how do you explore yr own issues?

i started free-form writing a week ago, asking myself questions and trying to be as real as i can cuz i've got issues. does writing help you? how about, say, recording yourself. i.e. what's the best way to look at problems under a clear light so u can start untangling them. what do you think??

troll ilx

i try to think as little as possible about my... issues. they usually disappear in a week but then come back next month

I tend to browse them at the bookstore, then put them back on the shelf and leave.

what is an issue

:(

latex glove covered finger

seriously ... it does help sometimes, depending on what your issues are ... sometimes if you spend too much time processing/writing you end up fixating on things and don't actually do enough to solve them.

sb the ppl I recognise my issues in

^^^ cozine

how do you explore your own pathetic jealousy at other people's success

drinking heavily generally doesn't work.

^^ not to be flip ... because I've definitely been there, and it's something I deal with on a regular basis. Probably the most constructive thing is to focus on your own work and doing productive things that you are proud of.

seriously ... i've never done this before, i don't fixate i tend to sweep under the rug, so facing some things makes the accumulated shadows less of a big deal, and if i just think about it i forget. writing. recording, videotaping, i don't know. flowcharting. ??? i mean i can't do enough to solve probs if i don't know what they are

xx-post yeah that's no longer a problem honey, thanks

I project them onto whatever artwork I happen to be paying attention to that week and develop elaborate theories about the works in question that violate all logic and commonsense

and i'm not jealous of other people's success btw, like at all? that was a comment on user Lamp's awesome thread, that i saw. x-post

xp - what method would be easiest for you? If you're prone to sweeping under the rug, it's probably best to do something immediate and simple, rather than something where the preparations/process might deter you from dealing ...

i try to think as little as possible about my... issues.

did anyone else read this in worf's voice

actually Clint Eastwood's ... but kinda the same thing.

mindfulness and thought routines are good. i don't want to go into my own problems too much, just honestly wanted to hear how others look at and work thru theirs outside of therapy or drugs.

i emotionally abuse people around me

write long essays in my head, never type them out, anaesthetize myself with internet diversions

"troll ilx" deserves a "first response hall of fame" award ...

i've written a fair number of letters-never-sent (or emails as the case may be), because somehow the idea of writing to someone else makes it easier to break things down and explain them. so they end up being i guess notes to myself, but under the guise of interpersonal communication. (i don't always actually know i'm doing this, sometimes i think i'm actually going to send them, but then at the end i realize i was just working things out for myself.)

do none of u go to the shrink? a lot of u could use it imo

http://s.mynicespace.com/myspacepic/478/47830.gif

I think "troll ilx" seems to be the most popular option ...

i wasnt kraken wise, i think it speaks ill of u all that u have all these fancy fagsauce home remedies like WRITING snort instead of just goin to a dang therapist

keeping a journal isn't all that fancy ...

and i'm not jealous of other people's success btw, like at all? that was a comment on user Lamp's awesome thread, that i saw

im generally pretty good w/ who i am and bein a h8r i guess its like a cbt concept at least thats how i no about it but staying conscious of my more ridic traits and failings helps keep control over them.

it may not cum across on ilx but i have a pretty rad lyfe, for the most part.

long drives. talking to people that are involved in those issues.

To the OP:

In your case, keeping a journal where you write out your thoughts is probably a good start. I have done that. It does help to clarify the problem and to describe your best idea of a solution. That is good as far as it goes and should do no harm.

However, if something is "an issue", it generally means your path to a solution is either not clear or not easy or both. Oftentimes the obstacle in your way will be strong feelings that deter you from seeking the most obvious solution. Could be fear. Could be anger. Could be a feeling of helplessness. You'll be aware of what it is.

Working through such strong feelings is very hard to do through writing, but possible. It helps a lot to have a sympathetic ear from a friend. Make sure it is someone who won't lose patience with you and constantly say or think "This is stupid. It shouldn't be so hard. All you have to do is XXX, you wuss." Not helpful.

