Posted by fallsfall on June 16, 2004, at 19:38:34
In reply to Therapy Hangover sick day (long), posted by tabitha on June 16, 2004, at 14:22:38
Oh dear, Tabitha.
I wish I could respond to your whole post, but I just don't have it in me right now. This all sounds like the kind of stuff that gets "worked through", though, so I would encourage you to stick with it. "Working through" has to be the hardest, hardest, hardest thing. (I can't respond in detail because I'm "working through" something...)
Anyway, one paragraph I really did want to comment on:
>And we're having a secondary argument, over whether I'm 'just choosing to be alone', which my therapist has said, and this woman also said, so I think she'll support her in saying it. That makes little sense to me, because if I was choosing to be alone, well then wouldn't I be OK with it? To me that whole line of 'you're just choosing this', is just what people say when they can't help and are sick of hearing about it. I mean, what am I supposed to do with that pronouncement? Oh yes you're right. I've been choosing to be alone. Tomorrow I choose to have a nurturing network of friends and a wonderful partner. Poof! problem solved!
I have gotten irate when I have been told that I am "choosing" something that I clearly don't want (in my case I've been told that I choose to be depressed - talk about an inflamatory accusation!). What it turned out to mean (in my case at least), was that I had an unconscious motivation to be depressed. It wasn't that I was consciously choosing depression (for me that would be a completely *evil* thing to consciously choose). But that there was some reason THAT I WASN'T AWARE OF that made me act in a way that kept me depressed. I argued against this for a very long time. But finally, it started to make sense. I was able to figure out that job stress was cripplingly terrifying to me, and that being depressed was "preferable" to failing in my workplace. This is certainly not anything I would consciously do - but it does make some sense that due to my terror about the job situation that I sort of "took myself out of the situation".
Unconscious motivation seems so incredibly foreign to me. I really don't get it, but I think that the theory has enough plausability that it has to be considered. So perhaps your unconscious is choosing to be alone?
Good luck
poster:fallsfall
thread:357301
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040614/msgs/357373.html