Common advice my therapist tells me

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I saw my therapist today. She knows about my feelings over about being single but wants me to move on from my past and accept the present. She’s said similar things before but what she said today has made me think about some common advice she gives me:

“If you aren’t actively looking for a relationship, do things you enjoy.”

I suppose it’s a pill that’s been sitting at the top of my throat but I keep refusing to swallow.

Last edited by Marknis on 14 Oct 2019, 5:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What types of things do you enjoy?

Please do things that you enjoy, regardless of relationship status

Some married people still do things that they enjoy

Maybe you have a hard time finding a date. Doesn't mean that there is something wrong with you

There is something wrong with everything

Yes, my therapist was obsessively keen on that! But accepting things are as they are is infinitely easier said than done: no denying it. On the plus side, I can vouch for the fact it is a trick one can learn (i.e. accepting things are as they are), and the effort of learning and practising that trick is well worth while. Maybe more worthwhile than you can yet believe, where you are; but perhaps even now you can see some merit in it?Yeah, mine had to spend many years repeatedly saying the same things to me, in different ways and with varying levels of exasperation and passion! I'm still pretty stubborn and inflexible now, but I was even more stubborn and inflexible then. Stubborn inflexibility can go with the A.S.D. territory, I believe...Wow. If I may say so, this is a very wise and profound remark on your part. I spent many years choking on a number of pills of exactly that type. I can confirm that learning to swallow them was among the very hardest things I've ever had to do (in my own case, cannabis helped, especially on returning home from the therapy session, but that's not necessarily good advice for anyone else to follow, and anyway you may not approve of illegal substances or they may not agree with you). Learning to accept that things are as they are was another incredibly difficult trick for me to learn, and I still have to practise that damned trick pretty hard every day in order to stay sane (or somewhere near sane), but I'm continuing to get better and better at it as time goes on.

I suppose it's a bit like an anorexic always has to keep fighting against slipping back into anorexia, or an addict always has to keep fighting not to slip back into addiction: but there are a hell of a lot of people out there who have somehow managed to drag themselves out of those black holes and never slip back. It's one hell of a trick to pull off, but it can be done. I regard my own painful escape from the black hole I was in as comparable. If that makes any sense.

Reminded of one time my psychotherapist lost it and yelled: "Oh, for crying out loud, Raphael! Half of you's brooding over the past all the time, and half of you's busy dreading the future! There's none of you left to be here, in the present, to actually BE YOU!" Or something along those lines. Yours ever said anything like that to you, by any chance?!

Sometimes not easy to get much pleasure out of supposedly "enjoyable" activities or pastimes if you're depressed. But sometimes you can surprise yourself. I remember sometimes being slightly angry when I caught myself deriving some tiny morsel of pleasure from something, when I'd really set myself up to not enjoy it at all! And scientifically I believe the state of being depressed can chemically limit enjoyment. Still, in principle, it does sound like good advice.

Sincere best wishes. Very good to read this latest post of yours, if I may say so.

I’ve been saying this to you for years.

I think I am in the spot you should be aiming to get to. As in, I'm also single despite not wanting to be, but the difference between me and you is that I'm not depressed about it. I can enjoy the things I like even without a relationship. The reason I look for a relationship is not because I'd think that only that could make me happy, but because I believe it might make me happier.

Yup. Can vouch for the fact this is a possible state of being! Still have to make active effort to stave off depression and cope with other issues, but very few days now go by with no enjoyment whatever (tho' I did have a seriously lousy week last week, as it happens), and I have no complaints about my life now except the usual, e.g. not happening to be a millionaire, those lazy dishes that somehow can't be bothered to wash themselves and keep expecting me to do it, etc.

For bonus points, I also know I'm happier single than in a relationship which was anything less than totally inspiring and magical. As those relationships are pretty rare, being single feels more of a choice (I did deliberately end my last one) than an albatross round my neck, even tho' naturally my Asperger's makes it harder for me to "find someone" in the first place; that's a fact I accept, because it isn't going to change whether I kvetch about it or not, so why waste my time and energy kvetching?.

However, turn the clock back to, say, 1995 or so, and I'd have refused point-blank to believe this kind of comfy spot could even possibly exist, anywhere, in any conceivable universe.

Here's hoping Marknis may yet move closer to a more comfortable sort of spot for him, even if it is currently hard for him to believe in any such place.

I remember back when I went under a different name here, a lot of people would give me advice like focusing on things I could change for the better to be more attractive to a potential girlfriend instead of just feeling depressed about my situation but my mind just couldn’t take in what people were telling me.



Reading, listening to new music or bands that are my favorites, playing video games (Not obsessively. It’s usually once or twice a week now), taking walks at parks, and socialization as long as it doesn’t become too stressful.

Last edited by Marknis on 16 Oct 2019, 1:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yup. That was a problem I also had for quite a lot of years (altho' it is also the case that a lot of the advice people were offering simply was not the right advice for me: they were offering advice that had worked for them, or maybe for someone else they'd known, but I wasn't where they were assuming I was).

