Things I've learned from counselling #9: knowledge is not belief

[kaberett]

That's the snappy one-line summary right there in the title.

I think this is actually something I worked out for myself when I was about 13, during my first staggeringly obvious round with mental illness, long before I spent any time in counselling, but it's no less valuable for that (and is still something I use frequently).

Think grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference, with a bit of a twist: what I actually want is the wisdom to know which beliefs I can - or should - trust.

Because: I get convictions that sink their claws into me gut-deep, that I believe (for at least a time, but it's always an unpredictable time) with unshakeable faith - like, I am the worst person in the world, or I have made so-and-so hate me, or it is not safe for me to be around [behaviour X].

The first two - oh, that is where knowledge comes in. That is where I cling tight to the knowledge that I am not the worst person in the world (and where I sometimes make lists of people who are unambiguously worse than me); where I turn to mindfulness techniques, and try to come up with more plausible reasons that someone hasn't got back to me than that I've broken everything forever (which tend to range from "I know they're having a rough week at work" to "giant fish rained from the sky and ate them"). That is where I sit with my belief and stare right through it; where I orient myself by the flotsam and driftwood on the surface of my ocean-deep despair, by the bubbles that float inexorably up, and hope that if I hold on tight enough I'll wash up on a shore I can't see and don't trust to exist. Knowledge feels weak and flimsy and fragile, here, a paper screen I could poke holes in without trying, but I school myself to it anyway.

But the last one - oh, that's harder. That is so much harder. To eye a belief, to want desperately to quash it and ignore it and try to grit my teeth through the screaming sirens in my brain; and to trust it anyway, to use knowledge not as shield or escape route but to examine and pick apart and shore up the yawning horror, to say "I refuse to train myself out of lesson I won with blood and fire and agony."

It is learning how to get free: what to keep, and what to discard.

Comments

[redbird]

That's a hard one. I can't do more from here than say "yes, that's important," I have no techniques for this that you don't already know.

What I was more than half-expecting when I saw the title was the other direction: how to take things that a person knows are true, or has decided make good life guidelines, and internalize them. One of my mantras (which I got from my girlfriend) is that we have to work with the Vicki we have, not an ideal Vicki who is stronger, healthier, more energetic, etc. Saying it helps, sometimes, but it doesn't stop me resenting that this is the Vicki I am, and unlikely to change much.

[kaberett]

Hah. Yes. Internalising is something I'm still working on; certainly dealing with the body-I-have is something I've been working on a lot and keep meaning to write a post about (because that one I *am* making progress on, though it was idiosyncratic and personal and I'm not convinced anyone else would find things worked the same way.)

[pretty_panther]

♥ I relate so hard it kind of hurts deep in my chest.