Journaling my "personal growth"

[bulletproof]

Eh... Fine. I won't deny that there's at least a part of me that is extremely resistant to change.

 

I have to say, though, I think I don't really understand what, exactly, needs to change, and what the best, most effective way to carry that change out would be.

 

There are volumes of material right on these boards regarding what needs to change. That material was all generated by the threads you started.

[bulletproof]

Eh... Fine. I won't deny that there's at least a part of me that is extremely resistant to change.

 

Also, it isn't part of you that's resistant... it's pretty much your entire being.

[MattW]

Your not serious...

 

Well, okay, I mean, I know that the general idea you guys are trying to get into my head is that I need to become a more positive person, a more positive thinker. That makes perfect sense. Granted, I think my head is so far beyond screwed up that I don't know how I'm going to get myself to become a more positive thinker, but the point remains, I get that message, and I genuinely would like to get to that point some day.

 

What I'm talking about, though, is "change" as far as actually helping me attract people into my life. I don't necessarily believe that being a more "positive" person is all it's going to take to bring people into my life. It would certainly be helpful in KEEPING people around in my life, yes, but that doesn't mean a whole lot if I can't draw them in in the first place. "Thinking positively" doesn't improve my social skills, it doesn't make me less of an introvert, it doesn't make me any better at talking to and connecting with people, it doesn't make me better at actually meeting people. It doesn't matter how positive of a thinker I am if I can't do any of these things.

 

Now, I'm not unwilling to try to "retrain" my brain into being a more positive being, but it's extremely challenging for me. My family practically raised me to be a cynical, pessimistic thinker, and a number of negative external experiences throughout my life further reinforced that development of my thinking. Starting small makes sense, and I can basically see the point of the whole "think of three good things that happened during the day" thing. Unfortunately, my mind is so warped that even that is too much of a challenge for me; like I said, I've been struggling to think of even one or two good things throughout the day. I know they don't have to be "big" things, but so many of the small things that I derive even the faintest bit of pleasure from throughout the day are just things I don't pay attention to or give a second thought to. So how do you "start smaller" than that? Clearly even "thinking of three good things" is too advanced for me, just yet.

 

I remember the therapist talking about making a commitment to myself. And the more I think about it, the more I see how problematic that really is for myself. For whatever reason, I don't really care about "committing" to myself; personally, I'd much rather find a very special lady and commit myself to her, give myself to her, do everything I can to make her happy. In my mind, that would be more important, more "pleasurable", if you will, than committing to myself.

[Batya33]

"I remember the therapist talking about making a commitment to myself. And the more I think about it, the more I see how problematic that really is for myself. For whatever reason, I don't really care about "committing" to myself; personally, I'd much rather find a very special lady and commit myself to her, give myself to her, do everything I can to make her happy. In my mind, that would be more important, more "pleasurable", if you will, than committing to myself."

 

You absolutely cannot have a healthy relationship without first being happy and comfortable in your own skin -call it "committing to yourself" if you like or whatever but I think that's a given. She cannot create that for you and someone who wants that kind of dynamic with you does not want a healthy relationship -she wants to be your puppeteer.

[BrianH46]

So you are unwilling to do anything unless if it brings you instant gratification?

[Deciduous]

I'd much rather find a very special lady and commit myself to her, give myself to her, do everything I can to make her happy. In my mind, that would be more important, more "pleasurable", if you will, than committing to myself.

 

Well that's a lovely thought, Matt.

 

But what women wants a man who cannot stand himself and puts absolutely no effort into his own well-being? What women wants a relationship with a man who is entirely dependent upon them for their happiness?

 

Is this your template for a healthy relationship?

[MattW]

So you are unwilling to do anything unless if it brings you instant gratification?

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not proud of that fact, but for the sake of consciously not being argumentative/ difficult with you guys, I do admit that that seems to be the way I look at things. I don't want to be that way, obviously, but it's a very hard habit to break. I just have a hard time thinking about the long term benefits of something, and more than that, having faith that I can actually attain those long term benefits.

 

You absolutely cannot have a healthy relationship without first being happy and comfortable in your own skin -call it "committing to yourself" if you like or whatever but I think that's a given. She cannot create that for you and someone who wants that kind of dynamic with you does not want a healthy relationship -she wants to be your puppeteer.

 

Well that's a lovely thought, Matt.

 

But what women wants a man who cannot stand himself and puts absolutely no effort into his own well-being? What women wants a relationship with a man who is entirely dependent upon them for their happiness?

