Attachment weirdness, neediness, shame

Hey @TheVorticon (with a quiet thanks for your tag and big respect for the apprehension there). Robot works well I think. It's kind of like my 'not sure what other face to use so this 😎 will have to do' one.

That seriously sucks with your psych. I can see how it's one thing to think it and then try and think your way our of it because it might be a distorted thought but another to actually hear it said from him 😏:face_with_rolling_eyes:

For what it's worth I can really struggle to let things my psych (and many people really) says go even when he tries to un-say them and I can imagine myself feeling hurt and having trouble getting out of that if that ⬆️ happened with me.

The relationship my psych and I have matters to me a lot. It matters what he thinks about things and it matters to me what he thinks about me. That feels uncomfortable to say because I like trying to live in an "I don't care what anyone thinks about me" world. But the tricky truth is that I really do care when it comes to some people.

You're clever and you know the way these things work (I sense), and if there was a way to stop things mattering I feel like you'd be able to do that (and then you could share that with us and fix so many of our 'this matters' issues!). Perhaps it's more helpful right now to work on accepting that this matters and that it's OK that it does even when you don't think it should.

You mentioned that you've discussed it since and I imagine those discussions have been about what he meant by what he said (I could be wrong there though). I'm wondering whether you've also discussed how it matters but you don't think it should?

I'm not expecting any of this to be helpful for you. I hear you and am listening though. It would be hard to be wrestling with that and would add even more to what's already a tricky relationship.

I have felt really bad since discovering the thing that reinforces the thing. Starting to crawl out of the hole today but it's been tough. Good thing it's just been a feeling-hole and not an action-hole. Almost emailed psych to tell him what a mess this has been, but he's the source of the mess and doing that would just make it messier. 😕 😞 Appointment with him later this week, and I wish it were sooner but also never.

Hey @TheVorticon. When I read about your diagnosis situation I was wondering whether it wouldn't be OK with you at some stage. I think I would struggle with it.

How have the last few hours been? If you would like to share what it is about the situation you are not OK with, I am interested in hearing.

Today sounds like it was a tricky one. Sorry 🙁

Yeah @CheerBear I didn't think there was much chance of it being ok as a permanent thing, but I was a bit optimistic that ok might last a bit longer. 😉

I've been really tense about it all day. I finally got properly "deep" in thinking about what the main problem is:
There are certain traits that are 100% unacceptable to me which are part of some disorders. I can tolerate some of them in other people (particularly if the underlying reason has been made evident) but if my psych sees those traits in me, then that is unacceptable and I deserve a lot of bad stuff for being that way. So 'not knowing but suspecting among many' means not knowing what he thinks of me (which is normal), but it narrows it down from an infinite pool of stuff he could think, to a finite pool which includes a bunch of things which are unacceptable. Making it a higher probability of unacceptable.

(As I mentioned, it is 100% true that I would beat myself up for certain negative things... Now those negative things are more likely to be true beat-up-for-able offenses.)

I hear you @TheVorticon, though also acknowledge that I don't know what the unacceptable to you stuff is and respect that there are reasons you talk the way you do here (as in why you may not want to or feel OK with saying what those unacceptable to you things are).

I don't know if this is going to be a helpful self-disclosure but I am going to go with it (possibly - I may write this and then delete it before I hit reply). My first diagnosis what feels like a million years ago was bpd. I was in hospital and it came about during my first encounter with a psychiatrist. He took very little time or effort to put it down as that. He also mentioned not being totally sure if it was bpd or bipolar, but went with bpd because female plus a certain type of trauma I guess. He medicated me for bipolar just to cover both (I never took that medication). The diagnosis did nothing helpful for me and instead it kept me in harms way with the added bonus of stigma that still follows me around. Years later my psych apologised on behalf of him and others who didn't see the violence I was living with at the time, and he changed my diagnosis/es to other stuff including ptsd. I feel very passionately about personality disorder stuff because of those experiences.

Annnyway, long story short, I have always struggled with aspects of personality disorders that I would consider unacceptable in myself, which is ultra complicated considering I still live with a certain one (if you ask my psych which I don’t tend to do 😉). I feel so incredibly off and really very wrong in writing that as, like you, I tolerate (and then some) them in others especially, as you mentioned, if the underlying reasons are there. To me those underlying reasons are always there and are almost always trauma related which I have nothing but respect for. Yet still I couldn’t accept them of myself. They would be beat-up-for-able stuff. I am working on giving myself the compassion and kindness that I give others but far out it is not easy and it is very much a work in progress.

I guess I just wanted to share that as I think I can relate to what you’re experiencing to an extent. I hope it’s OK for you that I am about to push post.

Would it help to know for sure whether this was a beat-up-for-able thing? Not that I think I anything is beat-up-for-able in you at all, but I get that it really feels that way for you.