Short And Long Term Goals?

[Sally sue]

Hello,

I was in my DBT class today and they want us to work on listing our short and long term goals. I can come up with some short term goals, but it's like there's a giant void in my head for anything related to long-term goals! What is that all about? It's like I can't see anything in the future....

Does anyone feel this way?

How can I make a list of goals when I don't believe i and/or there's nothing there?

The T said I should write a list and pretend that if I was someone else or a completely healed me, what would my goals be :(? I don't know!

I don't see tomorrow, next week, next year! They don't seem real.:sick:

 

[Lionheart]

Long term goals are good I guess, but for me, a live-life-day-by-day sort of guy, long term goals seem a bit unreasonable. I suppose I am like you in that I don't see much in the way of a distant future say, 20 years from now, and one reason for that is that I don't take for granted that I will even still be alive then.

Perhaps I should follow your therapists advise and give it a try, but I wanted to mainly let you know that you are not alone with having difficulty in imagining long term goals.

I can see a tomorrow and a next week, but that is because I have been on a healing path for many years now and have been working towards short term goals for some time.

 

[arfie]

I think that is the whole point of the exercise. Difficulty with long-term goals is a problem for many of us. Many of us had our childhood dreams crushed brutally and/or not nurtured at all.

Give it a try. See what happens. Ballerina? Fire fighter?

When I grow up, I wanna be a cocker spaniel.

 

[keifer]

I find I have to wait until I'm stable to write things like that. You may not know it right now or tomorrow or next week, but sometime should come where you get this thought, gee I'd like to do this or get to this place in life. Not knowing is also OK in my book. I think it's important you think about it more than having an answer.

 

[TLight]

I live in the present and my only goal in life is peace. I figure anything your supposed to do comes from that. I used to be driven by goals and now I think it's a bunch of hokey. Just try to enjoy each moment and add up as many as you can. That's the goal.

 

[franciemarnie]

When I have had PTSD symptoms bad, I have had a sense of a foreshortened future. But then that passes and I can see a little something on the horizons again.

I wonder what your dreams and goals were when you were little.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Well how about this...

You seem to want to heal, otherwise you wouldn't even bother trying, and I doubt you'd be here posting. The general consensus is that PTSD is a healing journey, not something that is fixed tomorrow. Is it safe to say that one of your long term goals is healing?

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but could this possibly be a long term goal of yours that perhaps went unrecognized?

I find goal making to be hard because I think of the end result and then inevitably end up on the wrong path anyway. I'm sticking to medium range goals for now. That is, continue with school and study what I love without knowing the exact result (ie career). The same goes for relationships. I've always had a hard time living for today, and in some ways I think this is paradoxical as I've heard that other trauma survivors can't think about tomorrow. But, my mind coped by ignoring today and always hoping for a better tomorrow. But I digress...

 

[Sally sue]

Thank you all for your feedback!

I told the T after that "I want to be who I was before!"(as a long term goal). She said that I needed to be realistic and another student said "well, you could learn to accept and love the 'new you'." But I don't want to be this "new me" :cry: but I guess that's "resisting" and that's bad :(. Resisting the reality of what is could be causing me to miss out (according to the class T) on good stuff now.

But why ask me what my long term goals are if I can't have the ones I want? I feel like I'm being punished:depressed:. I'm sorry, I'm being whiny.

 

[franciemarnie]

You can have any goal you want in the world.

It's good to listen to feedback, but this is your life. Dream whatever you want. It could come true.

If your goal is to be like you were before, maybe list those aspects of your life you no longer have, but still want and see if there is a way to get them back.

Some things are non-negotiable. Like recovered memories. But you could find a true serenity, not a dissociated state of buried feelings. That's an example from my life. I don't know yours.

You could figure out what it is you liked about the old you and see what is standing in your way.

Anything is possible.

 

[Sally sue]

Thank you franciemarnie :)

 

[digger]

Perhaps one of your goals could be to be able to set goals? Only half joking there. I have real problems with being able to see the future in any long term sort of way, so one of my goals I think would be to get to a place were I could.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Have you learned about radical acceptance yet? I think it's a DBT skill. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. I think that radical acceptance could really help you with being able to accept the reality that you will never be the exact same pre-trauma person again.