pinned like a bug to a display board...

[katster]

So I had a therapist appointment today.

I say this as if it was something new, but something interesting did happen. We were talking about my self-esteem issues, and one thing led to another. She asked me to name some of my good traits. I came up with a few. It was hard, though, because sometimes, I'm not entirely sure I *have* good traits. Which is why y'all need to occasionally remind me, y'know -- thick skull and all... :)

...anyway, one thing led to another and I found myself in a very uncomfortable position. She asked me, "Are you smart?" Well, there's only one answer to the question that's right, and the thing is, I *kept* hedging. Because I knew no was the wrong answer, but it was what I felt. And I couldn't bring myself to say yes, because that would be *lying*. Or at least, that's what it felt like in my head.

So yeah, we're gonna start fiddling with cognitive theory. Well, me and my new counselor, this one got another job. Doh, that sucks.

But the point is, I'm not sure I *believe* this cognitive theory stuff. I'm not sure how telling myself what appears to be a bunch of lies will help to make it any more truthful for my head--last I checked, I'm not a Balseraph. ;) And I guess, can somebody try to explain to me just why this works?

Because I'm not sure I see the sense in it.

That said, she said to stop waiting for parents to get their acts together and start doing what I really ought to be doing in order to get myself a job, an apartment, and a car. Because if I wait for parents to get their acts together, I'm going to be living with them when I'm forty.

Last, entirely unrelated, but I have a new icon. jillcaligirl found it:


Yes. B'harnee on a noose. It amuses me greatly.

Comments

[jcatquince.livejournal.com]

Hey hon. If you'll bear with me, and my notes (yay, learning) I'll try to explain it.

Cognitive psychology is the study of memory, learning, information processing, ect. A guy named Kurt Lewin came up with the idea of "life space" wherein our behavior is a function of the person and the environment. People are dynamic combinations of motivations, knowledge, and feelings that are all mixing together to create social behavior.

It sounds like your therapist is going to try tinkering with your self - concept, the perceptions you have of yourself. To me, it sometimes seems like you have some self - defeating behaviors to protect your perception of who you are just in case you fail, especially when it comes to your family. You've let the person you think you are become entangled to defining yourself primarily through your family, rather than your accomplishments, abilities, and more positive roles you've earned the right to claim.

Insofar as the therapy goes, "I'm not sure how telling myself what appears to be a bunch of lies will help to make it any more truthful for my head" there's an interesting study from 1967 by Walster, Bercheid, Abrahams, and Aronson about social adequacy. A group of people were given false feedback on their various levels of social ability. The participants given false feedback reported feeling more sociable even after a full debriefing uncovered the truth. Also keep in mind an old saying that states, "If you hear it often enough, you'll end up believing in it."

These two things are slightly important. Firstly, you have people who believe in you, and care about you. While distant, you probably don't want to change their opinions about who you are, and what you can accomplish. Secondly, it is true that repetition can change the way you think or believe. If your therapist wants you to print out a list of good attributes you have, or things you want to become, and you read and repeat the list often enough throughout the day for 'n' amount of time, you can convince yourself to become more like the person you want to be.

As an example: I had an absolute fear of going to sleep at the normal sleeping time. I'd stay up until the sun came up, because I was afraid. I recognized this was a problem, and took plenty of time before bed repeating to myself that the sun was not a controlled entity but a physical process, and no matter what I did, it would come up anyway. After some time, I stopped being afraid of the sun disappearing, and began to go to bed sooner. I gave myself the belief I needed to not be afraid anymore simply by repeating my argument enough times.

I'm a bit tired to explain this sufficiently right now...

Just rest assured that you have people who believe in you, and that creating a belief about yourself, when given enough repetition, eventually becomes part of your self - image. It ends up working because you end up wanting to believe it, and then modifying behavior to make it happen.

Another interesting study by someone at some time details an actor pretending to be afraid of snakes eventually overcoming this fear and picking up a snake on camera. When other people with actual fears of snakes viewed the film it became easier for them to find the courage to deal with their fears. That's modeling of behavior, or learning by watching and imitating another person's response in a similar situation. It's pretty interesting.

Finally: "Because if I wait for parents to get their acts together, I'm going to be living with them when I'm forty." Trust me, this is real good stuff. This person is on the right track regarding goals to strive for in the future.

Take this all with a grain of salt and a lack of sleep. It's possibly not very coherent, but hopefully slightly informative. Aw... just catch me on irc later and ask me if you want more info.

[mdlbear]

Basically, if you repeat the message often enough, you start to believe it. Works with religion, politics, "recovered memories" of alien abduction, you name it. Experiments have been done.

Scary as hell, but it does work.

[lirazel.livejournal.com]

So, a few experiences:

1) Telling myself that I'm 10 pounds thinner than I actually am did not help, even though some studies suggest that this kind of repetitive reinforcement can help with weight loss.