 

Is this your template for a healthy relationship?

 

Oh, don't get me wrong, that's not how I view a "healthy" relationship. I wasn't condoning the fact that I feel what I wrote in that paragraph, I was more trying to acknowledge that I have a problem in that area, and that I can't figure out how to "undo" that mentality.

[Deciduous]

Clearly even "thinking of three good things" is too advanced for me, just yet.

 

Well, that's not actually true. If a masked gunman asked you, I'm sure you would think of three things quite quickly. This isn't about not having the skills. This really about self-hatred. To do things mentioned on this thread would require self-love and you are not prepared to go down that route.

[Deciduous]

Oh, don't get me wrong, that's not how I view a "healthy" relationship. I wasn't condoning the fact that I feel what I wrote in that paragraph, I was more trying to acknowledge that I have a problem in that area, and that I can't figure out how to "undo" that mentality.

 

I don't believe you, Mattw. I think that's exactly what you're hoping for. To be rescued by the love of a good woman. This in turn will make you love yourself & erase all the pain you've suffered. This is the fantasy. And you clung to it. You are not ready to give up on that fantasy.

 

Deci

[MattW]

This isn't about not having the skills. This really about self-hatred. To do things mentioned on this thread would require self-love and you are not prepared to go down that route.

 

Well, okay, so... What now?

 

I don't believe you, Mattw. I think that's exactly what you're hoping for. To be rescued by the love of a good woman. This in turn will make you love yourself & erase all the pain you've suffered. This is the fantasy. And you clung to it. You are not ready to give up on that fantasy.

 

Either way, I do recognize it as a problem. The question again is, what now?

[Deciduous]

Well, okay, so... What now?

 

 

 

Either way, I do recognize it as a problem. The question again is, what now?

 

Read the thread from the beginning.

[bulletproof]

My family practically raised me to be a cynical, pessimistic thinker, and a number of negative external experiences throughout my life further reinforced that development of my thinking.

 

Blaming external factors is probably the first thing that needs to go. What are you now, 24? You're an adult. While it's unfortunate that your family dropped the ball in raising you, it's in the past and if you are still harboring resentment and blaming them for your current situation, then all the more reason for you to be in some serious and intense therapy.

[MattW]

Read the thread from the beginning.

 

And look for what, exactly? I fear I wouldn't see what I'm supposed to see by rereading everything here.

 

Blaming external factors is probably the first thing that needs to go. What are you now, 24? You're an adult. While it's unfortunate that your family dropped the ball in raising you, it's in the past and if you are still harboring resentment and blaming them for your current situation, then all the more reason for you to be in some serious and intense therapy.

 

"Blame" is such a harsh word. It's not my intent to say "It's all their fault!". I'm simply trying to say that the upbringing I had wasn't exactly conducive to helping me develop a healthier, more positive mind. I don't have any "role model" to show me what that's like. I have to figure it out on my own. That's all I'm saying. It's less about placing blame and more about trying to figure out how to navigate and find my way through where I've come from.

[MattW]

Look, what I'm getting at here is that I know I pretty much have to completely reconfigure my entire brain, and that's the hardest thing in the world for me. And I know, nothing in life is "easy", I get that, but just the thought of reprogramming my entire brain is mindboggling.

 

And when you add in my upbringing, my history, my tendency to over think and apply logic and theory to everything, and my stubbornness, and I have a lot of other obstacles to make the reprogramming that much more complicated and difficult.

 

It's just very overwhelming for me, and I'm having an excruciatingly hard time with it all.

[penelope13]

And look for what, exactly? I fear I wouldn't see what I'm supposed to see by rereading everything here.

 

then you reread it again and again till it makes 'click' - it's what most people do when they have to learn something new and complicated and they don't incorporate everything the first time.

[MattW]

then you reread it again and again till it makes 'click' - it's what most people do when they have to learn something new and complicated and they don't incorporate everything the first time.

 

Fair enough, but my own logic (even if it's flawed) has always prevailed in the past. Even if I take the time to reread this entire topic over and over again, I feel like I'd still end up right here saying "... So what now?".

[Batya33]

Fair enough, but my own logic (even if it's flawed) has always prevailed in the past. Even if I take the time to reread this entire topic over and over again, I feel like I'd still end up right here saying "... So what now?".

 

Because you're reading it with a negative and narrow mindset, not with an open mind.