The main thing is to clear away enough of the feeling that you begin to act based more on present realities than the residue of painful lessons which may not apply to the situation in front of you, or may be objectively legitimate, but are also objectively causing more problems than they solve are therefore inapt and harmful.

When you are thinking clearly, you will begin to recognize where your best action lies and you will quite naturally take it, even if "best" means the least bad of many bad options. If nothing better presents itself, it is still the best you can do. When that is clear to you, you will stop hesitating and move ahead again.

If you have bad, recurring patterns that you fall into, it can be helpful to write about where you are now and then revisit it later. It may help you find the things that trigger bad decisions or moody spells before they even start. I did this a lot in the past and was pretty good at working through my own shit in that way.

There's definitely something to be said for seeing a therapist, though. As objective as you might try to be with respect to your own issues, there's a certain extent to which you are never going to get outside of your own head, and it's often helpful to have a rational external voice to kinda coach you along.

it may not cum across on ilx but i have a pretty rad lyfe, for the most part.

lol @ me braggin - dont get this twisted sd this cause when im feeling envious it helps to remind myself that things are pretty good for the most part keeps shit in perspective

take acid and deal with your shit internally. don't involve other people in your mess.

Honestly? Therapy and I firmly believe that most ppl could benefit from it at some point in their lives.

he ain't heavy, he's my brotherlovesdub.

writing, words and music

acid

therapy

loved ones. last bot not fucking least.

Wait - are you serious about the acid?! I seriously think acid would be the worst possible thing I could do in order to deal with my issues.

acid gives some people more issues ...

lol. i'm half serious.

seriously did work out some thoughts in my brain tho

x-post to Sarahel - Yeah, exactly. I don't really do any drugs anymore at all so the idea of tripping at this point in my life sort of scares the shit out of me which would ultimately result in a very bad and definitely not at all therapeutic experience.

I know people that were mentally ill to begin with who did acid, and it just made them even more dysfunctional.

I was serious about the acid but that's just my experience. I credit acid for helping me work out a bunch of shit that I was unable to reach/understand/explore without it. If you have serious mental instability to begin with, you should avoid it completely.

I know people that were mentally ill to begin with who did acid, and it just made them even more dysfunctional.

― free jazz and mumia (sarahel), Tuesday, August 18, 2009 8:18 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

This happened to my cousin Jurgen! He was already sorta nuts to begin with but after he did acid everything got much worse and he never fully recovered. From then on, he was batshit insane. He once took off for three months and lived on the streets in Romania. Nobody knew where he had been until he turned up one day back home in Germany in a taxi that had driven him all the way from Romania. He also used to pretend to be a priest when he went out drinking so that ppl would buy him free drinks. Basically he was completely nuts but also pretty fun.

hahahahaha

was he cute?

Um, he was cute in a fat German middle aged dude sorta way sure.

as cute as a talking sausage, not a button or a dreamboat.

i tsklolled

when you masturbate, the issue comes after the exploring

that particular use of 'issue' is inspirational and i wonder how many times i have used it on ilx to general chagrin

xp - and you don't really have much of a choice ...

of issues ...

do none of u go to the shrink? a lot of u could use it imo

Gone to a shrink but he never even addressed my panic attacks. I mean, wtf dude, why not even acknowledge'em? I quit soon after.

My therapist says I shouldn't discuss my issues online and it's much better if I go to him and pay him 40 quid an hour.

Sometimes I wish I could find a therapist who would do instant message session. No need to get out of the house and sit in front of some dude.

I find journal-writing immensely helpful, both for working through things that can/need to be worked through - and also for getting rid of, or at least cutting off thoughtworms.

Thoughtworms are kind of a different kettle of fish, as they often strike at times you *don't* have access to your journal. It's really really bad and counteractive when you go on the internets with a thoughtworm, and people treat it like it's an Issue and try to engage with it.

Therapy is just... maybe it was helpful for me when I first did it, and I was, like, 15, 16 - and I probably would be dead were it not for the therapist I had at that point.