2) However, I tried writing "by this time next year, I will be in a relationship with someone who values all of who I am, including my intelligence," ten times in a notebook every day for a week (suggested by Scott Adams of Dilbert fame). Within six months, there was Bravest! Of course, I had to do some "uncharacteristic" things to make that happen, like responding to his voice ad on Dial-a-Date, but still...

So, my experience is that this sort of thing helps in changes that you really want to make but may be held back from by prior lessons learned.

In your case, every person who has merely brushed past you on line (never mind met you in person) comes away knowing they have encountered an above-average intelligence. Owning this in the deepest sense within yourself will help you step out. Your current feelings about your brain are worth changing, so why not give it a try?

Finally, a bit of advice that Bravest often gives me when I get too self-deprecating: "Just because this is easy for you doesn't mean it's worthless. Other people find this stuff hard. It's still a good thing to do well, even if it's only you that's doing it." He's referring to my work-related writing, of course, but I think it applies to system design as well, or whatever.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Actually, let me correct a minor misimpression. Cognitive therapy is about teaching you to stop telling yourself lies. There are a lot of negative messages a person might tell him or herself each day, and most of them simply aren't objectively true. Most of them end up being unfair criticisms that help a person feel miserable. "I'm always screwing things up", or "I can't do this; I'm worthless", or whatever.

It was once believed that one shouldn't contradict a person who says such things, that it was wrong to invalidate a person's feelings. The trouble is, by letting such statements go unchallenged, the feelings are reinforced. The only way to break the chain is to deny the statements.

One of the challenges is that, when a person is depressed, challenging the statements feels like a lie.It takes a bit of faith to break through that, and hold on to the message until it feels more truthful.

[salinn.livejournal.com]

I agree with all the above statements and want to add something that I always found helpful.

Usually, a person has an event (A) that happens that they have some sort of attitude (B) about. Because of the event, a person ends up feeling/doing (C) as a result.

The problem comes in when "C" is a negative - depression, low self-esteem, anger issues, etc.

"A" is usually an uncontrollable event. You can't change the events of your life, in most cases. Pets and loved ones will pass on, you will get in that car accident, you may lose your job, your financial situation may be dire, etc.

However, "B" is always under your control. If you have defeatist thoughts or negative thoughts about yourself and your situations, then you will always be powerless to turn the tides of your life and take back your control. Instead, if your thoughts were more like, "I'm smart, and I can handle this problem," or "I'm independent, what they do doesn't affect how I live my life," then the result will be a more positive one.

[lirazel.livejournal.com]

That's very true for situational depression--but not for the Bit D chemical imbalance sort. Which is why Big D is such an evil beast--it strikes at the very root of our sense of self. It is neither a voluntary nor an involuntary response to an event, but a chemical fact.

And it's easy to say, "Well, deal with it as if it were an event. Be positive about being depressed!" But... well, you see the problem there.

All of which isn't to say that thinking differently about one's innate gifts and capabilities might not be helpful. Big D is the liar here!

[salinn.livejournal.com]

Very true. I meant more of that under the "cognitive therapy" approaches, that's kinda what they're aiming for. Even with a chemical imbalance, you have to learn to have a more positive view, work with the drugs. It's just a tougher struggle. If you could just tell yourself that everything was going to be fine like a "chemically balanced" individual, then your coping skills would be intact and you wouldn't even have an issue in the first place, right? :)

[jcatquince.livejournal.com]

1) Telling myself that I'm 10 pounds thinner than I actually am did not help, even though some studies suggest that this kind of repetitive reinforcement can help with weight loss.

Lira: The problem is the approach you took to this problem. If you had wanted more results, the repetive statement should have been an action statement. "I can lose 10 pounds by (reasonable time period) if I try my best."

This sets the context into a situation you can have control over, and is a much more specific goal than merely stating you have the desire to be thinner. Goals are good. Good goals are difficult, challenging, and rewarding when achieved. However, they should never be impossible.


And Kats? I love you man. You let my sleep deprived blurb stay up. Um... Dang. Now I can coherently think (maybe) I can't review it. I just remember falling asleep on the keyboard 5 times while writing it. I hope you are doing well!

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

You == totally intelligent.

[webmacher.livejournal.com]

(I came across your blog a long time ago because we both went to SIMS, although at different times)

I got a couple books by this fellow named Albert Adler (http://mentalhelp.net/psyhelp/chap14/chap14g.htm). He wrote one book called "How to Make Yourself Happy and Remarkably Less Disturbable" which explains the whole concept pretty well. Basically, you're not "lying to yourself", but rather trying to come up with alternate explanations for events. By doing so, you can avoid going into an emotional tailspin. "It's unfortunate that that job interview didn't go well, but I have another one scheduled for next week. I'll practice my answers this week and do more advance research about the company." is better than "I completely screwed up that interview because I'm an idiot and nobody will ever hire me!" -- but NOT less honest. Possibly even more honest.