(no subject)

[jay]

Borrowed from a friend...


"If I believe that I am unworthy of being loved, then I can prevent my feelings of total devastation when I am rejected."

Yes, that's it exactly. Rules to live by. But I think if one lets go of those defenses, every oncoming rejection would be like being the proverbial deer in the headlights.

I needed to prove myself to the world in order to have value, in order to be worthy of love.

Check. Over-achievement at work, external praise, competency outside. Then see if it wins anyone's favor. Another fundamental SOP. Doesn't work in the personal realm because there's no way to prove myself worthy, no awards or merit badges. (ref: my Jekyll/Hyde thread 2 weeks ago)

Thanks to circusscreamer for the quotes (and stimulus of these insights)...

Comments

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Thanks for being willing to share :-).

it's the last part of the therapy that made the big dent
How would you rank 1-4 in terms of their contribution toward addressing your long-term social anxiety? Given your quote, I would suspect that #4 would have had the most profound effects, but perhaps #1 - #3 were needed to get to the point of attacking the core beliefs?

My ex-girlfriend and then Jae started breaking me of the habit of arguing out loud

I don't understand this... they wouldn't argue with you? What happened if you each wanted to go to different restaurants for dinner, or disagreed about politics? Did they try to shut you up? That sounds... controlling.

Negative self-talk has its uses...

with. You know how you argue with people when they contradict you?

Sure... (puzzled look) what else would one do? Unless I thought the other person was correct, and I'd been oblivious...

they'd role play something
Practicing introducing themselves, and the like?

[minnaleigh.livejournal.com]

How would you rank 1-4 in terms of their contribution toward addressing your long-term social anxiety?

4 is definitely responsible for the long-term effects. 2 & 3 were definitely required both to get me ready for success at #4 and because they gave me something immediate and practical to work on so I could see results. 1 (role plays) weren't at all helpful to me in the format the therapist used. I knew they wouldn't be and warned him in advance. He didn't really believe me until we were well into the group. Towards the end I found ways to make the role plays more useful for me and because of my experience, he's changing the options for role plays in the future for people who find them too easy.
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Re: the arguing thing. I don't mean they never argued with me about anything, I mean that they worked to break me of the habit of automatically defending my negative automatic thoughts. What would happen is that I'd say something negative about myself (or something more subtle) and KB would conntradict it, often with evidence that I was wrong or exaggerating. I'd keep arguing my position. This reinforced all of the negative thoughts that I held because I sought out evidence in support of my position and *totally ignored any evidence that supported a more positive view of myself*. Eventually I realized that they very act of KB arguing with me made things worse. Jae takes a different tack and tends to stop responding when I get all negative about something (there are some areas, like writing, where I'm still dealing with the negative automatic thoughts) and eventually says, "I'm not arguing with you about this. It isn't accomplishing anything." For me, it's exactly what I need. I don't have something to fight against so I'm less locked into my position, completely unwilling to listen to any alternative. Also, it points out to me that I'm arguing, possibly irrationally, and I can rethink things with the tools I now have.

We still discuss/argue/whatever things like politics or restaurants. And Jae has never tried to control my behaviour, she's controlled her reaction to it and that's more than allowed. Plus, as it happens, the way she controls her behaviour gives me cues I can use to reassess my thoughts.

Negative self-talk has its uses...

You know, I sat down and made a list of pros and cons of my old attitudes and thoughts and my new attitudes and thoughts and you're absolutely right. Negative core beliefs and negative self-talk totally have their uses. That's how come they develop. But I looked at that list and all of the pros of my old attitudes were short-term gains and the cons were long-term, severe losses. And it wasn't worth it to me to hurt myself so badly for the benefits I was receiving. I saw the other people's lists, too, and they came to the same conclusion.
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You know how you argue with people when they contradict you?

Sure... (puzzled look) what else would one do? Unless I thought the other person was correct, and I'd been oblivious...

The thing is, Brian, that what I always did was argue automatically without even registering what other people said or discounting it entirely. And I've seen you do the same thing. Arguing is one thing, blindly sticking to your position is another.
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Practicing introducing themselves, and the like?

Oh, all kinds of things. We picked out own. A popular role play was to pretend to approach a stranger in a bar or at a party. One guy had to fire his realtor during the course of the group and role played it in group first. One guy gets freaked out by reading out loud and he read out loud things a couple of weeks. One guy had wanted to share his story at an AA meeting for 20 years and never had the courage so he told it to us for practice. We picked out role plays that were relevant to our life.