But at this point of my life, I've just been to so *many* therapists - I no longer trust 90% of them. In many cases, I know more about mental illness than they do - especially if they're those kind of first year post-grad types who have read more in books than they ever have experienced. But then again, the old, jaded kind who have seen everything under the sun and are already packaging you up into your little box in the DSMR-IV (or whatever version they're up to now) - those are just as useless.

And my last experience with CBT was so bad (due to the therapist, not the treatment) I will never do it again.

I think, if you have never had any experience of therapy at all, and you come to it fresh, then it might probably be good for you. But when it gets to these long-term illnesses that just go on and on, they do little good. It would be different if you were going to see your family priest once a week and doing a confession to lighten your mental load. But therapy has been worse than useless for a long time, for me.

I am so over therapy.

Sometimes I wish I could find a therapist who would do instant message session. No need to get out of the house and sit in front of some dude.

― Nathalie (stevienixed), Wednesday, August 19, 2009 10:15 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i've actually seriously thought about starting this as a business.

you could pay me $15/hr! i'm really a good listener

He also used to pretend to be a priest when he went out drinking so that ppl would buy him free drinks.

*Takes notes*

It actually worked too!

i think writing shit down helps, alot. yr always going to have a bias and that will affect how you interact with a therapist. as masonic booms pointed out if you aint never been to one, then fer shizul: check it out. perhaps you will respond well to it. but the key to writing working is being completely honest with yrself, which for many people is quite difficult. therapists say "denial aint just a river in egypt." and i think that being honest with yrself is what brotherlovesdub was getting to with the acid which sorta strips you bare and lets you see in a different way things that you are so used to seeing a certain way you don't even think about it anymore. but acid is def not for everyone, look what happened to daniel johnston . . .

It's easier to be truthful in writing you know no one else will ever read, than it is talking to someone else.

Writing's disadvantage: when you go back and read it all you're like 'DAMN, I am one navel-gazing depressio.'

Sometimes it's good to have a record of things. I mean, when I was going through painful breakup from hell, I had this image that the whole relationship had been sunshine and roses. Going back and reading through my journals made me realise that I had been miserable practically the whole time we'd been together and the "it was all sunshine and roses" was the denial.

(Also, I am a novel-gazing depressio. Is it a crime?)

(xxpost) That's a big advantage if you go back and read stuff that you wrote several years ago. I've just been reading my journal from 2003 and boy what a stressed out short tempered angsty paranoid person I was then.

I think part of my problem is in the Mormon church (how I grew up) you're supposed to write a journal so your descendants know your 'testimony' and life and thoughts and hopes & ways & faith. Family history is this damn huge thing. Also the people in the Book of Mormon were keeping journals, of sorts, that comprise the book. So if you don't keep this journal your parents say "What if NEPHI hadn't kept a journal? Then we wouldn't have the Book of Mormon!" So you've got this impossible writing standard/purpose that makes it all v awkward and stilted. Plus once you turn 18 & start doing stuff w/the adults you find they say to read your kids' journals to make sure they aren't up to anything bad or thinking 'wrong' thoughts.

i would much rather talk to someone -- writing can be found and read by others! i never feel safe writing down anything too personal. my high school diaries read like they are written in code. "we went to the place and had fun -- haha!"

k8 it's not a crime but I feel I shouldn't be that way due to some implacable, unknowable standards

Yeah, I wish I weren't bipolar. I also wish I were about 5 inches shorter, had a different metabolism, a longer nose and better eyesight. Sick of trying to be someone I'm not. Sometimes self acceptance means accepting the fact that I'm an asshole. Ha ha. Joking. Maybe. DOn't really know right now.

It's easier to be truthful in writing you know no one else will ever read, than it is talking to someone else.

― hüzün (Masonic Boom), Wednesday, August 19, 2009 12:40 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

i dunno, it's easy to tell yourself what you think you ought to say w/o anyone checking you. if you can lie to a therapist or a friend you can just as easily lie to yourself

i could never hold anything back from my therapist. i would tell her like, i don't like you right now. she was cool with it.

if you don't feel like you can be brutally honest with your therapist then there's no fucking point, imho.

