
I’m considering closing your account. You really shouldn’t be using this site, given your mental health condition. If you want to stay, limit your time here, maybe 4 posts per day, we can negotiate that. You are obsessive and compulsive and the internet is not a healthy place for you.
Unfortunately I don’t have controls that create limits. The only one is limiting everyone in a thread to one post per day in that thread.
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Finding meaning brings satisfaction.
You are a perfect example of an unhappy person because you haven’t found meaning yet.
If you ever find it, I’ll bet you’ll find satisfaction and a measure of happiness.
You can’t find what doesn’t exist.
I said therapy didn’t do it for me, doesn’t mean I’m giving up and quitting life or whatever.
I’ll just have to have to manage it myself like I always do.
For example, after yesterday I did give things some thought. I gave journaling another try like people said and it sorta did give me some insight this time.
I’m able to sorta tell the difference between who I am and my wants vs the panic fueled and manic part of me that just spits out things on impulse without fully forming them. I think I also learned the difference between actual thinking and what I thought I was doing as thinking.
The problem is, this is how you lead people on. You say you are doing something or accepting something said, only to come back a week later with the same old garbage. It’s what addicts do, but you are addicted to your problem, not booze. Then you whine that you can’t help it. If you can’t, how can we help? (That’s rhetorical)
I’m not really addicted to the problem, it’s more like I don’t know what to say about what they do.
I told you yesterday I was able to make a distinction between what I actually think and feel and what could be called “doom”. THe problem is until recently I thought that side was valid. That the fears were real, the conclusions that bad, and that nothing would ever change. That because the thoughts just blinked by that they were true.
When I journaled it down and didn’t hold back, noting everything as it came and even as I wrote I saw that I just took these for granted. When I looked back I saw that I often failed at things because I just assumed I would, and that when I succeeded I would choke because I never considered the notion that I would win or make it.
I didn’t allow for the possibility in my head and because of that when it did happen I didn’t know what to do. I spent so much time planning for the worst that I had no idea what to do when it didn’t happen. There’s probably deeper implications to that line of thinking than I know. I also think that another part of it is safety. If you don’t try you can’t fail. I also read a few new things that came up that forced me to reassess myself. Stuff like Jonah complex (which sounded a lot like me) along with a certain episode of an anime I loved that struck a chord in me when I first saw it. That particular one might as well have been written about me, as was the advice in it.
I could explain more but I don’t think people would be interested in it.
It’s symbolic wording and it does work to write to your “inner child”, if you want it to work. You have to actually talk to your inner child and this activity is shown to work well. I’ve even done it myself and it very therapeutic.
I question whether or not you actually tried it and actually talk to the child within you.
It’s not going to solve your problems. It will get the feeling out and not leave them inside to fester. I’ve found once I write them down, I can walk away and forget about it.
Possibly a false sense of helpfulness.
I’m not lying to you. It was my job to help treat the mentally ill. The patients could only watch TV from 7 pm to 10 pm. 11 pm was lights out, so the TV was not on all day. They also were not allowed outside for a smoke break. They had a choice of nicotine gum or the patch, but not cigs. There was even a smoking cessation group, besides group therapy. IMO, you’re lying to yourself and to us about what happened when you were in the hospital, because since the 1990s if not before, patients were not allowed outside for a smoke break or smoke period and TV wasn’t an all day thing. Either that are where your from… I live in the States.
that’s what an addict would say. That doesn’t prove you are an addict, but you exhibit addictive behaviors, so I can’t trust your self-diagnosis.
You never said “doom”. Don’t use quotes like that. Now I have to go find what you actually said.
You wrote some things down yesterday. that’s not journalling. Even when you take a suggestion, you do it with no commitment. You do it just to say you did it, so you can say it didn’t work.
I think I’ve made it pretty clear that your explanations are not actually explanations. I’m interested in you working on what the actual problem is, not another story.
How can I talk to something I’m not sure is real?
Well I’m not really sure if it’s real for starters, so already I’m on shaky ground. Enough with the “wanting it to work” that’s not the issue.
I’m from Florida and that’s what the hospital I was in was like. They offered activities but you weren’t forced to do them. The TV was on all day, and YES you could only go outside for smoking and the “outside” was more like some walled off patio.
I’m not lying I even remember where it was at. I have records showing I stayed there. It was SO bad I lied to them about getting better and told them what they wanted to hear so I could leave.
I’m even more soured on it after my current therapist LIED to me about where I was going and I didn’t know I was being committed until I got there. I had my suspicions but ignored them because I thought I was paranoid. I was, truth be told, but this time it turned out to be right.
They don’t really care about you or you getting better, that was obvious from how they talked to me. The therapist I spoke to for years never did that to me, so I felt safe talking to him. I literally told him the same thing I told him but he didn’t ship me off or report me, we talked through it. You know, LIKE HUMANS. To this day he was the one guy I could tell anything to and I know it’d be ok and we worked through it.
No bullshit self soothing techniques, no work sheets, none of that noise. Sadly I had to leave the state so I can’t see him anymore. That and he was pretty expensive.
Doom is just shorthand for the inner critic, at least that’s what I call it but the inner critic is the general term.
That’s literally journaling. Again I have done it in the past, but I don’t do it every single day because I don’t have anything to really report on. It’s more like every other day or when I REALLY need to get it down.
That is what working on it looks like, sorry you don’t believe it. And they are explanations.
Well, I guess you’ve never been in a depressive psychosis before or even had an invisible friend as a child. You’re definitely not a writer either and don’t have an imagination. Or even an only child for that matter. Maybe it would help you if you did have an imagination in which to grasp some of this stuff.
Have you ever heard the song ‘Imaginary Lover’ by Atlanta Rhythm Section? The singer says, “Imaginations are real”.
Oh! The state that is in the Dark Ages still. I’m so sorry. Florida is bad even if one isn’t in the hospital from what I hear. Unless you live in Boca.
I actually have a very vivid imagination, but we’re talking about reality here.
Singers say a lot of things.
I dunno, I still love the State. I miss the amount of water and humidity there. I miss the ocean, the wetlands, all of it. I’m still homesick for the state. I miss sitting by the beach, salt on the air, and waves rolling on. Even better if it’s cloudy.
I still don’t get the hate it gets.
Arguing with you is just feeding your addiction to arguing
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I’m sure you see it that way, but bottom line, you have two unfinished therapy treatments. One of them tou liked, which contradicts what you said about therapy not working. You’ve just admitted that others think you need it, and even you think you do but it’s expensive.
And your story doesn’t acknowledge that if a therapist lied to you like that, you have recourse. Your story doesn’t comport with reality.
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It does comport, you just refuse to accept it.
Just because I liked it doesn’t mean it worked. We never really made progress on anything, it was more like having someone to talk to.
I don’t really have much to say. I don’t really know how to communicate humility on the internet. It’s only recently that I’m trying to changing how I’ve done things, and it’s hard. Still I want to do it because I want change. Buried under all that I want something different.
Though when I don’t know something I panic and ask people so that I have an answer or make one up.
Sometimes you need to escape reality in order to keep your sanity.
And sometimes one needs to have some fun in order to keep one’s sanity.
The governor for starters.