Forward & Back

[Friday]

@Kaia ... Both ideas are good ones.

I used to do that with work. Intense job, and crisis mode would bleed over into the rest of my life. Long as I wasn't silly and took a vacation or anything, things mostly worked out. Hmmm. Food for thought. Balance, balance, balance. Seems to keep coming down to that one, yeah? How to get just enough oomph, without the FFS stupid.

Also, reframing in therapy might help a lot. Very much worth a shot.

 

[Chava]

Never imagined I'd make it to adulthood. Then very impulsive, perpetual-present (no tomorrow or next week or next year). I still don't have plans but I bought a house. Seemed great (I do like it) but that turned out to be really stressful. It forced me into a little small groove of future-oriented thought. I had to stop impulsively blowing everything in my checking and savings accounts. I need to fix the garage!! It's weird. But even in college, I started a degree and told myself it might not be "forever" (turns out I love my work). So for me, it really always is about taking a sort of impulsive leap (though I swear there is some intuition involved) and making my future as I go...it's still turning out better than much of the past, so day by day (with a better budget) is good for now.

"Future" is overwhelming. Are you able to narrow it down to one goal or just a starting point? All big changes are made of little ones, so they say...

 

[sun seeker]

You've just taken me back to years ago when I was asked that. My answer was.....survive?

Yeah, me too.

A career counselor asked me last summer where I see myself being in five years. I had no clue how to answer that and told her as much, but what was really going through my mind was "umm, alive?"

Foreshortened future. I don't exactly think I'll die, but have so little sense of control over my future I don't have any clear plans beyond the next few months (and even those could change at a moment's notice).

Sorry @FridayJones, no brilliant ideas for you at the moment. I'm not at my best at the right now either.

 

[Recovery4Me]

@theotherside within the list you scroll down to your state in the mag. I found a great T that way.

 

[Digz]

I know I used to freeze up like that in therapy. Not just future-based questions, but everything. The anxiety over-rode my brain and my thoughts - like you say, it just went blank. I could not get anything out or respond in any way. We often sat there in silence for long periods.
My therapist used to say, "just say the simple, honest, dumb stuff".
What he meant was, if your brain is freezing on you, going blank when he asks you to consider the future, that's what you say - that simple observation... "My mind freezes and goes blank when you ask me questions about the future".
If you can manage to get that out, then it allows him to lead you or plan for how to address this... I guess. Hopefully! Worth I try though, right?
Good luck. I feel your pain. I'd hate to count the amount of hours I've sat in silence in a therapist's office.

 

[jaccat]

I had an urge to say Future? What's one of them?

I have never been able to plan for the future, never been able to see much father than the next month or two. Even that's a struggle. My life has just been a constant falling into things or me deciding to 'do the right thing' regardless of consequences. My therapist regularly asks me what I see myself doing in the future and I'm like Uh... She knows that. I think that's why she keeps asking, because she's waiting for the answer to change.
I read something about how part of PTSD is the inability to make decisions. If you can't care for yourself how can you decide what you want? Drives me nuts. I'm struggling with it at the moment. I'm beginning to realise what I don't want, no clearer to realising what I do.

 

[Digz]

I guess knowing what you don't want is a step in the right direction. That's progress, right? Celebrate the small gains. Don't forget to congratulate yourself for that! If you eliminate approximately another several hundred possibilities, then you'll probably know what you want! :P

 

[shimmerz]

in order to sort my PTSD stuff I need some kind of stability. Which means getting a job & renting an apartment. Having some external structure.

This is my life right now. It seems like a loop that keeps coming back to itself. And my peeps are constantly asking me about 'what I will do for work'. My son just kept going and going on me last night about it. How many times do I have to say I can't go there right now?

It has eased a bit because I am trying to make it smaller. What am I going to do in the next 60 seconds? Dishes. Okay, I did future shit. Not big future shit, but future shit just the same. Then it went to making a list of 'what am I wanting to do today'. Small victories. Then I finally got to some things I will do this week (doctor, Wednesday night group etc). Now I can flirt with future but only if I go there and only for a short time. Nobody else is allowed to lead me there yet. I put that down to not being able to deal with the emotion of feeling that I potentially have no future prospects.

Yes, I get it. Natural response to my f'ed up situation.