It’s Therapy Thursday today.
Me and my therapist got talking about my Energizer Bunny way of just keeping going no matter what, and how bad that is for me in the long term.
The enelogy I used was that I likened it to one of those people who drivers the same piece of shit car for twenty years, pouring thousands of dollars into it and becoming a laughingstock for the whole town because they drive this disaster of an automobile,. and seem oddly prouid of their “loyalty” to it.
And all because they have a little trouble letting go of things.
I’m like that car. No mattter what, I keep going at my extremely low level. Rain or shine, come what may, I slog ever onwards.
But the thing that I am quite ill, and I have a lot of psychological issues, and there are times when you actually should flame out and fail because that’s the only way the bad system can die and make way for a new you to emerge.
The role of destruction in change is something I have struggled with. Logically, it’s a slam dunk. but part of me always wants to believe that there is another way.
The fact that in moves and on TV, the only peopole you hear talking about destruction and renewal are supervillains looking to kill everyone on Earth doesn’t help either.
Myh entire persoanlity (and that of any Taurus) is geared towards preserving and maintaining , and accumulating value.
That doesn’t leave much room for destruction and renewal. That’s more of a Scorpio thing. We are the sign of not being able to let go. They are the sign of not being able to keep things. It’s balanced.
So I just plain keep going when I should at least be pulling in for a pit stop now and then. But that would involve stopping and I can’t stop for any reason.
If I do. something terrible will happen. It’s the same overwhelming dread that I feel when I contemplate doing something other than what I had intended on doing.
My guess is that it’s the universal emotion of compulsion denial and that what I feel is a lot like what people with OCD feel when they try to resist one of their compulsions.
It doesn’t matter how blatently and obvious irrational it is. It obviously causes me no great hard to have to change the plan in my head. It’s just as obvious that nothing bad will happen if an OCD sufferer doesn’t touch the doorknob exdactly three times when they leave a room.
But the forces involved are way stronger than reason and operate on a level far deeper than our consciousness, and it’s very hard to resist it as a result.
I have veered way off topic again. Sorry. Mygh therapist has noticed this tendency in me too. He said he could warn me when I am doing it – when I start off talking about myself then slip into theorizing and extrapolating and pontificating as I am wont to do, and do it so smoothly that I don’t even know I am doing it.
I will strive to fix that in the future. The first step is becoming aware.
Where was I? Oh right, keeping going.
Time break! Ironically, after writing that last senetence about keeping going, I failed to keep going (I needed sleep) and it’s now much later in the day.
And with the time shift comes a topic shift, because now I want to talk about my argumentative nature and how it still gets me in trouble.
I ended up arguing with Felicity tonight and she made the very excellent point that it feels like I am attacking her when I argue with her negative self-comments because of the way I go about it.
Wwhen I hear someone I love saying bad things which are untrue about themselves, I (over) react in my typical fashion and rise to their defense. The same thing happnes when I hear them expressing a way of thinking I think they need to escape.
I leap into action as Counter Argument Man and my missions is to destroy the evil thoughts and ideas before they can hurt my loved one any further!
OR at least, that’s the idea. But those evil thoughts and ideas are part of the person I am trying to protect and from their point of view, its hard for them to tell the difference between me attack the pernicious thoughts and me attacking them.
So my big ol heart is in the right place, but my pugilistic nature and my overperforming urge toi defend people I love get crosswired and I end up doing morw harm than good when I so desperately want to help.
This is, of course. unacceptable.
So now I have a lot to think about. I feel like I have to invent an entirely new mode for my personality. Or rather, a synthesis of other modes. Be a gentle listener, and ask the sort of questions that keep the person talking. Attack nothing, no matter how loud my entire endrocrime and nervous systems are crying out for me to leap into the fray and destroy the threat.
What matters are the results. As a hardcore pragmatist, that’s a truth I cannot dodge.
So I will have to work on modifying my response so that it matches my intention.
And that will take a long time and a lot of difficult thinking. That’s always the case when you realize that your natural response just won’t cut it any more and that means you want to change your natural response, in a sense.
In the right context, my instantly leaping to the defense of a loved one would be seen as heroic. But there is no kind of action that is the right thing to do in every situation.
Gotta put that bear back in his cage and finds a new animal for my act.
Something a rad calmer/.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.