Things I've learned from counselling

[kaberett]

This is part one of an irregular series I've been meaning to write for a while: I keep promising people I'll talk about what my counselling is like, and then I don't. So now I am; while knowing this stuff doesn't always lead to gut-deep belief, one of the things that's really helped me is rearticulating ideas I've come across before - because sometimes they click and fit and lock in place, rather than sliding off into the corner with a small sad sproing. And so:

The ice cream is not a lie.

[Content note: discusses abuse.]

Like an awful lot of people, I'm very, very good at working myself up into a twisting, screaming state of panic over something apparently trivial - something where starting is well over 80% of the work.

Like an awful lot of people, for a very long time my reaction to this was to yell at myself: ramp up the self-criticism for being so [insert negative descriptor here] as to not even be able to do [SIMPLE THING IS SIMPLE AMIRITE].

I am pretty sure I know exactly when and where and how this reaction was trained into me. The details aren't important (many unhappy families are, after all, unhappy in very similar ways), but this bit is:

The way out of behaving like a panicked toddler is, for me, dissociating enough to split myself into "toddler" and "adult".

Sometimes this is easier than others; some days I can do an internal monologue, and sometimes I need to vocalise in order to make the words happen. (I have been known to make my way across the big local open spaces, well after dark, well into winter, giving myself an out-loud pep talk. This gets you odd looks, but whatever - it's worked. Think I'm gonna cry - don't know why/Think I'm gonna sing myself a lullaby/Feel free to listen/Feel free to stare...)

I'm good with kids and I'm good with animals. I'm a babysitter. Modelling myself and my reactions as a terrified five-year-old or a skittish foal shows me what tools I need to use to calm myself down: I need to make myself calm and open, I need to move slow, I need to speak softly, and I need to give myself space and love. Those skills are so routine to me that part-dissociated, my "adult" self can do them even when the vast majority of me is curled up under the metaphorical sofa screaming.

So that's what I do: because oddly enough, promises of love and acceptance and support work better to calm me down than screaming and threats of violence. They work much, much better when it comes to making the same stimulus less scary next time.

And the best bit about not actually being five? If what it takes to get my metaphorical toddler across the metaphorical rope bridge is the promise of ice cream, there is nothing that can stop me getting some.

Comments

[rmc28]

You would not believe how amazingly well-timed this is.

I might just be struggling with performance anxiety/freezing/not-starting-vital-tasks panic right now.

[kaberett]

I am so, so glad that this is helpful - writing about Stuff is sometimes difficult (though this one was relatively easy), and knowing that it's of use is just - a joy. x

[rmc28]

So it turned out to be one of those things where it was still an almighty pain until it was done, rather than going easily once started. But now it is done and there can be ice-cream.

(in practice: sleep now, and icecream tomorrow)

[kaberett]

GO YOU, though.

[pipisafoat]

My problem is that I bribe my child-self with things but then leave my adult-self at home and go get whatever I bribed myself with, whether I actually earned it or not. (because most of me is that child, and that child has no self-control.) And it's like, idk, I've set up this pattern of rewarding not doing anything, so I know I don't actually have to do whatever in order to earn the fake reward. So I still don't get anything done! I just have days where I sit around and eat candy forever and then whine about not having done anything.

eta: hello, beginning of classes, what do you mean I have to do stuff now! hahaha. timely conversation is timely.

[tim]

Food rewards don't work too well for me either, because I was (inconsistently) kept on strict diets as a child, forced to eat food I didn't like, and kept from eating food I did like -- so, putting it in kaberett's way, child-me doesn't trust adult-me enough to be confident that the ice cream isn't a lie. And child-me (using adult-me's body) eats the ice cream whenever an opportunity arises, since it might not be there next time.

I was taught to think of things in terms of self-control and discipline for a long time, and gradually I'm realizing these are words adults use to shame kids into doing what the adults want. So instead, I try to think about setting up the right circumstances (when adult-me is running the show) so that child-me, when he's running the show, will find it easy to do the thing that both parties will be glad for. I haven't thought about dissociating things so explicitly like this before, but I think it might actually be useful for me, so thanks, kaberett :-)

[kaberett]

That's another interesting bit of this: I know I've framed this post in terms of conscious dissociation, but what it's actually about is learning to trust myself enough that reintegration is a possibility, I think. I can't trust myself and won't be safe with myself if there violence (verbal or physical); separating myself out further, along lines I choose rather than have forced on me, is a way for me to take myself back.

Which, you know, that would probably be easier to parse if it weren't 6am and I hadn't done that bed thing yet, but there we go.

I am so glad this sounds as though it'll be useful to you. <3

[tim]

Part of it is parsable, anyway :-) I'm not sure how literally to apply the word "dissociation" to this process for me, given that I've had a long-standing lack of certainty about whether what I've been doing involuntarily all my life is dissociation or not, but that's a ramble for another day.

[flippac]

I've been treating myself like that for a long time - it's one of the quicker ways to spot an idiot shrink, they really freak about it because apparently I managed to remove all notion of agency as I do so. That, or they can't have their patients analysing what goes on below their conscious layers better than they do.

Seems to work for me, anyway - amongst other things, it's easier for me to feel out what's going on when something's really messing with my head (descriptivism in being more useful than prescriptivism shocker...). I think on some level we're forever reintegrating - but then I would, given how many of my 'defence' mechanisms originate in my hobbies!

[ludy]

this makes an awful lot of sense to me

[batrachian]

Lots to think about here, to be sure, but on a lighter note there is something beautifully evocative about the end of your first paragraph.

'small sad sproing', indeed. :)

[kht.livejournal.com]

A friend of a friend has a similar approach to counselling by personifying parts of your personality and talking to them - you might find their blog http://monstertalk.co.uk/ interesting.

[dreamfracture.insanejournal.com]

Do you have any idea quite how much I want to take you out and treat you with ice-cream right now?