A good part of therapy is having the problems accurately identified with possible realistic goals for how to improve your mental situation.
I need money and fearlessness, now give me that or at least ways to achieve it
Self diagnosis often leads to the wrong conclusions. A perfect example is that there are already many rich, powerful, fearless assholes. Not only is adding you to their ranks unrealistic but it may not lead you to a future where you are content with yourself. Therapy can help you find whats wrong, and help you with the tools to know what to do about it. They aren’t going to “fix” you though. If you’re going into it with that mindset you’re going to come out exactly as you went in. Therapy is work. Be prepared to put in the work. It can be difficult, but its always worth it. The alternative is what you are now or possible even a worse version of yourself if you go down the wrong spiral.
FRYD@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Generally when you start out, they have to get a feel for how you think and it’s mostly just you complaining about what stresses you out. After a few sessions, a decent therapist will have figured out some patterns in how you think and will be better able to direct the conversation so you end up talking about more of the situation than you typically think of on your own. From this it’s up to you to figure out how you want to solve the problem and/or what you want your goals to be.
I get the never ending struggle for more money. That’s a tough one let me know if you figure it out lol.
Fearlessness is probably a pretty unhealthy goal imo. Fear is a normal, healthy response that keeps you from making bad decisions. I think what you would really benefit from is: increased self-confidence, stress management skills, and good planning. You could definitely tell a therapist that you’re looking to become fearless or at least less fearful and they would be able to better look for what you might be hung up on.
I personally suffer from pretty bad anxiety and I know it holds me back, but I’ve become more confident in my own judgement and I’ve become better able to seek support from the people in my life thanks to therapy. Things haven’t turned around for me yet, but I feel better about the future, which is a massive improvement on its own.
JulieLemming@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
No I don’t want fear. I don’t want to feel fear ever again.
FRYD@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
I’m not going to tell you what your goals should be, but you’ll eventually become less fearful on your path to fearlessness and it’ll be up to you to decide when it’s good enough.
If you’re afraid of therapy, I understand that. I don’t know you, but I was personally afraid of my inner thoughts causing people to reject me and I was also afraid that I may come to discover I’m worse than I thought. I’ll tell you how I came to see those things over time and maybe you feel something similar even if you can’t describe it and it may help. I unfortunately can’t do much more.
For the first fear (rejection) there’s two main things I clung on to: 1) There’s always someone worse than you out there and likely any therapist has already dealt with someone much worse than you or I. 2) Therapists are trained to deal with all kinds of people and manage whatever stress that may cause them. It’s why they cost so much money and that training is the difference between a therapist and a good listener. It’s also worth mentioning that they’re legally required to maintain confidentiality and unless you’re a danger to others, they’ll never spread anything you say.
For the second fear of realizing I was worse than I thought, that wasn’t really assuaged until I started. One thing most people come to realize as they become better at self reflection and self evaluation is that your imagination is almost always worse than the reality.
Whatever your particular fears are, it’ll take a measure of will power to overcome them no matter what. You should be proud then when you do go since you overcame your fear for your own betterment.
JulieLemming@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
thank you, sincerely, this is very helpful comment and something that I don’t feel like maybe I deserve omggg I need to work on that lol