Posted by fallsfall on October 9, 2004, at 14:49:38
In reply to Re: I quit therapy- Feeling Very Sad (Long) » fallsfall, posted by Poet on October 8, 2004, at 18:07:05
>Where I feel like a therapy failure is that I can't open up to any childhood trauma other than what little I'll reveal about my completely messed up family. The emotion we shared was anger, so like you, I didn't learn emotional skills. Maybe that doesn't make me emotionally inferior, just emotionally challenged?
Perhaps emotionally challenged, although to me the "challenged" part tends to mean that you will never be able to *stop* being challenged. And I don't think that is the situation for you or for me. I tend to think of it more like I'm emotionally illiterate. I have never *learned* the things that I need to learn in order to be able to have my emotions help me in life. It isn't that I'm not *capable* of learning them, it is just that noone ever taught me. The world assumes that we will learn this stuff from our parents, so the world doesn't really teach it. My parents (each for their own reason) couldn't teach it to me. So I never learned it.
I was so excited when I saw Marsha Linehan's "Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder". There are *pages* of emotion words - categorized - one set for love, another for hate, another for shame, joy etc. Finally someone understood that I just don't *know* about emotions. I found it helpful to type them up, and then cut them apart - I call it emotional confetti. Spread it out in a pile on the floor and then sort through to see which ones apply to you. I'm still not good at this (and I found her book in 1996...), but I am better able to figure out how I feel than I used to be.
Since my deficit is because I was never taught about this stuff, the solution is to find a place to learn this. The DBT class was a good start. But, for me (and quite possibly for you), the real place to learn this *is* in therapy. Therapy is the appropriate place to learn about emotions. I certainly feel like a fool a lot when it becomes clear how little I know (and sometimes it takes some convincing to get my therapist to know that I really *don't* understand something). But my therapists have shown me that they are willing to help me learn about this stuff. And so we slog through it together.
Think about how you would approach helping an adult learn how to read. There are lots of adults who don't know how to read. For many of them it is *not* because they are not intelligent enough to learn, it is because they haven't had the right *opportunity* to learn. Now, if you sat down to teach a person to read, and put a simple book in front of them and they couldn't read at all, what would you do? Would you say "Of course you can read this, you aren't trying hard enough"? Probably not. You might choose one word and see if they understand phonics at all - can they sound out a simple word? If they can't, then you might find out if they know the alphabet, and if they can recognize the different letters. And you may have to go all the way back to "An 'A' has two slanted lines that come together at the top and a line across the middle". I really don't think you would say "This person is an idiot". You would be more likely to say "This person hasn't learned the alphabet/phonics/reading. How can I teach him the parts that he doesn't know?"
Now, let's say that you started teaching this person to read, but after a while they stop making progress. Now they can't read words that they used to be able to read. Would you say "You are hopeless, you will never learn to read"? Probably not, because you have seen them learn some of the skills already. There *may* come a time when they *are* incapable of learning any more, but at this point they seem to be going backwards, so that doesn't make a lot of sense. You might try some experiments to figure out why they are having a problem now, where they were doing fine before. Eventually you might think that you really can't help them with whatever the problem is - that they need more help than you know how to give. So maybe you send them to an eye doctor, and the eye doctor figures out that they need reading glasses. It was never a problem before because the type was big enough for them to see, but now that they are reading better they are progressing to books with smaller type. Are they a failure because they need glasses? Are you a failure because you can't provide them with glasses? No. They just need both you (their reading teacher) and the eye doctor.
I think (I hope?) that this is the way that my therapist sees me - that I have some really basic things to learn. That other people learned these things when they were 1 or 2 or 3 years old, but for some reason I didn't. So I need to learn them now. And he can help me learn them.
You don't need to be ashamed of the things you don't know. You were never taught them, how could you know them? You can learn these things if you are given the opportunity. Therapy gives you the opportunity that you need to learn about emotions (and also to learn about trust).
P.S. Therapy is also a great place to learn that it is OK to make mistakes (I sure didn't learn that as a child!!!). Your therapist will be happy to show you that you can be forgiven, and welcomed back.
P.P.S. You said: "I can't say what will go through my brain as I think more and more about leaving therapy or leaving this world." Please stay.
poster:fallsfall
thread:400053
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20041002/msgs/400760.html