Tag Archives: therapy

hypotheses and philosophies

Lionizer

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I’m reviewing my library in search of answers. I have seen my emotional roller-coastery self of late. I feel I am in a good place to pull back and reflect. I must feel a certain stability right now, as though I’ve been through something dangerously wonderful, or wonderfully dangerous, and lived to tell the tale. Also I’ve been practicing pretty regularly, which has a grounding effect. I am still a walking advertisement for neuroses, but somehow I’m just that much more composed.
So I have reconsidered the possible sources of who I am and why I do things. I have come back to something called borderline personality disorder. In reading my books on it, I would have to say I am borderline borderline. The reason it is called borderline if I understand correctly, is because it didn’t quite fall into any readily identifiable psychiatric categories at the time the name was coined in the 1930’s. It borrowed symptoms from various illnesses and seemingly arbitrarily glommed them together, based on the patients observed. Nowadays it is an established disorder. I myself only have a portion of the symptoms, which is why I say borderline borderline. I also feel like the name borderline aptly describes my feelings in life generally, kind if like I’m in a no-man’s land between normal, functional, real-life society and a weirder place of my own making full of dreams and emotions of both wondrous and frightful nature. I am straddling the two almost all the time. It is rather frustrating because I feel I cannot commit to anything 100%. I only know how to exist on that borderline.

I think that is why I spend much of my time not being particularly productive. Non-action is the best means I can come up with to guard against falling off this fence. I guess I feel either choice is going to be a disappointment. Any choice, really. Of course I do have to make choices sometimes, but I try to keep them to a minimum.

The choices I make are usually fine. And the dreams and fantasies I muse upon are generally of a reasonably pleasant or useful sort. The trouble is this dang-blasted split between the two, frequently leaving me in limbo, a dead heat of indecision. Thankfully I have found that writing helps bridge the gap.

originally published on 11/17/07

reflections within

Betwixt

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Ahh, my shame. I see I am ashamed due to my shame. Seems reasonable, huh? I end up being ashamed to be me. Thus I do what any ashamed person would do: hide in a cave or wear masks. The troubling thing about shame is that you can’t even look yourself straight in the eye. So what are your chances of letting someone else get a glimpse?
That must be my greatest fear. I hide behind the supposed fear of not liking other people, when what really concerns me is whether they are going to like what they see in me.

It seems if I can work past this underlying shame, I will be able to be more myself around others. I won’t be so constantly fearful of others’ judgment. Judgmental people tend to have a lot of sway over me. Their personalities confirm my own predilection to judge myself. People have varying degrees of judgmentalness, but almost everyone has some. I do feel it can turn in on itself quite easily, and that perhaps it starts out turned inwards, later going outwards.

When I’m working on my problems successfully, I feel different. I can be more in the moment with other people, less caught up in some neuroses or another. I am less worried about whether what I say or do will violate some law or societal norm. I feel I have calmed the bumpy waters of my soul, so I don’t constantly interrupt the flow of life, of a day, an hour, a minute. I sometimes feel that I must check myself so often, I cannot make it through any activity in some semblance of peace.

originally published on 4/23/08

reflections within

18

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I’m not sure how long I’ve been catastrophizing. I thought it was a more recent phenomenon, but perhaps not. I think I often let my friends and family do the brunt of the catastrophizing for me, so I figure I am free of it myself. There’s also the opposing trait – idealizing. I seem to have dreams full of that. Not to mention the trips my mind goes on in my waking hours.
But why is it so different in my head, so one-sided, and then when I write or talk about it, everything changes? When I am thinking, it stems from some sort of raw emotion or physical sensation. When I am writing or speaking, it is once removed, at least, from the raw emotion. So you can reimagine the emotions, reconfigure them to help serve a greater, vaster truth than that stuck in your body and psyche. But what happens when I feel I have run out of material? Is there something else which is equally rewarding that I could do to reconfigure the wiring which causes the angst? Yes, I believe so. But there are a lot of deceptively pleasing or fruitful activities which don’t provide the assistance or expressive qualities they have been deemed to. Or, if they do, I overuse and abuse them to the point that they cause more harm than good. It’s that “ize”-ing thing that I am so drawn to. I exaggerate.

originally published on 12/24/09

reflections within

14

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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