That does help me understand better, wildcat. Perhaps you have greater focus and I have a greater need for structure -- my ramblings would generate interesting conversations, but I didn't know what then to do with the new information or perspective.
I suppose that that this thread is reinforcing that, just as there is no one thing that got us here, there's no one or right way to get us out. I'm working one-to-one now with the therapist who organizes the self-help group I participate in, and I find that the combination of his knowledge and experience, my knowledge that he's observed me in a social (albeit safe) environment, and my CBT work is really making a difference. An example was when I identified a core belief that I'm dull, boring, and generally inept socially -- the next step in the program was to go back over my life looking for evidence, and I was having difficulty with this because it was so obviously true that I was blind to evidence to the contrary. For as far back as I could think, new people that I'd meet would soon drift off, I don't have many friends, and I've always been awkward in groups rather than the bubbly life of the party. Bringing this up with my therapist, though, he was quite taken aback -- he never would have guessed, from our conversations or from my behaviour in the group, that I believed this about myself. I found it difficult to discount his opinion (my usual response when someone says something nice about me) because he's actually seen me numerous times in a group situation. We talked more about friendships in my life, and I made an off-hand comment that I'd had lots of friends in high school -- that everybody wanted to be my friend, in fact, because of my 2 very good-looking and very popular older brothers. He challenged this, and I came up with some specific examples of people, girls in particular, who had pretended to be my friend so that they could get into my brothers' social circle. I'd found it hurtful, but that was a long time ago. We left it at that.
For a while, I guess my sub-conscious played with the 2 concepts: 1) that I was dull and socially inept was actually a belief, rather than necessarily the truth; and 2) that many years ago my trust in people's motives for friendship had been challenged a few times. It was a good week or even 2 before the connection clicked in my conscious mind, but then came a whole slew of other clicks and I realized that these acquaintances hadn't been drifting off all my adult life because I was dull and boring, but because I'd been unresponsive and had shut them out.
I don't know the words to say how utterly astounding this was to me. I'd been navel-gazing for so long that I'd thought I knew myself inside out, but I'd had no idea I did this. The social ineptitude had been a given -- I could rhyme off every stupid thing I'd said, every gaffe and blunder, every person who had tried to be nice to me but just found me too boring to sustain a friendship, my evidence was substantial and long-standing. I guess that's why they're called core beliefs. I'm still a little disoriented in my new perspective, but I've moved past disbelief, past skepticism, and have been testing this out a bit and do you know what? When I'm warm and responsive, people are warm and responsive back! It's very cool! I'm looking at the world and my life in a completely different way now, and it feels really, really good. Do you know what else I'm finding, wildcat? Showing our vulnerability and emotion is like giving others permission to show their own, and most people are a little surprised, perhaps, but then relieved and even grateful. There will always be people in the world who believe that sincerity, vulnerability and emotion are for losers, and I'm sad for them because they're living in monochrome rather than technicolour.
Sorry for the long post, but