If I may say so, you have done very well to identify the mind's refusal to take in good advice as a problem.

The mind can get quite attached to depression and quite possessive of it, so naturally when the mind spots something that looks like it could remove any of that oh-so-precious depression, the mind strenuously repels that unwelcome something! If you see what I mean. But meanwhile the mind cleverly conceals from you yourself what it, supposedly on your behalf, is actually doing for its own twisted ends.

I hope this makes sense to someone out there, because it looks utterly preposterous now that it's on my screen in English in front of me! My psychotherapist frequently reprimanded me for "sabotaging" myself. It took me a few years to see this was the kind of thing she was getting at. So far as I consciously knew, I wanted to be happy. But my mind, secretly, had other plans for me! Unbeknown to me, my mind was pretty happy with my being unhappy, so it always fought as hard as it knew how to protect and preserve my depression.

I remember someone with the username mordy trying to reach out to me through MSN because he said I reminded him and if I needed advice from an “older you”, he was open for contact. Unfortunately, I kept hesitating and never corresponded with him. I wonder if he could’ve helped me and the years 2006-2019 would’ve gone in a better life direction for me.

Well you've probably had enough therapy by now to have gathered that (shall we all say this together, boys and girls? One, two, three...) you can't change the past, ha ha! So it does sound maybe a shame about that unmade contact, but there again, who's to say he would necessarily have been able to wave the magic wand that needed waving?

Your hesitation there might possibly be consistent with the same "mind-not-letting-you-do-anything-that-could-actually-help-with-the-depression" syndrome I was attempting to describe above. On the other hand, it could simply have been genuine hesitation!

From one or two of your most recent comments it sounds, maybe, as though you just might currently be in a place from which progress could begin to be possible. I really hope so!

You've probably heard the old Winston Churchill line from 1942: "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

So good luck with that. There can be some false dawns, and there can be times when you're disappointed if the slow progress seems to have ceased just when you were beginning to feel that it was progress, but from what I've seen in my brief time on Wrong Planet, you actually have some sincere well-wishers who will be here for you, and some of them have evidently had some pretty long journeys through therapy themselves (even if the journeys they had to make were not actually the same as the one you'll have to make).

A lot of people have.

A friendly patron told me something like “I hope you find joy in whatever for life.” in response to telling her I wish I could tell her I have a girlfriend. I just can’t let go of the 13 years of struggle because it would mean they were all for nothing.

Unless you enjoy something like a felony, please do things that you enjoy

Um.

Well, I am not one of those who believes that "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger": some extremely traumatic stuff has occurred in my life that has definitely left me permanently weakened! And not necessarily even any wiser, either!

However.

Although my "years of struggle" (to borrow your phrase), when I was younger, were largely wasted years, for one thing they at least now give me a very strong incentive not to slip back into that horribly uncomfortable and unhappy way of being. It is a daily battle not to slip back, but it gets easier and easier as time passes, and I remember the Bad Old Days vividly enough to convince myself I don't want to revert to them! And on a slightly more positive note, perhaps, when I'm lying in bed at night, I can sometimes feel the skin on my face stretching as I involuntarily smile in the dark, while reflecting on how much happier and more at peace I feel now, and in recent years, than I used to, and indeed much more than I ever would have believed possible. So, paradoxically, recalling the Bad Old Days kind of cheers me up and makes me appreciate stuff a lot more than I used to.

This is the best I can do as it's way past my usual bedtime. Sorry if it's a disappointing answer to your question. If I can think of a better one I'll post it to-morrow.

I predict someone may suggest, and probably with unnecessary sarcasm or brusqueness, that "letting go" of all that struggle is in one way exactly what you urgently need to do, for your own present-day comfort living inside your own head. There may be some merit in such a suggestion, so long as it is not made too curtly. Sometimes people seem to post potentially good advice but in so brusque and cutting a fashion that it appears offensive, and indeed can cause actual offence. I can never tell if those people realize (or care) how hurtful their posts could actually be.

But now I'm struggling to express myself coherently, from sheer tiredness (I am sober, for once!).

Well, overnight I thought of another response which you may find even more trite and unsatisfactory than my last one, and if so, please accept my apologies. You posts give a poignant idea of the place you're in, and that place rings a lot of bells with me, but it would be foolish of anyone to fall into the trap of believing he or she knew exactly where you were, because ultimately only you (and, hopefully, your therapist) can judge that.

And of course, one can sometimes realize, way down the line, that one was not actually where one thought one was anyway!

So it's alarmingly easy to be telling someone the wrong thing at the wrong time, even if the thing itself does in some way have some validity...

Anyway.

The years of struggle have got you to where you are now. Chronologically, this is undeniable: you may not have travelled far in those years, but in order to get to this place, you had to pass through that time. If this turns out to be a place from which you can ultimately start progressing to a happier and more fruitful place, then whatever it took to get you this far was necessary and worthwhile. Maybe?

Not sure I'm 100% convincing myself, to be honest, but that would be one way of looking at it.

Apologies if this is a really vexing and unhelpful post. The good intent behind it was sincere, if that's any consolation!