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Posts created by Pete

for 12 år siden 0 +0 / -0 223

Getting to Know Members - How do I spend my time?

Typical week:

Monday to Friday are the same. Get up around 6.45, have a coffee and a cigarette and get the train to work. Work till 5.30 pm, wondering what I am doing there and why I feel so detached and unmotivated. Sometimes have to fight falling asleep at my desk. Go home. Try and find reasons not to go straight to bed. Maybe watch a dvd, play the guitar, mindlessly surf the web, play a video game, go for a walk and smoke (I don't smoke at home) . Bed time can be anything from 8 pm to 2 am.

Saturday and Sunday. More of the same. Spend time wondering why I look forward to the weekend and then don't enjoy it. Possibly go to my writing workshop on Saturday afternoon (though I've stopped that for the moment).

Once in a while I go to a film (usually Asian or French - I'm an arty type) alone, or go catch a band (also alone).

I spend a lot of time alone, that's how I prefer things to be.

for 12 år siden 0 +0 / -0 223

How´s your summer?

Hi Ashley

With all due respect, I'm not sure what you mean by reframing and refocusing the reasons for my dislike of this season. Could you explain a bit more, if you don't mind, because I can't undertsand how I can put a positive spin on any of it?

thanks

Pete

for 12 år siden 0 +0 / -0 223

How´s your summer?

Thanks, Ashley, I see what you meant now.

for 12 år siden 0 +0 / -0 223

Positivity

I have no doubt at all about the power of positive thinking. Given that there is no objective reality, one's individual view of the world is the world. Literally.

However....it's very hard, if not impossible, to force it. Some of us have this gift and some don't.

for 12 år siden 0 +0 / -0 223

Positivity

Thank you, ~m.

I see where you're coming from on this and it is somewhat encouraging to read your conviction that one can change the way one thinks with the right tools.

With the right tools...now, there's the rub, at least as far as I am concerned. I have yet to find the tools. After 3 or more years of CBT, I know for sure that it is not for me, and has barely helped me. I know (and you may be thinking) it's not a magic wand, and it's down to me to do the work, but I just can't buy into the whole paradigm, the frame within which CBT is set. I can make myself look at my thought processes as CBT asks me to, but I gain nothing from it except a deepened depression and a certainty that I am stupid because I just don't get it.

Obviously it is a therapy which has helped many people, and I'm certainly not qualified to dispute its validity, but for me....no.

So, I search for the golden fleece. The tool, the trick, that will help me change my mind........though, come to think of it, it's not my mind that needs changing, it's my life. Depression and negativity are perfectly rational responses to my life, and who and what I am.

for 12 år siden 0 +0 / -0 223

Positivity

Hi ~m,

In answer to your question - I post here because I find the forums supportive and I feel less alone this way. I tried the program but did not find it helpful, but that doesn't stop me finding something good here.

Hi could be more,

Looks like we see things in much the same way. I was feeling like a deviant because I can't get anything from the CBT approach - your post makes me feel better about that.

for 12 år siden 0 +0 / -0 223

Positivity

Where CBT sticks in my throat is its model of depression as it has been presented to me by a clinical psychologist and a psychotherapist/counsellor. I may have completely misunderstood, of course. CBT seems to posit that I have a core of 'negative' beliefs, self-images and assumptions about myself, other people and the world. And if I challenge and examine these negative thoughts, they will turn out to be distorted and mistaken and I will gradually be able to abandon them, thus starving my depression to death as its basis is removed. Sorry, but I just do not feel that my mnd and emotions work in this way.

What I choose to name as my depression springs from the real, solid facts of my life. I can look around me, look at my shabby home, my worn features, my bank balance, my successful and socially competent contemporaries.....these things cannot be denied or challenged, they are solid and indisputable. I can look at my past actions, the omissions and mistakes, the laziness and lack of assertion, the episodes of pain. This is all real, what use to look at it closer?

Why, I ask myself, should the 'negative' beliefs turn out to be false, but not the 'positive' ones that I hold? What if I examine my 'negative' beliefs and find them to be well-founded and true (which I am certain is actually the case)? Where does that leave me? More depressed, that's where.

So. In a nutshell, that's why I've gained little of value from CBT. I can't buy into a therapy that has a central tenet I can't apply to my own situation.

for 12 år siden 0 +0 / -0 223

Positivity

Wow...this thread is becoming a brain-bender. Thanks, ~m and Jonie, for your thought-provoking posts. Obviously my 'understanding' of CBT is not the only way to see this therapeutic model. I am glad to hear it is helping you.

I, however, am a curmudgeonly, somewhat cynical, 50 year-old Englishman. I'm depressed about my present life and about my past - I'm not thinking about the future. As you say, Jonie, it is unpredictable, things change. But, right now I am unhappy. I look around me and that is a logical, rational response to my situation. For me, tweaking thoughts around ain't gonna change the basic facts of my life.

Yes, things will change, of course they will, and if they change for the better then maybe I won't be unhappy any more. If they change for the worse or stay the same, well then I shall remain miserable. Who knows? As you rightly say, there is no control. So, I certainly accept the idea that change may be for the better, but until that happens I shall be unhappy in the here and now.

for 12 år siden 0 +0 / -0 223

Clinging to depression

I've been casting an eye on my various posts and thinking back over the counselling and therapy I have had, and I realise that I've been quite assertively defensive of my depression as if it is my friend. I seem to cling to it, almost treasure the notion of myself as a depressed person as if it makes me something special.

Do any other members feel that they do the same thing, or have any insights into this?

for 12 år siden 0 +0 / -0 223

Positivity

Oh, Lord...what do I want my life to be like? I knew if I hung around here long enough that somebody would ask me a question like that

The answer to that is that I just don’t know to any degree of specificity, and can only express it in negative terms, i.e. what I don’t want.

I don’t want to be trapped inside this body and face that I hate, I don’t want to be trapped inside this personality that I hate.

That’s it, really. I feel like there is someone of value somewhere inside, but God – or whoever/whatever – has played some cruel joke by packaging my soul inside this ridiculous creature.

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