One skill I am struggling with is "not making it worse."
There are a couple of ways I can make things worse. I can take a bad situation and make it significantly worse by yelling louder, throwing things, making threats, refusing to give up, oh I could describe some doozies.
Alternately, I can make things worse by taking a bad situation, or a mistake, and beating myself up about it. If I'm already upset, telling myself I'm an idiot really doesn't help anything. I can hear the dry voice of my therapist saying "Well, it really doesn't help anything to say that, you know," when I tell him so.
It doesn't help to deny myself access to friends, or to things that make me feel better. No, you can't go out to that movie, you made a fool of yourself at work today. Not only does it not help prevent me from making a fool of myself at work (if that even really happened vs. just being a huge fear of mine or a misrepresentation in my mind), but it makes me sadder and angrier and hate myself more.
In the first case, my goal is to walk away. Hang up the phone. Give up the fight. Don't have to win. Don't make things worse.
In the second case, my goal is to be realistic about how bad my screwup was, and to attempt to fix it. If it is something that can be fixed, apologized for or somehow changed, I should do that. If it is not (i.e. spilling food down my shirt), then I should not fixate on it, I should not make it bigger, I should not theorize that everyone in the office saw it or is giggling behind my back. I should be realistic.
I need to not make things worse.
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4 comments:
Today I actually told my husband that I had thought his sauce looked like dog puke. I have NO idea what made me believe this would be funny for him.
The moment I realized I had once again put my foot in mouth, I apologized, then made myself stay calm and change the subject, even though I really wanted to beat myself up about it/freak out.
Afterwards I was glad I did neither, because those feelings eventually went away, and my husband soon appeared to forget about the faux-pas anyway.
I don't want to even think of the years it took to bring on those enormous, unconscious changes in my thought process...the good news is, the more often I do it, the easier it gets.
Yet I could have never been able to make the connection without reading your insight first, which helped me understand what/how it happened.
This has really helped me. Thank you so much!
Oh wonderful! Great example. You could have ruined dinner by being so upset over what you said.
That wouldn't have helped anything, would it? It wouldn't have made you feel any better, and it definitely would have made you feel worse.
I am especially impressed with your ability to praise yourself for the really hard work it took to make these enormous, unconscious changes in your thought process.
I know. I feel very uncomfortable whenever I catch me seeing myself in a more positive light. But I'm glad too. The alternative got too scary.
I call the chances in me "unconscious" because I didn't (want to) know what was wrong, but I desperately needed to feel a little more in control, and it made me willing to try out stuff.
It's fascinating to see others benefiting from the same methods, and realizing that I must have done something right. (for once)
I guess it was a rather awkward way of saying, it pays for us to keeping chugging along no matter how hard or useless it must seem at times, because it does get better.
I always feel bad when I say stupid things to other people. I am so emotionally sensitive...towards myself and towards others as well...I tend to be hard on myself, too when I say things that I think was inappropriate or out of line..beat myself up...or when I was a teenager I would pull my own hair!
Not literally out of my scalp, but just pull my hair hard, call myself stupid.
As I got older, I got a little better, I still am hard on myself but now I go into a deep depression... which I think is part of the Bipolar, too of course..
How in God's name does a shrink separate his/her diagnosis' from bipolar and BPD if a person has both???
How can they distinguish the two in a person when both Disorders are SO MUCH ALIKE?
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