Cognitive therapy. Working on actions instead of feelings. Ineffective actions. They probably stem from feelings initially. I am thinking that I learned these coping actions from some of the same people who caused the weird feelings. Maybe all of the same people. But the bad feelings may be passed on from their bad feelings, just like the bad coping techniques. So I am being misled into copying techniques which didn’t work for them, either.
This journaling seems to be a superior coping technique, versus some of the ones I picked up. For instance, I may have actually learned dissociation. I was assuming that it is an instinctual reaction to unpleasant or traumatic situations, but it could also be a learned behavior, I suppose. “Depression is Contagious” style of learning. Environmental depression. Habitual depression. My low-grade depression goes hand-in-hand with my lower end coping techniques. They get me by, but not in a high-functioning way. It explains why I don’t let myself stay healthy for very long without an infusion of self-destruction. I am finding that comfort zone where I am mildly depressed.

And there is another side – I am born with these propensities. They are both not taught and not reactions to anything. They are my biology. Or maybe they’re a response to my biology. There’s also my own behavior choices, which lead to ingrained ways of thinking and feeling – like being a musician might make me moodier or more solitary, or more introspective. Even being a cellist, to be very specific.

So what happens is I cannot trust my own instinctual reactions or propensities. I have been taught or born maladaptively, so I live that way. I live sad or I live manic. But sad and manic are not happy. Although everyone wears masks, mine are more prohibitive than most. They seem less functional.

I would like to accumulate a repertoire of pro-adaptive activities. I do try. They seem to come and go. They lie on the whispering wind.

originally published on 11/29/09