At the beginning of the therapy we said that it makes no sense to dig in the past, and it's better to focus on the now. Now we are changing the strategy, as in my impression the deep negative feelings and false identity cannot be fixed just with skills training.

I recently wrote a long essay for myself (i prefer to think in writing) trying to analyse how my childhood events influenced my current state, and how they resulted in my current problems. There was a number of threads, and they are all very entangled, one problem is reinforcing another - but what we decided with my therapist that could be the right first step was feeling compassion towards my past self, towards the emotionally abused kid.

And this is funny, as "compassion towards self" is a term I often heard or read in self help materials and I never quite stopped to think what it actually means. I think it's this tricky effect of subconsciously filtering out the information that is considered irrelevant or uncomfortable. So now when I stop to think about it, I see that my first reaction is "no way I will feel compassionate towards myself", because:

  • I SHOULD have been able to handle what has happened to me
  • I don't want pity from anyone, including myself
  • I believe I deserved everything that happened to me back then

It is indeed a very difficult subject to get a hang on. How can I feel compassion towards myself when I see myself as a worthless being that actually deserves everything that happened to it? A tough one.

I also noticed a scary thing - when I see children nowadays I kind of want to behave in the same abusive way towards them. If I saw an abused child, I would not be able to feel sorry for it. I would feel like "okay, shit happens, deal with it". How can I feel compassion towards myself if I cannot even do it for others who are in a situation that reminds me of mine?

So, I just wanted to write that I think I found a back door :)

The prerequisite was that, for the first time actually, I realised that there are other people do not feel how I feel. I mean, they do not feel that bad. They are actually excited about things, and awaiting good things, and they actually believe when someone says they like them or they love them. They live in a reality that to me feels like some utopia, but they actually do! And vice versa, my reality would be unbelievably horrible for them. If someone made them live in my head for 1 day, they would be shocked how I made it to this age.

And then I started to think about my boyfriend, who is also emotionally unstable and who I believe is also suffering like I am. And I thought - this is not fair! Yes, this is not fair, as he has so many great qualities, and he really wants to be a good person, yet he is constantly getting himself in situations that are so enormously emotionally exhausting that he will probably not live through a fraction of the happiness that a regular person does. It's such a huge set back. Maybe he also never felt loved? What did he do to deserve that?

And then I started to think about all the other people with psychological and/or emotional problems. There is so many of them, I can immediately think of a few that I actually know. How many of them is actually getting help? How many of them is aware of having a problem? How much suffering, every freaking day, is going on all around me. And it is all suffering in silence, it is not visible. Why are mental diseases not treated like physical ones? So many people are suffering and only the tip of the ice berg is actually searching for help at a specialist. And out of those specialists, how many are actually competent? You cannot measure those things even, so it's like being really ill physically and knowing that you have 10% chance that the doctor you go to actually knows what they are doing.

And then I started feeling compassion for all those people in general. I hope that could be the first steps to get where I wanna get. Today I was almost crying when singing songs to the children in the hospital. For so long I was not even able to feel emotions that other people felt there, thinking of them as freaks because they would wanna cry. Today I had to keep on pushing my nails into my hand to distract myself from the urge to cry. I believe that having stopped the medication can also be a factor in it, but I have always been rather emotionally indifferent when it comes to other people's suffering.

Could that be the first steps?