[wruza]

learning to be okay

Cannot stress enough how I second that. A nervous person (who you, a reader, completely are, despite thinking you’re normal) is at risk of self-feeding the problem they have with something.

Also as a person who couldn’t find interest in life events anymore in general (not suicidal, just boring to death), CBT theme itself is like a fresh breath. Like as a geek you never knew what a computer is and just found out.

[lanstin]

Yeah. A lot of people think therapy is about changing yourself, but honestly there is nothing shamefully wrong with most of us. We need shy, anxious but smart and kind people and we need oblivious plow ahead people and charming slightly narcissistic charismatic folks. We need some contrariness and some obedience. Some deep thinkers and some rush in and try it folks. Creative folks and measure twice cut once folks. Even with sleep, if you have to keep your little group safe at night in pre history having a variety of sleep schedules is good. The old people get the dawn watch, teenagers stay up first watch, the sleep shifted get second watch. It all works out.

Therapy makes a difference thru acceptance and working with you as you are more than fixing. Part of that is getting a more realistic way of perceiving your self as you are, and part of that is finding the strengths in how you are. Also taking very good care of your precious life. Sleep when you are tired. Eat when you are hungry. Seek help when you could benefit from it. It you hate someone, don’t hang around. Etc etc.

Between the acceptance, self awareness, less shame about your actual self, and a life that meets your needs, therapy can transform your life, but not by transforming you. You are fine.

[wruza]

A lot of people think therapy is about changing yourself

This was my concern as well, I asked about it on third or fourth session right after acute symptoms relaxed. I really didn’t want to change into someone else. The therapist laughed and said to not worry, because I lived more than 30 years along with my core beliefs and it would take an inhuman effort to move that mountain even slightly. All you do is getting familiar with yourself and being aware of tons of your automatic thoughts and what they result in, if you allow them to act without your noticing. Speaking in software terms, we are legacy monsters with no source code or self-testing, and CBT is basically a set of (pretty effective) blackbox testing methods with a goal to (a) create additional routines to work around detected issues and (b) accept that this is you and it’s normal/okay/justthat.