Experiencing Therapy As Humiliating

[Tinyflame]

It strikes me that a big part of the issue might be you conflating your core belief thinking patterns with your functional thinking patterns. I know, for myself, I developed a coping system almost 30 years ago, and it has to do with two things: an enormous amount of partitioning, and a deep acceptance of my 'wrongness'.

.. the second - which is this acceptance of my wrongness (I don't have a better word for it, it basically could translate as "I am completely unlovable, I am a mistake, I am a monster") - that's the core belief part, and that is not a very helpful side of my coping. It is very maladaptive, but it's a huge part of how I have gotten through my life. It would always cause me pain, sometimes, but most of the rest of the time it was how I shut down my pain - because it was a reason for feeling the way I did. Of course I was deeply sad, monsters are probably sad. Accept it and move on.

It's filtered into my life in a very tangled way, and ultimately, it's where I hit the wall with CBT, . my sense was that I could spend 12 hours a day, every day, doing thought records and I'd never even keep up with the daily negative thoughts, let alone getting to their origins.. So, putting more focus on the trauma processing itself, and just continuing to identify and challenge that negative thinking, but also recognizing that it's likely not going anywhere until I've dealt with the trauma....that's what has made it doable for me to be working on all this stuff.

I think this is very wise above, what @joeylittle said. I think that is why ptsd can feel 'not' like a mental illness, in so far as we continue to think, or feel or function in ways which do not seem to be influenced by anything other than rational thought. You hear that here a lot (& I've said it to myself- "just get over it".)

The bad thing about self-beliefs (speaking for myself) is that I feel like I have sufficient & irrefutable evidence to draw the conclusions I do. Then I reinforce them. So for example, having low worth I treat myself in certain ways that I never would another I value. And I do it over & over when we believe it it has passed the point of 'fearing it' or 'wondering if it's so'. Like my abused dog, she wouldn't eat (originally). That being said she wouldn't have eaten even if I had put a steak out & left, it no longer mattered if she was assured no one was there. (In fact, it took the opposite, a few days of hand feeding & countless opportunities of love & fun & seeing nothing bad would happen.) Over & over for myself I mistreat my self in ways that reinforce the same. Even things like not making eye contact etc have bigger reasons. So as Joeylittle said, it's back to addressing the trauma that started the beliefs.

To add, I do think we 'feel' humiliated etc revealing much of stuff. I don't think that references to our intellect or ability to 'think' intellectually at work, but the emotions & trauma +/or even re-enactment of it (or attempts to bear with it or solve it on our own) impact all areas, like Joeylittle said. I think addressing it that way will help @theshadowoftheliving. I think going through the humiliation, fear & shame is part of what they mean of the necessity of going through it.

Dear @joeylittle, I hope it's ok to say, @shell described the potential roots of the exact feeling/ beliefs you described (I have them too), in a thread I posted. I don't want to paraphrase her in fear I won't do her justice, but she said it's to avoid the pain of rejection & abandonment.

 

[Tinyflame]

(Edited to add, Dear @joeylittle @shell's posts #69 & #73 in "Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes around in another form". )

 

[theshadowoftheliving]

I agree that I can't seem to separate out my functional versus core thinking patterns. I think this is because my work is everything to me, and has been for quite some time - it's wrapped into my identify and my friendships and literally every aspect of my life. I don't have hobbies outside of it. I don't do ANYTHING really, that isn't work related, so those sorts of thinking skills feel like the only ones I have.

I think what's kept me functioning over the years is partitioning. I've gotten really good at being able to put things aside when I can't deal with them: taking deep breaths before work and telling myself not to think about anything other than the task at hand, etc. But putting other things aside means my emotions get put aside too, which is helpful 90% of the time - it's impossible for me to work when I'm so depressed or anxious or hypervigilant.

I'm struggling now in therapy because I'm being asked not to do that - to feel my emotions all the time. Feeling emotions is making my symptoms spike. My symptoms spiking is making me panic, and getting in the way of my work.

And then I'm getting caught in the language of the therapy. I can't seem to separate out the way they talk about thinking patterns (problematic and avoidant are favorite words) with who I am. I'm equating myself as problematic, instead of just how I think ... Because how I think is how I've defined myself for so so long ....

 

[Chava]

These sound like really deep patterns you're feeling pressured to change in an extremely short amount of time. It really takes time because we have to adapt in small bits. It really can mess with your identity. I'm a workaholic. I crashed and having to slow down was horrid...I couldn't just say to myself, "relax." I developed chronic pain.

My therapist never uses words like "problematic." I totally understand the language hang-ups because I'm hyper-sensitive to shaming associations (this feels shaming...I mean, I always thought I was the problem and that's why I'd get hit...you know?). CBT reinforced all my "I'm-the-problem" feelings. It was simply the wrong therapy for me.

If you can't work through the original trauma, but only the current patterns without time to understand the context and your current or new resources, and without time to find safety and adapt at a reasonable speed, it can certainly makes things feel worse because you are ungrounded. It sounds like you're being asked to change patterns that probably work for you, with no clear alternative. There might be some black and white thinking here (like you probably don't have to feel all your feelings at work), but my sense is that this is too much of a push, and very possibly the wrong form of therapy for you (vs something maybe more humanistic and process-oriented....also focusing on helping you realize your positive resources and not just point out what your problems are).

 

[joeylittle]

I'm struggling now in therapy because I'm being asked not to do that - to feel my emotions all the time. Feeling emotions is making my symptoms spike. My symptoms spiking is making me panic, and getting in the way of my work.

I think this is actually where your therapist is just plain wrong. If you can't drop everything and go into treatment full-time, then you absolutely need a skill set that allows you to put the therapy work aside, so that it's not running 24/7. There will be a time when you feel ready to integrate it more purposefully into your daily thoughts. But I think of that as integration, not foundational work. You're still trying to assimilate the concepts. It's a little like showing someone a model of a semi truck and letting them play with it - and then 30 minutes later saying, "OK, go drive the real thing now". Nope.

I think you should give your brain some gold stars for getting you as far as you've gotten. Now, what you are after is actually changing how it processes certain things in the hope it will open up a new kind of freedom and joy in how you live your life. But it's not about throwing yourself away and rebuilding from the ground up. You need to be allowed to work from where you are, and I can only suspect your therapist does not know the depth to which you feel these things. Either that, or they are not sophisticated enough for the trauma work you need to do.