Attachment weirdness, neediness, shame

Hi @TheVorticon 👋🏻

I can hear how totally frustrated and alone you are with yours thoughts about this. It’s pretty understandable. I don’t know the answer but I know that on my time on the forum there have been so many amazing and clever and kind people that feel alone and feel the 'wrongness' of them. I feel the wrongness in me constantly as well. In this space I’ve learned about true connection that is void of all the social norms and assumptions and judgements people make when you meet in person. It’s taught me more about connection and authenticity and life than what I’d learned in my previous nearly 5 decades. I’m not suggesting that online is the answer but it’s a great way to get to understand people. I hope you can take the pressure off yourself to learn about being human and a human worthy of connection. I know you’re smart and kind and have some cool interests. I know you are worthy of connection but it might take a while to find the connections that are the right fit and worthwhile. Sometimes just taking that time pressure off ourselves helps.

I wanted to share with you something too. It may be not helpful to you but just thought I’d share. I’m about to start my 9 th year of therapy. It took me about the last 18 months of banging my head against a wall to finally get to a point where therapy is working. I finally understood what it was that I needed from therapy after many calls to the help centre and them encouraging me to talk through these recurring dysfunctional things in therapy.

when I finally got a psych I started to trust I became so frustrated again because it didn’t feel like I was addressing the things I needed or would get sidetracked. I started about 8 months ago making a mind map of things that I needed to address in therapy. I now create the mind map convert it to word and hand it to my psych when I walk in. I have kind of got a template I use now that is really helpful for me. I have on it things that have happened since I last saw her, current stresses, what I want to work on and things that are on my mind that are still on constant rotation. Some of those things have been on there for 6 months but it helps her to see that I don’t feel like I’ve dealt with that yet. It also helps with the awkward start to sessions and having to recount stuff and waste time on the less important stuff. She gets a snapshot of where I’m at without having to write notes (she writes her notes on mine now). I feel like she knows me now and have confidence that I can do the hard stuff with her. Sometimes writing the same stuff down starts to make it clearer to see what’s important but also defines the problem (even if it takes more than 6 months to define in a way that I can work on).

Sorry for my ramble. I know we are all different but wanted to share that with you. 👊🏻

I dunno wtf is wrong with me, why I can't just accept the reality of things and deal with it.

Real non-distorted thoughts reality time

= I don't know how to ask for help when I need it, so I beat myself up for needing it.

= I don't know how to form close connections with people so I beat myself up for that too.

= I don't think I'm worth being cared about by anyone else and knowing that I'm supposed to not need anyone else to care about me makes it very easy to hate myself for wanting to be cared about

= When someone seems like they care I think it's because

a) they're momentarily pretending and are either doing it for their own amusement just to reject me when it becomes too much, or had good intentions but it will still become too much at some point

b) they care only to the extent that I can continue to fulfill the role they expect of me, not about how I really am inside

C) they don't actually know me and if they did then they wouldn't care

d) all of the above

I think I have to stop seeing my psych. The "therapeutic relationship" hurts too much and I feel like a nutcase. 😞

@TheVorticon Hi TheVorticon how are you going? I want to stop seeing my doctors and do a runner. I don't know how to do it though without ending up back in hospital .... feeling so constrained by reality atm.

Hi @Bunniekins that sounds tough about feeling like you are trapped. 😞 Do you think it could be helpful to make a list of things that you are thankful for or that are helpful about your care team, medications etc? What parts of your life are less restricted as a result of your treatment?