!@#$%^

[tartary_lamb]

There has to be some way to outsmart your body chemistry.

No, seriously, folks. I know why I feel like this. This whole heart won't stop pounding, oh god everything's a crisis and everyone hates me thing? The jittery, useless ball of unfounded anxieties and stress? It's hormones. More specifically, it's hormones fucking with an already naturally

Comments

[barometric]

This. You'd think that knowing why you're reacting to things a certain way (and knowing that this is not a fact-based response) would contribute to being able to, you know, feel better. Or at least cope better, or calm down slightly.

And yet no. Rational thought is absolutely no help on that front. The only thing it helps with, in my personal experience, is sometimes allowing other people to cope better (because I apologize and/or interact less).

I feel like popular culture has lied to me in some respect on this front. I have the strong impression that at some point in my life, it was communicated to me that if you confront your emotions rationally, you can stop feeling things that you recognize as irrational. This is patently false, and I am somewhat bitter about that. I mean, maybe there are people out there for whom realizing that some of their emotions are irrational would be a major step forward, allowing them to make positive changes in their behaviour and mental health! I think I probably know some of these people. Lucky them! For the rest of us, we've gotten there, and it wasn't all the help we thought it would be.

Sometimes I am amazed by how much we (humans) are capable of, intellectually, given how utterly bound we are by psychological and chemical foibles.

And on that cheery note, I'll stop ranting. Sorry. Short version: so much agreement!

[angstbunny]

it was communicated to me that if you confront your emotions rationally, you can stop feeling things that you recognize as irrational. This is patently false, and I am somewhat bitter about that.

THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS

THIS THIS THIS.

Because, yeah. I know exactly WHY I think the way I do, WHY I feel the way I do. But it doesn't do a damn thing in helping me CHANGE. Urgh.

BITTER BITTER BITTER

[barometric]

Yeah -- so for example, I've recently started meeting with a councellor-type person, and I feel like I respond to a lot of what she says with: "yes, I know that intellectually, I really do. It hasn't helped."

Really, I feel like I use the word intellectually a lot when I'm explaining myself to her. Frankly, if I felt all the things I knew, I'd be one of the best-adjusted people in the world. And then I wonder: are there people who don't know these things intellectually? Am I at least better off than them? Or are they just equally wound up but less frustrated about it?

[angstbunny]

Yeah, same here. It's why counseling hasn't really worked for me. Or at least, insight-based counseling, which seems to be the dominant type out there. The talking cure. If you can discern the root cause of whatever it is that bugs you, you can cope better. I think there ARE people who don't have insight into what ails them. And insight-based counseling can work for them. Just not us. And HA, same here. If I get a nickel every time I use the word "intellectually," I'd be fucking rich. It's actually a form of a coping mechanism. For me, anyway. Possibly the one and only piece of insight I ever gained from counseling (it may not work, per se, but at least I can vent confidentially and without judgment, which is something). When one rationalizes, one distances oneself from one's emotions, so as not to feel them, or feel them less intensely.

[tartary_lamb]

Yeah, the opportunity to vent without guilt is always appreciated, though I tend to find myself more embarrassed and self-conscious than I probably should be in sessions with my shrink.

I'm starting to wonder if the whole psychiatrist thing has a hope in hell of working for me. I mean, I know I need help. Badly, if I ever want to accomplish anything in life. But I know exactly what's wrong with me and, between having no memories of my childhood and, well, me being me, the whole affair seems hopeless.

Gah.

[tartary_lamb]

Oh man, yeah.

That's me in pretty much every session with my shrink I've ever had. The number of times I say some variation on "and I'm consciously aware that what I'm feeling is totally unreasonable, but..." per session is kind of amazing.

The deeply frustrating thing for me, and probably for my shrink, is that she's convinced I could improve if I could sort out what it was in my past that made me this way. That would be great, except my childhood memories? Totally gone.

Grr...

[barometric]

You've mentioned this before, and I hope you don't mind me asking: in what way are your childhood memories totally gone? As in, you don't recall any events from before the age of 10? Or something more therapy specific?

(And is your shrink convinced that the only path to improvement involves remembering why you are this way? Because if so, then given that apparently you don't remember the things she wants you to remember, that seems kind of counterproductive...)

[tartary_lamb]

Totally gone is probably not a fair description. For the most part, my memory (and this includes all of elementary school and some of high school) is a handful of disjointed fragments. The bulk of what I know about my history's been cobbled together from what people have told me and photographs that I've seen. Making matters, worse, what I do remember I'm not sure I necessarily trust.

I can remember playing with my brother on a number of occasions, for example, but all I have of my years in elementary school (public school, anyway) is a lingering fear of the berries that stick to your hair (people throw them at you) and a vision of the paved, covered area where somebody called me a "hippopotamus".

This is mostly problematic because, for my psychiatrist to do what she's been trained to do, she needs early, traumatic memories to work with. So much is missing that I'm often left sitting there, trying to fill the inevitable stretches of awkward silence.

Fun times.

Edited for typingfail.

[barometric]

Thanks very much for explaining. Your description of the memories you do have (disjointed fragments combined with things people have told you) sounds a lot like what I introspect my own childhood memories to be like, but it seems fair to say that since you have many fewer pieces, the gaps are more obvious? Like, I know that there are periods of time from which I have no distinct memories, but I have enough individual memories of, say, grade 3 (maybe 5 events and a few more vague pictures, identified by what the room looked like) that I can sort of float them together into a vague whole.

It sounds like it might be frustrating for you, especially if your psychiatrist is all Surely you have traumatic memories of childhood! I don't know what to do in the absence of traumatic childhood memories! I mean, not to knock psychiatry, but it seems like making you feel bad about not remembering things is unlikely to make you more likely to remember them. If you do find it frustrating, allow me to send sympathy waves. *sympathy*