Tired of being traumatized

[catharsis_logs]

There are a series of things I want to go through with a therapist, or find books for. How to feel less afraid or anxious all the time. How to handle stress and being overwhelmed better. How to find things important- like with deadlines, I can meet deadlines posed by other people who I care about how they think of me like: professors or (eventual) employers but not for some reason: myself. How to keep a schedule. How to not be afraid of big time/long term commitments: long video games, writing long (fan)fiction. How to be long-term friends with people. What's polite to do in society and not apparently? How to help me understand people and their motivations. How to handle poor emotional object permanence (a problem with the long-term friendship thing, specifically RL friendships but I have been known to accidentally ghost online folk too). I'm sure there are more, but the ones I've listed so far are the really important ones for right now because all of them affect my life in one way or another, and all of them are causing difficulty for me and living my life as well. There's more I want to say, but I've abruptly lost the energy to talk about them. Maybe more later.

Comments

[alatefeline]

I have all of these exact same problems.

Also thank you for the phrase 'emotional object permanence,' that is very much useful to me.

Can we brainstorm together? Books, online resources, practices...things that help.

[catharsis_logs]

You're welcome! One of my therapists actually introduced that concept to me when I told her that sometimes when I'm friends with someone, the longer I spend away from that friend and (ironically) the closer I am or feel to them the more the... relationship seems to warp.

I lose the coherency and consistency of their emotions towards me and then self-doubt settles in and then I worry about why they're friends with me in the first place, and basically just turning all the things that I think they like about me into thinking that they think the opposite.

Thus it's a surprise and a relief when I see that person again and they reiterate that they enjoy spending time with me (or if they seem very enthused about seeing me in general). On the other hand, the longer I spend away from someone, the more my emotional object permanency fades, the more anxious I get about seeing them again and the more catastrophizing I do and it gets harder and harder to see them again. EDIT: it also doesn't help that my short-term memory isn't the best and I don't tend to remember conversations or what was discussed with any accuracy.

I feel the same way about relatives. The more time I spend away from relatives that I really enjoy spending time with (my godparents) the more that relationship deteriorates in my mind and the more I doubt their love for me. With my godparents I generally become more upset the more I don't see them and start demanding to see them again, so I can refresh those emotions.

The way I understand it it's a lot like babies general object permanence. They see someone and that person exists, they don't see someone and that person doesn't exist anymore. Emotional object permanence is (obviously) about emotions. For me, when I am away from someone's positive emotions towards me the more those emotions deteriorate for me and the less secure I grow in those emotions, especially their positivity. Which... makes it really hard to reconnect with people. It's also really my own doubt about other's emotional object permanence. When I'm away from someone I generally tend to think (while knowing logically that is not the case) that I vanish from their mind until they see me again and then I'm... refreshed in their mind.

All of this also goes along with my occasional existential issues. The more time I spend away from people, the more I feel that they don't exist. So it's a little bit of general object permanence as well haha.

Also hell yeah we can brainstorm together! I plan on posting more here about these same issues when I go back to therapy in January. I also like general "how to be an adult" books and "how to have relationships" books like the "dear generic-sally type stuff". I have several that I can find that I can post the name and author of if you want?

Also, if you've read this far thank you. I get incredibly wordy when I think I can help someone else with my own experiences. I generally don't like to assume whatever people are thinking or feeling and generally like to situate any problem solving with another person as "here's what *I* think about what you're going through in regards to my *own* life experiences and how *I* would deal with it in an ideal situation and then maybe make some additional suggestions" then. :D

[alatefeline]

Read this, all of it. Thanks. I don't think I can spare the brainpower for a thoughtful response right now, but I do want to find time for that eventually. <3

[enemyofperfect]

Oh gosh, I really hear you about being intimidated by big projects especially. When I do something short and I complete it, I feel so good! But when I do the same amount of work on something bigger, I almost feel like I've accomplished nothing.

Since you mention books: This isn't exactly a recommendation, but for the last couple of months I've been working through The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook, and even though sometimes they really overgeneralize or oversimplify things, I feel like I'm getting some benefit out of it. You do have to be able to look past what they're saying to what they might mean, though, and sometimes there's some random prejudice, like the idea that gaining weight is always a bad thing. Maybe there are better DBT workbooks out there? I do feel like there are some useful things about the general approach.

[catharsis_logs]

Yeah! It's so much harder for me to continue a project after I've gotten a good start on it. Something that's kind of helped is that 'two sentence meme' (ie: "if you see this message write two sentences for your current project") except recently I've realized that having more than one "project" to work on at any time is really beneficial to both (or all lol) because then I can be stumped on one, go and work on another, and then so on and so forth lol. And yeah! I can watch hours upon hours of other people playing video games live, but the moment I think about playing an 100+ hours RPG I'm like "Nope, don't got time" XD

And oh wow what a small world! I have that exact book! (I got it like three years ago from my godmother who is a social worker who does therapy) It's only recently I've taken another glance at it and started working through some of the problems, but then, again, I get intimidated by doing things in order, or even just applying the advice to my daily life. And yeah, the 'advice' or 'self help' books are in my opinion things to take with a grain of salt (or a whole shaker).

[enemyofperfect]

I love the idea of having multiple projects so you can work on one when you get stumped on the other(s)! Another thing I've been thinking of trying is deliberately starting something new every day for a while, to prove to myself that I really can work on things regularly before I ask myself to work regularly on any single thing. Plus, maybe I could actually manage to tire out even my love of novelty and want to stick with one thing? IDK, I guess anything's possible. ^_^

I totally hear you about finding the book hard to work through, meanwhile. (And omg, that you already have it!) I think the only reason I've gotten as far as I am is because I'm checking in with someone else who's doing it too, and I know if I slack off, so will she, heh. But hey, if you ever want to trade notes or complain or brag or anything, I've read up to chapter 6 so far!