Repeated Trauma When You Can't Do Anything?

[joeylittle]

If I told you 8 years ago that even half of what I've been through was even remotely likely, you'd say I was paranoid and catastrophizing and all those cognitive distortions.

No I wouldn't. It's only that 8 years ago is not the same as now - and that is a major thing you would learn how to manage in CBT.

Not that everything in the world is actually safe and awesome and sunshine and roses. Not at all - only that the way we allow our past experiences to shape our core beliefs is something that can cause us a great deal of suffering in the present moment.

I really do care about what you are going through, @Sunset - I've read many of your threads and the one thing I don't see is your willingness or readiness to pick yourself up and take a risk again, because of the ways you've been hurt in the past. But eventually (I think) you are going to have to.

Taking the focus off the "why" of it all and putting it on something very, very controlled and defined, like CBT, could really help you get to the next step, and once you're up on that step, you might see more options for yourself. That's all. I truly don't mean to be sounding like I'm preachy or that I'm not hearing you.

 

[Sunset]

I think...feeling like I'm being heard is a big thing. It's like...suppose you get up and go to cross an intersection. Wait for the light, look both ways, and bam, you get hit by a car. Get out of the hospital, go to cross, be even more careful, bam, you get hit again. And this happens a half-dozen times.

Now you're starting to be afraid of crossing the street. People tell you you're paranoid, people don't get hit that often. They express shock that you've been hit as many times as you have, often even telling you that you can't be right because no one gets hit that often. They tell you to be more careful but the only ways they have to do that is wait for the light and look both ways.

And people are telling you, you can't spend your whole life not crossing the street. But when you ask how to make it safer they just tell you to do the things you've already been doing, and don't spend so much energy worrying about it because people almost never get hit. And when you point out how often you've been hit they just shrug and tell you to wait for the light next time (no matter how many times you've said you did).

That's sort of where I feel like I'm at. I've been hit more often than not trying to cross the street. No one can tell me why, or what I can do to not get hit. But they keep insisting that it's safe and people don't get hit that often. And I just...can't believe that.