The thing is, I don't want to go to therapy.
Not now that I understand what's been done to me. I've been judged, defined, redefined, categorized, put down, explained away, gaslighted, annihilated.
Right now I have an urgent need to be my own only authority on myself. I'm too afraid a therapist, as a kind of an authority in the therapeutic setting, would not be able to refrain from well-meaning labeling, definitions, categorizations or gaslightings. And I would either comply or rebel, as I always do when a person in authority is involved. And neither would be helpful to me.
A nice therapist that I know personally suggested a self-help book to me and then, almost timidly, added that I might want to consider therapy.
And I had a nightmare in which I was doing all these tests in a big, Kafkaesque, dark building. They would then tell me what to do with my life. The results show that I'm intellectually very competent, but there's something fundamentally wrong with me and I need therapy, right there, in that dark huge building. So I obey the huge institution. I go from door to door, knocking on each. Some potential therapists aren't even there. Some are evil, creepy, and try to just put a label on me and be done with me ("Why are you here? Are you a drug addict? A schizophrenic? What do you want?") - I don't even have the time to utter "I just want to learn to be me."
So I get the hell out of there. Out of the big dark building. Out in the sunshine and the air. And I just enjoy it.
Not now that I understand what's been done to me. I've been judged, defined, redefined, categorized, put down, explained away, gaslighted, annihilated.
Right now I have an urgent need to be my own only authority on myself. I'm too afraid a therapist, as a kind of an authority in the therapeutic setting, would not be able to refrain from well-meaning labeling, definitions, categorizations or gaslightings. And I would either comply or rebel, as I always do when a person in authority is involved. And neither would be helpful to me.
A nice therapist that I know personally suggested a self-help book to me and then, almost timidly, added that I might want to consider therapy.
And I had a nightmare in which I was doing all these tests in a big, Kafkaesque, dark building. They would then tell me what to do with my life. The results show that I'm intellectually very competent, but there's something fundamentally wrong with me and I need therapy, right there, in that dark huge building. So I obey the huge institution. I go from door to door, knocking on each. Some potential therapists aren't even there. Some are evil, creepy, and try to just put a label on me and be done with me ("Why are you here? Are you a drug addict? A schizophrenic? What do you want?") - I don't even have the time to utter "I just want to learn to be me."
So I get the hell out of there. Out of the big dark building. Out in the sunshine and the air. And I just enjoy it.
You are so smart to have stayed away from therapy! Your nightmare says it all. Believe me when I say, it's the last thing ACoNs need. Oh, the horror!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Lisette!
ReplyDeleteI was consodering therapy for later, once I got healthier and stronger, but them I realized, if I can and will more easily do that on my own, why do therapy after that?
I guess all I need are a few reality checks - someone "normal" to listen to my patterns of thought and say "You know, I don't think in that way - e.g. I don't feel I'm necessarily responsible for everything - you might want to change that." I don't know where to get that.
I might do a group workshop in TA with some students of psychology - there's safety in numbers!
ReplyDelete