[Deciduous]

Fair enough, but my own logic (even if it's flawed) has always prevailed in the past. Even if I take the time to reread this entire topic over and over again, I feel like I'd still end up right here saying "... So what now?".

 

Mattw,

 

That is the right question. You are asking the wrong person. "So what now?" This is precisely the question we are asking you. You tell us. This choice is not ours. We have no decision in the matter. We have no control in the matter.

 

We have absolutely no decision in this matter, whatsoever.

 

So, Mattw, what now?

[MattW]

Because you're reading it with a negative and narrow mindset, not with an open mind.

 

Right, but then that means I have to figure out how to change that first, because otherwise I'm just rereading it over and over and coming to the same conclusions, and that doesn't really help anything.

 

Mattw,

 

That is the right question. You are asking the wrong person. "So what now?" This is precisely the question we are asking you. You tell us. This choice is not ours. We have no decision in the matter. We have no control in the matter.

 

We have absolutely no decision in this matter, whatsoever.

 

So, Mattw, what now?

 

Again, fair enough. That said, that's not a question I can even begin to answer. Never really have been able to, honestly. I mean, heck, I didn't even realize seeking therapy warranted a bit of research before hand; how do I begin to answer the question of how I get my life together from here? I hate to admit it, but I'm extremely naive about how the world and everything around me works and operates. And from my perspective, it's all very confusing and overwhelming. The more confused and overwhelmed by everything, the more likely I am to not take action. I feel completely lost. I know where I want to end up, but I have no sense of direction as to how to actually get myself there.

[Angler]

I know where I want to end up, but I have no sense of direction as to how to actually get myself there.

 

This one sentence should be enough for you to leave behind the logic that has served to get you here.

[Deciduous]

 

 

What's that I hear, Mattie? You're choosing to do nothing. You choose to take no action. Good for you. You've made a choice.

[penelope13]

1. you start small. - If you are unwilling to do those small steps first - you will never get to your big goals in the end. you can't build a tower by starting at the roof

 

2. you start to change your default response from "I know I'm not going to do anything different" to "I WILL MAKE A CONSCIOUS EFFORT TO TRY TO ACT DIFFERENTLY" - repeat this sentence again and again throughout the whole day. A million times if necessary. Before you sleep, when you wake up, when you are bored, in your work break, ..... Print the sentence out and plaster your bedroom, the fridge, the bathroom etc with it. At the beginning you may not believe the veracity of the sentence, but do it anyway

 

3. do the 20min walk the therapist suggested and while doing it, FOCUS ON YOUR BREATHING and YOUR STEPS - i.e. try to stop the overthinking, the anxiety induced racing of your thoughts. Your mind actually will work better once it's not going into a million different directions at the same time

 

4. take a piece of paper and a pen (alright, you can use your computer, but TYPE IT OUT don't copy/paste), read through this and your other threads and write down any suggestion you were given. Writing it out yourself (instead of only passively reading) will engage a different part of your brain and it will be easier for things to stick in your mind. If you can only read 10 posts a day, that'll be a good start. - The idea is not for you to do all of these things at the same time, but to train your brain to recognize when you are actually given advice. Based on your answers, I think at the moment you are reading everyone's response already with the expectation of wanting to reject it (i.e. with a negative mind), that the advice has hardly chance to be sinking in altogether.

 

5. Go back to your therapist, discuss with her openly what it is you are struggling with (you could just print out this thread) AND ask her for a referral to a psychiatrist as well

 

6. consider taking some anitdepressants/anti anxiety medication (after consulting the psychiatrist). - would you rather be a slave to the out-of-order chemistry of your own body that is interfering with you having a productive life currently or take some medication that is geared towards helping to get your body chemistry back into balance?

[Wayfara]

I think that's exactly what you're hoping for. To be rescued by the love of a good woman. This in turn will make you love yourself & erase all the pain you've suffered. This is the fantasy. And you clung to it. You are not ready to give up on that fantasy.

 

I think so too.

 

how do I begin to answer the question of how I get my life together from here?

 

Well it depends, what is your goal? To get better by changing? To change you start with wanting to change, it means letting go of the fantasy of saving this girl you like with love to get her saving love as reward because that is the fantasy of miraculously getting your cookie without changing at all.

 

You could make a new fantasy, a better one. You have admitted you are a constant worrier and you have said in a earlier thread you want to be seen as chill and laid back, maybe that could be your fantasy, becoming this chill and laid back man? A man who doesn't need to guarantees, a man who doesn't need to be rescued.

