Reporting the mods

If I go to therapy, will his flippant answer before I've even described the problem solve anything?

I'm going to say "I have a problem where this teenager hurt me" and they're going to cut me off and say that I shouldn't be associating with teenagers.

If I say "I'm having a problem with an online forum and..." they cut me off and say "just stop associating with them. Problem solved." and they're writing me a prescription or telling me to get a pedicure before I can even ask them how many years it will take.

 

How do you know that anything even remotely like that would happen if you don't bloody well go get a therapist. Yes finding one that works for you can be hard, but you absolutely will not make progress if you don't
1) stop drinking, get help with that
2) get therapy

Those things are absolutely imperative if you want to get better. There's plenty of people right here on this forum you can extol the virtues of therapy and for good reason too. You need professional help or none of this is going anywhere good.

 

If I stop drinking, Spock will kill me.

 

How about a temporary derail...

• Saying a bigoted thing makes you a bigot
• Once the bigot is identified, everything they say will be viewed as a bigoted thing
• So therefore the cycle self-perpetuates

I'm not up to digging out the quotes, but it seems like there is a strategy to bully a person into changing? Seebs and Rigorist, IIRC.

I remember Rigorist saying that it wasn't working. Is that still being done to me?

 

That's what did happen the last few times I went to a therapist. I'm the definition of insanity with every attempt to be a human. Every strategy fails enough times to convince me that the ultimate goal is what is impossible, and yet I persist.

 

I'm 100% completely and utterly sure that Spock would appreciate the fuck out of you not drinking anymore, much like she would appreciate the fuck out of you not talking about her anymore.

 

No, any halfway decent therapist is going to work with you and what your goals are. Like I said, you're probably going to want to focus on cognitive behavioral therapy. It teaches you tools for separating yourself from highly emotional states and analyzing them objectively among other things.

 

do you genuinely believe this because holy shit

 

AM, your problem is not that a teenager hurt you decades ago or that you got in a fight online. your problem is that these very normal stressors happen, and you react in ways that are massively disproportional to the original slight. if you frame it as "i need help dealing with my emotions" or "i need help communicating with people," you'll get WAY more traction.

arguments happen. shitty teenagers happen. friends who turn out to be assholes happen. most people can say "well that was fucked up" and move on. your problem is not other people, it's the way you react to other people. THAT is what you need therapy for.

 

Then you need a better therapist. Potentially an enterily different kind of therapy, CBT has been brought up repeatedly and for good reason too. But if that's what a therapist said to you then you need a different therapist.

also every single word of this.

 

Yeah, I was supposed to be CBT, bought the book, mom bought the book too so she could follow along. First journal entry and it was "come back after you stop drinking" so catch-22.

"Spock will kill me" is a huge metaphor for {how much she kept pushing me the last few days after I told her to shut up} will introduce a bad emotional state unless I keep drinking long enough for it to die.

 

Oh, maybe I will collect more failures... https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-therapy/200907/the-definition-insanity-is

 

These are things about your communications I've observed: you believe your self-reports about a situation above anything else (generally reasonable, but given that you have admitted to multiple things that would make your perceptions flawed, not helpful or the best choice here) and you seem to have trouble coping with confrontation in a reasonable or healthy way. Here's the thing: those are scary things to happen and they are also not anything online strangers can help you with. When I went to therapy, my therapist asked me what my goals were. You may have better luck saying things like "I want to learn how to deal with other people better" or "I want to understand why my interactions keep turning into a confrontational shitshow" or "I want to stop feeling like I'm constantly hated and hounded" and those are concrete goals a therapist can help with.

 

I interpreted this as "drinking is currently my only coping mechanism and I am experiencing a very high level of stress from interacting with Spock, so if I stop drinking I've lost the only way I have to deal with stress and I may die from this stress." Is that what you meant?

If so, look. Part of a therapist's job is to give you coping mechanisms to deal with stressful situations. Your current coping mechanism is causing you more problems than it's solving at the moment, so it's to your best interest to find ways to cope where the risk doesn't outweigh the reward.

(I'm on vacation currently so I'm gonna duck out of here for now - I have no idea if this'll get through at all but I felt the need to try).

 

MOD EDIT: Post wiggled for self hostage-taking. Leaving this here but editing as part of a mod experiment in transparency. - Chiomi

 

Then take a break from the forum to get sober.

I'm going to be as blunt as possible. No one hear can help you in the way that you need. No one. You are to the point of self harming with your interactions. Get sober, go to a therapist. Steps one and two. You can keep making excuses and keep whining and playing the martyr, never taking any personal accountability when it all goes predictably to shit. Or you can buckle down and do the work.

Only you have the power to change this. We can not.

 

SPOCK’S ABUSE