There are different ways to be not truthful than to lie.

Omissions are much easier and much more twisting than outright lying.

There are things I would never *ever* tell another human being - friend or therapist or anyone. And yet I can write them in my journal. Things that are too awful to be said aloud. And yet I can write them. Get them out of me in the light, so they stop poisoning me.

and it's not really a question of evasion, it's a question of trust.

I think.

ok Martin Gore

I went to a therapist once when I was a freshman in college and totally miserable, and I was explaining that I was miserable because I didn't have any friends, that everyone disliked me. And the therapist said that that couldn't be true, that I seemed to have good qualities -- to which I replied, something to the effect of, "How do you know? You don't know these people or me, except for what I tell you and how I'm presenting myself to you."

xp Abbott: I think I remember hearing that about Mormon parents reading their kids' journals ... crepey.

I replied, something to the effect of, "How do you know? You don't know these people or me, except for what I tell you and how I'm presenting myself to you."

What did the therapist say to that?

I deal with my issues like a frozen bottle of Dr. Bronner's: REPRESS REPRESS REPRESS

xp WmC -- probably something therapist-like like, "You have a point, but ..."

??????

I was listening to Depeche Mode this afternoon. Does it show?

if i were a shrink i wd say 'ok then don't bullshit me, dummy' but i'd make a terrible/awesome therapist

k8 no ha I just can't hear the phrase "it's a question of trust" without imagining the dude in his bondage suspenders going "it's a question of not letting what we've BUILT up crumble TO dust!!!"

I think part of why I don't like therapy is I don't like sitting in a small room facing another person! It's so unnatural.

You guys need to see some better therapists, obvs

(ps they can come to your house)

ha ha, he must have got into my head while I was listening this afternoon and influenced my choice of words.

and now my bloody email isn't working, argh.

but, erm, Abbott - no, sorry, I don't have AIM. Wish I did, but couldn't get it to work on this computer. Sorry I wrote that here instead of emailing you back, but my email is refusing to send emails right now. Bah.

xp - It wasn't about bullshit, it was about my skepticism that the therapist could know the reality of my relationships with other people or the truth of my statements, without seeing it first-hand.

It doesn't help that every pro-therapist I've known as a person outside their occupation has been so disgustingly full of shit that I want to hide under the table to avoid being confused with their ways via my propinquity.

Serious question, does anyone know anyone whose parent, or parents, were therapists and aren't/weren't fucked up?

My husband & esp. his sisters.

I didn't want to assume that it was universal.

Being a total nutjob, raising nutjob children, all these things are not incompatible with being able to help others.

I keep thinking of my mum - and half her job, as a priest, is pastoral counseling which is a kind of free psychotherapy you get through the church - and as crazy as she's been in her life, and as badly and crazily as my brother and I turned out - I can not deny that she is absolutely marvelous with the people in her congregation, and helping them through grief and troubles and all that kind of thing. I think perhaps having ben so crazy and been through the ringer has helped her be more patient, more understanding, and a better listener and not-judger.

So I think it's entirely possibly that you could be totally crazy, be a really bad parent, and still manage to be a good shrink.

I've just had too many shrinks in my life for any more of them to really do me any good. There just aren't any more insights to be had.

suedey, where are you from that therapists will come to your house?

i have convinced a couple of therapists to do telephone sessions, but those were therapists who already knew me and did that as a favor.

for now, therapy is way too expensive for me. but if i could find someone who was really good, i might consider it. it's just so incredibly hard to find someone good.

I think part of why I don't like therapy is I don't like sitting in a small room facing another person! It's so unnatural.

― god bless this -ation (Abbott), Wednesday, August 19, 2009 8:50 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i would always turn the chair away and close my eyes

couldn't do it any other way

I deal with my issues like a frozen bottle of Dr. Bronner's: REPRESS REPRESS REPRESS

― Dan I., Wednesday, August 19, 2009 12:44 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

tonic