 

The first change starts in the mind, you would be making changes in your brain just by slowly replacing your fantasies of this girl with something else. The question is, not counting how hard it would be because we are talking baby steps here and nothing instant, do you want to?

[MattW]

Okay. I suppose this is an outline I can try to keep in mind. So "starting small", I assume that means things like the whole "think of three good things" thing?

 

Number two on your list makes me a little... nervous, I guess. I don't know that simply telling myself that I'll consciously try to act differently will make it happen, especially when I feel like I don't know HOW to act differently. I feel like every time I go somewhere, whether it be work or class, or wherever, I DO tell myself "Okay, you're going to act different, better, today", and yet no matter how much I remind myself of that, I still end up acting ad reacting to things the same way I always do.

 

 

 

I guess, but it doesn't really help much that I'm not completely sure what I expect "better" to be. I mean, I don't really know exactly what it is about me that makes me unattractive to people, so it's hard to visualize in what specific ways I want to be "better". Often times, people will indicate to me that they think I'm pretty cool and/ or think highly of me, but then they tend to forget about me and fail to include me in things, and when I try to get close to them, they seem uninterested. So, I'm not really sure what's "wrong" with me and why people often tell me one thing, but then behave in the complete opposite, and as such, I have a hard time knowing what "better" actually means.

 

If we're talking about external goals, well, I simply want to have people in my life. I want to have friends, I want to have a great girlfriend, I want to have people to go places with and do things with, I want someone I can be intimate with, I want to have people in my life that actually care about me.

 

 

 

Easier said than done. I can't stop feeling attracted to her, and no matter how much I tell myself that I'm going to distance myself from her, I always allow myself to be sucked right in because our chemistry just comes so easily and naturally to me that I just talk with her and have banter with her without even really thinking about it. As long as I'm seeing her consistently through work, I'm going to be struggling with my attraction to her, and that attraction poses a big problem in letting go of my feelings.

 

 

 

Perhaps, although it seems I do an okay job at promoting this image already. There's one person that tells me how "chill and laid back" I come off every time I see them, and like I've said before, I act exactly the same around this person as I do around anyone else, so I don't really know why I would come accross differently to others. I guess maybe internalizing this feeling and mentality is a goal I could try to work towards, but I don't feel like this is something that would impede me from already thinking I am this way.

 

 

 

I do, yes, I just don't have enough faith in myself to not get in my own way, and sabotage myself.

[BrianH46]

Well first stop calling your feelings for this girl "chemistry" this implies a mutual attraction, there is not. She straight up told you it would be weird to even be friends outside of work let alone lovers.

 

People say one thing to be courteous. However if they were interested in being friends with you, they would make an effort. The cool thing about friendship though, is that it requires two people to build a friendship. They don't show any effort because their first impressions of you is negative, if you make an effort though, you can change this and foster a friendship that is mutual to both parties. Friendship is very similar to courtship, hardship and effort is required to make it work, the only difference between the two is a mutual attraction that surpasses the threshold of friendship.

 

You don't see what makes you unattractive as an option for friendship or courtship? Here are my thoughts on the matter. We would not be friends because:

1) The biggest thing is you come off as extremely arrogant. Mr. know-it-all kind of guy.

2) You seem very judgmental towards everyone else and yet hold yourself to a different standard.

3) You lack interest in MOST almost ALL things, we would have nothing to talk about other than work.

4) You are socially awkward.

Why women do not consider you?

1) You lack an identity, who is mattw as a person? What does he have to offer as a person? As an experience in and of itself?

2) Emotionally unstable/depressed.

3) Lack of ambition/drive/passion.

4)Physical appearances.

 

Anything and everything in this life that is worth a damn requires effort. It requires work against adversity.The only thing on my list that you cannot significantly change is physical appearances and even then you can work out and dress nice.

 

Your future is bleak and present is abysmal, you do not have the luxury to logically justify every single action you take. Two things are certain: 1) You are not happy and want a different life for yourself and 2) In order to achieve this you must do something/anything differently than you are now because it is not working.

 

You don't take advice well and giving you "complicated" advice will only serve to piss me off as you will surely have a counter-argument for my advice.

So I'll give you one that changed my life for the better when I was slipping into depression and hopelessness:

 

 

Start running daily. Don't think about it and just try it. Keep a daily log of how long you ran and daily journal with your thoughts about your future.