DBT Week 2 doing my head in!

Great that you were able to get into a DBT course Chris. I really do believe it will help you. Hang in there. Work hard. There's life at the end of it all.

Ellie.

@Chris

I did a course last year i think it was or maybe the year before.... i have no time/ space differentials currently..... the course was about holistic side of things to do with being a man. errm it was run by a holistic councillar, who was really good, now i am extremely closed off emotionally, i know how to portray the right emotions on my face, like i can look happy i can look sad, i can look angry etc, except i think i know what you mean about not having the feeling behind it, i know on here i seem pretty all over the shop with emotions, but if you were to walk past me typing, my face would be blank expression......

And i know the feeling of all this information and trying to wrap your head around it, but the paper is blank, i found while doing this course and the subject matter involved, i had to walk away, when i was having those difficulties, come back to it 30mins later quick glance write a couple of lines, quick glance again, write some more, whenever it got too much i had to walk away again.

the course i did was 8 sessions i think.... i opened up the most to the group on the eigth session, 12 other males were like, ahhhh so this is you. it was a little overwhelming, i barely spoke except for my inner dialogue that ran rampant, and i had sessions where i thought they were all being idiots and i wanted to scream at them, now none of them knew this except for the guy running it, i was seeing him for 1 on 1 sessions as well, he asked me, why i didn't participate more, i told him cos i go blank, it's like my brain forgets how to speak...... which i think is similar to what you get???

Anyway i am going on a tangent, i found, what helped me was prepping myself before the session, i would write down, what i would have said or would say to certain things from the prior session.....

i am a much better writer then talker, but just a few notes written, i slowly started speaking more, it might help you maybe

but you are not alone with this, so don't feel that you are

. Kato I think I need to write things down as they come up. I also think well I know emotions scare the crap out of me. Fear of running out of control whatever the emotion. None of it feels like a normal response, just running out of control.

Light bulb moment I feel these emotions internally, but I keep them under wraps and pushed down

I don't show emotion. I have to keep them under control at all times

As a child it was dangerous to show any emotion. Any response was the wrong response. I quickly became afraid of people which is with me to this day.

I have only recently realised that I suffer from performance anxiety. After being in a job for a short while I would start to doubting my ability to do the job, and compare myself to colleagues, and how much more capable they were. This is quite a revelation for me It explains why I could not keep a job.

hey chris

i am the same, if i don't write it down when i think of it it's gone.... i keep a notebook next to my bed, and it gets everything written in it, thoughts/poems/stories/realities/false hoods/ posts for here, which never make it here...... i forget what i have written sometimes and i flick back through it, and realise that i should have looked in to that thing that so and so suggested......

that is quite the light bulb moment you have had!

i too internalize all my emotions, i show surface emotion so to speak, but bottle everything else up, i have always done it, and i don't know why, i don't have a reason for doing it either tho, i see you were quite repressed as a child, that certainly covers the fear of people you describe, it is good that you have noticed this point, and written it down..... job anxiety is also a big thing, for me i found myself, on the opposite spectrum, but i was having some quite manic moments, in the last year or two, i believed that i was ten times better then everyone else, and that i was untouchable, couldn't get fired because i was too good at what i did, whereas you find yourself feeling less then colleagues, which possibly also stems back to the emotion blocking

It looks like you have made a couple of really good insights,

keep it up, your doing great

@Chris

Hi Chris,

You certainly have taken on a bugbear. And good on you for the courage to do so.

Just try and remember these things have been with you for a long time. This will be a nonvolitional resistance as you mind fights a rearguard action to hold on to what it knows. This is normal and surmountable.

Any therapy takes time. So let it. At least try to reduce that situational anxiety by acknowledging to yourself that you'vee taken the big step the other srteps will follow.

I admire you greatly for doing this new thing. You desire change and you are willing to work for it.

That is immeasurably cool.

Hope as ever endures

Rick