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Trying to reduce the maladaptive coping tool of self contempt

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Justmehere

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I've been confronted (with kindness) by several people lately on all the ways my self contempt shows up in my life: my self hatred, relentless inner critic, low self esteem, tendency towards perfectionism, negative self talk, deep shame, guilt, etc...

At the core of it is a prideful distorted belief that it was all my fault and I'm inherently a terrible person.

I believe this kind of thinking is prideful. Here's why: if I think it's all my fault, then that means I have super human powers to control other people and cause them to become violent abusers. It also implies I could have the power to force them to become good decent human beings.

The reality is that I do not have such powers.

But I hang on to my self contempt all the same...

My therapist recently asked me, "What it would mean if (the abuse) it wasn't your fault?"

I became angry at the question itself. I began to list all the things I did wrong as a child and adult, to try to tell her I have made mistakes! She knows this! I have indeed made very big mistakes in my life. To every mistake she said nope, no that's doesn't cause people to become abusers. That doesn't make it you deserving of the way you have been treated.

She's right. (Damnit) I know this stuff... but I'm still resisting this soooo much, it's driving me up the wall.

I'm trying, so hard, to believe that I really was powerless to stop what happened to me... When my therapist and I talked about it, my symptoms immediately spiked. That's when I realized that all this self hate isn't just a distorted way of seeing the world, but it's how I am trying to cope. It's become my basic way of viewing the world, and my therapist is concerned how it's holding me bck.

This self contempt is a maladaptive coping skill to try to lessen the pain of the truth that I was hurt very badly, and I was truly powerless to stop it from happening. Take it away, bam, I'm hit with PANIC.

I'm scared to believe I can be a success. I'm working so hard, but I'm getting stuck, paralyzed and essentially running away from opportunities, out of fear. I feel like the version of me that can succeed is a fraud and my flaws will invariably mean horrible rejection and disaster. I'm stuck, so stuck. I'm getting in my own way. I feel like I'm in a dirty fight with myself over this fear of stepping out of the self contempt. I do have value.

I'm rather annoyed with myself at the moment, and posting this because I'm hoping someone can relate - and I'm totally open to any feedback. I don't really trust my thinking and what I believe about myself very well on any of this.
 
I was truly powerless to stop it from happening.

I think the powerlessness part is very difficult for most people. I know it has been for me. All the 'could haves', 'should haves' and 'would haves' are just another way of refusing to accept that some things are beyond our control. Even more frightening is that if we accept that if we were powerless in the past we could be again in the future.
 
Yep...this one hits home. I hold myself back from completing certain things because I'm not real sure how I'll handle it if/when things go really well. I'm used to the clean-up duty of messes I create, but have no freakin' clue how to deal with any kind of success management, even with the things I know I'm good at. So many roots left to dig up. So much fertilizer steadily piling up on top of them. So little energy left to even want to dig, some days. So damn frustrating.
 
"What it would mean if (the abuse) it wasn't your fault?"
I think that these types of psychological shifts threaten our entire view of SELF. Identity is built upon the feedback that we were forced into believing as children, which is why this developmental stuff is so wicked hard to challenge. I mean really, it means starting from scratch if these fundamental truths were actually not true at all.

For myself, this literally felt like the death of myself. Every goddamm event in my life took on a new meaning. and on a psychic level? There were no words to describe how that felt, how close to the full bore crazy precipice that it took me. And after all of the losses I had already incurred, I wasn't sure that I was up to the task of losing ME (as I knew me) too.

It also has implications for further losses. I lost my SO. The place that I was calling home. The kind people that I had met. Any hopes and dreams for an easier path. Gone.
 
So I've been thinking more about your post. It has hit a nerve somewhere in me.

The self-criticism seems to have two functions for both of us. One positive and one negative. It protects us from the helplessness that comes with trauma but it prevents us from accepting success. If we succeed it means we aren't inherently bad, hopeless, etc. But it also means we are stuck with admitting we were helpless.

It does seem like a vicious circle doesn't it?
 
So I've been thinking more about your post. It has hit a nerve somewhere in me.

The self-criticism se...
That makes more sense than what my last T said. I was really angry because of my success. Especially, success at the places that I was being undervalued. She said that I tie success into the rape in that I somehow "paid the price." So if I am not valued for my success, it was like I was raped for nothing. I still don't quite understand what she was saying, but your statement makes sense.
 
I can totally relate to everyone's post. However, my self-contempt is wrapped within the permanence my PTSD self stigma. I am in my 60's and had tried unsuccessfully to re-wire since age 18 in countless years of therapy (on going to this day). I had hoped that with work and dedication that I might be normal one day and accepted in larger circles.

I hid in education most of my life: it was safe there. I felt free there. But upon retirement, I found that all the processing, education, self compassion and esteem could not erase my PTSD. As some people have trauma that does not manifest nor tarry in the label zone...at times I do feel vibrant self-contempt at being captured.:meh: And that is OK.
 
