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13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

Hi Red.

I presume you are still doing good. Anger is an emotion and to be felt, like all the emotions. Acting on it is the hard part. How to release it without hurting anyone or ending up in jail and get some relief is tough. Some times splitting wood or punching a pillow just is not enough. And dwelling on it is counterproductive and negative. Even worse when the other guy has a bigger stick than you.

Davit.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 2508

Hi ~m

Long time no see..Starting a thread titled Anger sounds like a good idea...Anger is something I have a problem with except in my case I express it..and my partner says I have a anger problem..The dilemma is that a Dr. told me like 30 years ago that my depression and suicide attempts were in part caused by not expressing my anger. That I was self destructing..So the problem seems to be that when I express myself people complain and when I say nothing and take it I self destruct..My anger seems to be brought on by triggers, like my neighbors using me as a human target in my front yard again last weekend. People having no boundaries. People saying mean and hateful things and ptsd traumatic events from my past. I don't see why we have to feel bad because we get angry sometimes. Its seems better to assert and express ourselves instead of self destruct..I don't know..Just talking out loud again..

Red......

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

Read your post again, you might not do anger toward other people, but I see anger here, you just need to expand it a bit. Let it go. What makes you mad, especially at yourself. Pull out the stops and you can pull out the blocks. Lets see if we can end the twenty years here. Subconscious anger and shame go together.

Busy right now but I will answer your other post.

Davit.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 376

I should start another thread... call it anger. Seems like my work here is never going to end. I didn't even get to any exposure work but was tracking my moods... so that every time the IWTD chorus was triggered I examined what triggered it, what was happening at the time, how my mood changed, etc. Yeck, yuck, bleh. I've spent 20 years with therapists trying to get me to express my anger. Never have, never will... I don't DO anger. I just don't. In tracking my mood this week I found that that the intense feelings of shame come not from whatever is happening, but from feeling angry about whatever is happening. ANGER? Well that just is not allowed. So it's true...I don't DO anger because it gets changed into shame so quickly... split second thinking process. And now, I WILL start a thread on anger because I have no idea what to do with it. I am NOT a happy camper right now.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

Hugs this is an interesting core belief. You are right, you do have to respond but why do you have to respond in a negative way? My brothers mood is controlled by his environment and mine is not. It is a pretty negative world so there is little choice if you are going to be controlled by your environment. Then too he watches TV and I don't. I have seen some unimportant trigger ruin his whole day and into the next. But then we have different core beliefs. Different personalities too. I have a theory that instinct that rides along with our DNA has an effect on a persons personality. If so then your reaction to your environment might not even be your own. Now that would make it harder to change even because it would have been there for ever. In attachment theory it is said that it takes three generations to change a personality and that is only if those three generations want to. Tough one there since you would be dealing with three different people with different influences.

Comparing ones self to others is definitely damaging but I think we all do it. Why does it effect one person different from another. Has to be different core beliefs.

I believe it is you that is the cause of your thoughts no matter what the trigger. As in the panic triangle, even out of it everything has to pass through your thoughts. Every thing you think and do is controlled by previous thoughts. If you have been living with negative thoughts long enough then you will have a negative attitude because there is nothing else. Yet if you have a positive attitude then even with a negative core belief you can still have a positive thought pattern that will colour everything that you react to in a positive way.

I have seen this in a couple of people. When asked how can they find good in so much bad they say they don't know, they just do. I think this goes back to which group they fall under in attachment theory. Then there is the opposite type of person who finds bad in everything. Yet oddly enough this type of person can still be happy. Has to go back to a core belief I think.

Why not black or white? The opposite of positive is negative, neutral doesn't function so can not exist.

Davit.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 4027

~m,

What triggers shame for me, is my negative response to the world, rather than something "out there". More specifically, comparing myself is not helpful, I find.

At the risk of someone out there labelling me as oversimplifying my life as "black or white", one does have to respond, and those choices ultimately impact our feeling state, and what we do the rest of the day, and how we interact with others.

I think there's an argument about whether the environment or myself is primarily a cause of a shameful set of thoughts leading to the behaviours and self-perpetuating lifestyle which follows, but I need to respond to the world in either a productive or non-productive way.

It might be different for you ~m, but I know I was set off today by those triggers, and had a miserable afternoon. Once I get going, focus on something productive, I dredge up something postive, and build on it.

