I have had a lot of counselling over the years but none of it has made any material impact, beyond feeling better for a brief few hours/days. I still think I am weird. I still think everyone else's feelings matter more than mine, I still think the guy selling a guitar is going to think I am a weird incompetent person if I message him back to say: On second thought, I can't afford to buy it, sorry. Thus buying a guitar I cannot afford, because I worry what a total stranger thinks of me having a perfectly valid reason not to buy it. It is ridiculous.
I am very argumentative. I also believe I have it all worked out. I have told myself that I actually really like myself, I like being “weird”, I like being spontaneous and impulsive at times, but that I just want to learn how to not care about what others think. Over and over and over, therapy has focused on that. Because that is what I told the counsellors what my problem was. Because I have repeated the mantra: I don’t hate myself, I just worry about what others think of me so please help me to care less about that. And I can be very convincing when I think I am 100% right about something.
For years I have told myself my FEELINGS are wrong in the equation. After all, I like myself (objectively speaking, I can see I am nice, funny, impulsive, caring, clever, inspirational and so on. Being able to see that must mean the same as being able to feel that. So what tell myself is: I like myself, I just need help finding my place in society).
I pride myself on having a rational brain. Society praises me, and people in general, for having a rational brain. So it seems perfectly simple: Change the emotions I have about the fact and that’s it.
But is it really the feelings that are wrong? I am starting to think that I TELL myself I FEEL happy with myself because rationally I KNOW I am all those nice things. And knowing must mean the same as feeling it.
But if that is the case, if I genuinely like myself and am happy with my place in the social world, why then did I ask 4 people yesterday about posting a picture on Facebook? Asking them if they thought the picture was weird. Asking them if people would be offended if I posted it. Checking they didn’t think people would judge me or be disgusted by it. Half a day I fretted about it. HALF A DAY. ABOUT A PICTURE.
Or that time I wanted to buy a new guitar. Asked 5 people if they thought I should. Not because I needed their opinion about the guitar. But because I worried others might think I was crazy to do a 4 hour round trip for a guitar I know I do not need and could not really afford. And after deciding I shouldn’t buy it, I worried so much that a complete stranger would judge me as stupid or impulsive for telling him I wanted to buy it, that I was too mortified to say: Eerhm, I was a bit impulsive, sorry I won’t be buying it after all. So the guitar, lovely as it is, now reminds me all the time of not being able to say: I have changed my mind.
Or, now that I know my ex has become a vegan (who IS she???), LITERALLY every time I put meat in my mouth, I wonder if I should become a vegan too because if someone as flaky as she can do it and have the discipline to do something good for the planet that we frankly should all be doing, then surely, I should be able to do it too. If I was really a good person, I would just do it. Right?
That doesn’t really sound like someone who loves and respects herself. I have spent years and years and years, constructing a narrative around myself. That the logic is right, it is just the feelings that are wrong. That construction is now so strong I can not get through it anymore. One therapist after the other has accepted me telling them what I think the problem is that I need help solving with. They have walked around this self-constructed building/idea I have of myself. They have helped me in trying to look for a door or a window in that walled-off section. Because I kept telling them: I KNOW there is a window here someone. I just need your help finding it. We do not need to destroy this whole building, we just need a inject some feelings into it.
This time, the therapist has said: yeah, that’s all bollocks. You SAY you like yourself, but NOTHING that you say about how you live and feel, backs that up. The implication here of course is that I am trying to fix the wrong problem. I want to build on a foundation that is actually not there. I believe the foundation is: I like myself, now let’s help me accept that feeling. In reality, I don’t like myself. I don’t believe I am worthy, I don’t believe it doesn’t matter if people think I am weird, as long as I am happy with it. Before I can learn to live with myself, I need to accept I don’t like myself.
He’s right. There are no doors or windows in the fortified walls I have created. I will never find them. I can't fix the bits and pieces that are wrong with the building, adding a bit of flourish here and there, but keeping it fundamentally the same. The building itself is fundamentally flawed. It has no right to exist and does not serve any useful purpose. In fact, it restricts me and any hope of learning to enjoy who and what I am.
And for the first time, a therapist has said: I will not be complicit in you lying to yourself. You either are prepared to take a sledgehammer to the story you have told yourself, or it won’t work. And if you are not prepared to do that, then I am not the right therapist for you, I refuse to collude with you.
I think he is right. I have seen him 3 times now. And every time, I am wiped out for the rest of the day. Exhausted. I have never felt like that in any therapy.
So there it is: I don’t like myself. I will put others first to my own detriment. I worry that complete strangers think I am weird, unprofessional, unreliable, irresponsible, socially inept, arrogant and self-obsessed.
I think it is
time to change that. I asked the therapist how to do that and the bastard
wouldn’t give me the answer. He just smiled encouragingly, handed me a
sledgehammer and said: Go on, strike the first blow. It will hurt. It will
reverberate around your whole body. And I will be here to make sure you keep swinging
that sledgehammer until you have cleared away the rubble. So you can start with
a clean slate. You can do it.
I picked up the hammer. This is the first blow: I don’t like myself. Who knew.
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