One of the most useful tools I've ever been given was a friend/councilor who used to go like this :O_o: and sometimes grab me by the shoulders and shake me <cough> Clearly, not an infrequent event/utterance.

Yo! Put the bat down! You're hurting a friend of mine!

Simple, right?

Certainly doesn't take care or everything. There are many things I know to be true about myself that not beating myself up doesn't cover (Like I know I'm a monster, I just don't particularly care, most of the time. In point of fact, it's often useful to have a monster on-side. So it's something that I usually DGAF about, but when I do? It's something I'm more likely to be grateful for, rather than regret.) And it reeeeeally doesn't begin to touch the motivational speeches I give myself that may sound terrible, but really just make me smile, dig deep, and get fierce. :sneaky: (Thank. God. One of my problems with namby pamby bullshit is it's sweeping generalizations & throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Not everything that sounds bad, is.) <<< On one side of the spectrum. Meanwhile on the other >>> It's not a cure all. While it doesn't touch the stuff I like, it also doesn't touch some of the stuff I don't like. Which I'm not going to itemize, as it's depressing.

Instead? It's a very targeted attack. It specifically covers my beating myself up / when I'm hurting myself by my own words/thoughts/feelings/actions.

It was always like icewater when she said it. Because, f*ck me, this is ME we're talking about. I'm allowed to treat myself like shit. But shifting my perspective? I would beat the hell out of anyone who treated a friend of mine like that, and cheerfully hop on board with reeducating someone who thought they could treat a friend of a friend like that. Major cognitive dissonance. Screeching records. Thinking of myself, not as me, but as her friend. The idea that I was hurting her friend? Unconscionable. That would make me her enemy, to be hurting her friend. :confused:

It took several years for it to become my knee-jerk reaction.

To catch myself beating myself up, or stop before I could start, and automatically shift perspective. Put the bat down. You're hurting a friend of mine. Okay.

No matter how much I want to? I'm not going to. We don't hurt our friends. Even if that friend happens to be me. Was super-useful later, once I became a mom. Because it added an extra layer. I'm not going to beat up her friend, or his mom. Not because it hurts me. I can handle hurt. But because it hurts them.
 
AH here we go. I can write about this because this is YOU and not me. (no, no, do not even bother to point out that I've had that exact conversation in therapy I mean WORD FOR f*ckING WORD.)

So I have written almost a f*cking book about this in my diary for all the good it does me. But it all started with this goddamn little cartoon for me.
You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you - The Oatmeal
Cute cartoon, eh? Even if you don't love The Oatmeal as much as I do
But what you're talking about is that whole thing where he starts talking about Core Beliefs and Yeah we prattle on about them all day long because we are fed the psychiatric bullshit that our therapist like to throw at us and we willingly regurgitate like a momma bird because ... well, maybe to show we are listening? Or maybe because we want to feel like we aren't wasting our money?

In either case, look at the little cartoon segment when he gets to Core Beliefs and what does he say the amygdala does? It goes into hyper protect mode. KILL! KILL! KILL!
Ok So Matt was talking about sociology but it works for all of us with PTSD as well and that little nasty backfire effect (yeah I've gone so far as to listen to You're Not So Smart and the whole three part series)

I had the exact same reaction.
And I was absolutely frustrated by both what he had said and my inability to work around it.
His explanation was that this takes time and it seems that the backfire effect is in full swing if you directly confront someone in this manner and say 'it wasn't you're fault'
That's f*cking BULLSHIT and you know it T, and what's more I have TONS of proof on how.
:O_o:
J latched on to the idea of pretending my pinky toe was my amygdala and to just sit with it. Well, We all know how WELL I sit with anything. (ahem, a brief glance over the last few months with a TBI and broken leg prove I do not sit well with anything)
When I started digging down into the podcast
Podcast
There was some useful information about how to deal with OTHER PEOPLE who experienced the backfire effect (like say someone who thinks that because they read and have a conformational bias that ... Obama was born in another country) being bludgeoned with information showing them that this was simply not true didn't work. But talking to the person and going through it in a sort of "let's explore this together" idea worked far better at changing peoples core beliefs.
Now, I have ZERO idea how to do that with myself. I don't like myself all that much and I don't fancy giving myself the easy way out on any of this. Ever.
If my brain will ever let me listen to podcasts again I plan on listening to see if I can figure out things more but it seems that changing a core belief- one that your whole world view stands on is more difficult than one might believe- there are even some people who will look at something realize it's false and then because they have NOTHING ELSE to firmly believe in, will revert back to the old belief because well... they need SOMETHING to believe or the whole world comes crumbling down.

Lots there in order to say, yeap. I get ya.
 
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