Carl Rogers was a contemporary psychologist who believed in something called "unconditional positive regard", I believe. Maybe society has marketed "shame", since a newborn in a 3rd world country should have the same value as a newborn in a developed country, and both should grow up knowing they are of value, shouldn't they.

I think a lot of materialistic people think those children need "baby gap" clothing and ferraris when they grow up, and marketing shames us to buy stuff as "retail therapy", but it doesn't work, because the issue is one of self-worth.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 2606

Hello ~m,

Sessions 4 and 5 on Exposure work and Exposure homework might be of assistance with tackling your feelings of shame or embarassment. It is good that you have broken down the things you need to work on, go through the sessions again and work on this new goal you have set for yourself.

Samantha, Health Educator

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

One other thing. The things you have tried are mostly avoidance. Trying to get away from it rather than facing it head on and burying it. If you try to avoid the thought it will just go around you and get back in your face. The positive mantra accepts it is there and says go away, you don't belong.

Davit.

CBT, break it down. Therapy to change the way we think. This encompasses a lot of things.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

The fact that you have posted is a start isn't it. "I don't want to die" , "I'm enjoying life". These are positive thoughts and to make them mantras you only have to play them over and over. For some reason if you write something it reinforces the thought and if you say it out loud it reinforces both of those things. One thought done this way gives you three times the capacity to bury a negative thought. But we have a small problem here. Interrupting the thought stops the reaction, and the trigger. (temporarily, getting longer as you go on) But it would be better to work on a different corner. By the way it is a panic triangle but the reaction does not have to be panic. It could be depression or suicide depending on what the thought is that the trigger passes through. So if you know what the trigger is that causes the reaction then that will give you the mantra that you want to use to disrupt the negative thought.

Parents are not supposed to out live their children. You could not have been the cause, but the mind can do some pretty powerful things if it can find a reason to. More so if it is a negative reason. I would think that shame is the thought that the trigger passes through, but it could also be the "trigger" that passes through a more damaging thought. EG. "death is the only way to get away from the shame". If you have an actual legit reason to feel shame then it would be the "reaction". See it could be any one of the three corners. This you have to figure out first before you can formulate a positive mantra to interrupt the thought because the thought will be different, depending on what corner shame belongs to. Interrupting the thought corner is the easiest but you may have to work on a different one.

However the idea here is to bury the negative thought that pops up because of the core thought you have built, usually on some core belief. This can only be a problem if you have more than one core belief seeding negative core thoughts.

Having been suicidal when I was in intense pain from infection in a disc I know what it is to feel that is the only way out. The thought was there day after day as I lay for six month in pain and became a negative core thought. It was built on the core belief that bad things should happen to me because I'm not good enough, and no one could love me. So I should do the world a favour and take the easy way out.

Is this thought gone? No it still crops up. But since I now have something to live for and telling myself so (silently, as a thought mantra) every day, some times a number of times has got me believing so and like pac-man (remember the game) it is eating it's way back to the core belief where it is destroying it and allowing me to build a new one to keep it buried.

It took a while to get myself to actually believe. (one of the three corners of core beliefs) (perception and attitude being the other two) But repetition like exposure works, just not over night.

Davit.

13 years ago 0 +0 / -0 376

I am still working on dealing with shame and need some help/suggestions/different perspective to get unstuck. The panic thought cycle is being discussed on another thread and I was struck by how it relates to thoughts/feelings of shame. The discussion was about replacing negative thoughts with positive mantras. I started a new thread because I did not want to interrupt the discussion as it pertains to an actual panic attack.

My question has to do with changing a thought pattern I have that no longer causes panic, nor a negative behavior (I've learned to control those)... The thought pattern comes from the stimulus of embarrassment which quickly blooms into shame and then the thought "I want to die". This has been a negative mantra of mine for as long as I can remember. I've tried all kinds of things to make it go away including visualizations, internal discussion, flat denial, hypnotism, ignoring... and many more. This is one thing I've made zero progress on...and that I have not addressed with CBT... yet.

So how do I do that? How do I change this thought? Life is full of embarrassing moments... some real... some imagined... some new and some very, very old. Part of my problem is that any sort of embarrassment... including embarrassing memories... starts the cycle. The cycle doesn't send me into a panic anymore and I'm definitely of no danger to myself now... I do, in fact, not only want to live... I am quite enjoying doing so. I do, however, feel saddened that this response remains...

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