TW therapist says i'm trying too har

I'm 23 male, abused, invalidated n blah blah blah..my therapist says I'm trying too fast n too hard to get over it. But why shouldn't i..

Bpd, PTSD, abuse...these things I've read in novels n movies but to go through them...if only..cruelest wordsin life..if only

my therapist says I need to accept the past n let go of the hope that things could've gone differently.

It means letting go of the man I would've been had I not been abused. I know the kid I was before the incident n what it did to me. Acceptance means saying bye to that man. Why should he go, what did he do wrong..

No you haven't upset me. I just need to slow down.

Instead of hating the abuser, I have to start protecting myself. That helps a lot, seeing myself in third person.

Warning may trigger..

Instead of a hug can you offer me the batmobile..vroom vroom

This just in...robbery at Gotham bank, joker strikes again. Hop in archer girl, I could use the owl to battle joker's minions.

Can you await your hunger till I send joker to jail. You can watch tv till then..

Hmm..god save the joker now.

Forgiveness is the complete release of all hope for a better past.

jaus tail wrote:It means letting go of the man I would've been had I not been abused. I know the kid I was before the incident n what it did to me. Acceptance means saying bye to that man. Why should he go, what did he do wrong..

I have been in a similar position as you are in now. I couldn't let go of what happened to the child because it was like I'm the only witness, I know what happened to her and it should have never happened. She was only a little person and done nothing wrong. I equated acceptance with me betraying and abandoning her--that I'd be doing the same thing they did to her. That's where this feeling of being stuck came from. I felt that if I accept, it means I approve of what happened. For me it was easier to get angry and resentful of what they did to me. But no amount of rage is going to change what happened. Blame and thinking/wishing that X didn't happen is missing the point that in fact it DID happen. There is no use fighting the past. All it will do is make you more paralysed and helpless and you'll be going nowhere. But one thing my therapist constantly reminds me of is that acceptance is NOT the same as approval.

Radical Acceptance is central to DBT. Below is a copy of a handout on distress tolerance. It might be useful.

RADICAL ACCEPTANCE

Freedom from suffering requires acceptance from deep within.
It is allowing yourself to go completely with whatever the situation is. Let go of fighting reality.
Acceptance is the only way out of hell.
Pain creates suffering only when you refuse to accept the pain.
Deciding to tolerate the moment is acceptance.
Acceptance is acknowledging what is.
To accept something is not the same as judging it to be good.

TURNING THE MIND

Acceptance of reality requires an act of choice. It is like coming to a fork in the road. You have to turn your mind towards the acceptance road and away form the rejecting reality road.
You have to make an inner commitment to accept. The commitment to accept does not itself equal acceptance. It just turns you toward the path. But it is the first step.
You have to turn your mind and commit to acceptance over and over and over again. Sometimes, you have to make the commitment many times in the space of a few minutes.

It's not easy to "achieve" acceptance and quite often you'll have to do it repeatedly. It's something I still struggle with but once I stopped fighting the past and accepted my current situation, I was able to actually start working on my problems.

The thing that bothers me is that I had forgotten it all, until the guilt n mood swings n b/w thinking came in. I'm 23 n the abuse had stopped many years. The therapist says mind had developed defends mechanism. I'm having a hard time believing what happened in the past would show its effects years later.

The part of accepting is free from suffering, makes sense. I guess that'sthe only way life goes.