Therapy?

I've been thinking about going into therapy. I've been thinking about doing a lot of things in my recovery actually. Have any of you been to therapy? What kind of therapy were you involved in? Did it help, and how?

What is the purpose of this therapy? What is the goal?

I've had various therapies over the years and the only thing I ever came away with is guilt that I spent money on myself.

I've had effective therapy for depression and for substance abuse, and because both of those things were endangering my well being I had reason to seek help. I needed outside help to interrupt behavioral or thought processes that I could recognize as damaging but couldn't step away from on my own. Therapy can be effective if you are able to find the right therapist and the right approach for your problem (& the person/approach that might be effective for one problem may not be effective for another).

However, I don't even know what effective therapy for SPD (assuming that's what the therapy is for) would involve. Aspects of SPD annoy me at times, and I might want to change specific things--like spending less time daydreaming and more time engaged in actual creative activity--so I guess I could work on those specific tasks (maybe with some form of CBT). Still I don't think any of them cause me enough distress to cause me to talk to another person about them.

I started a therapy a few month ago. i dont realy know what i expected. i think nothing.

it was more some sort of negative proof that you cant trust people and shouldnt let them too close to you.

about me, i never had depressions or so and i think my emotional limitations are a bit different than the usual spd guy. my emotial spectrum only involves anger/rage and joy.
i can supress anger/rage very easy with logical thinking about the case. doesnt take more than a few seconds to overcome even the strongest anger.
there are only a few things that can bring me joy, but i know how to get them.

iam 36 years old and for the most time i was quiet happy without any friends. i even broke the contact to my family.

the only problem i ever had was that there was "something" attracting me to woman. i couldnt figure out what exactly it was, but it was easy to suppress too.
i basically spent almost 20 years being happy alone while "researching" what exactly is wrong with me and whats up with this "something" inside me. all i was able to find out is that it isnt a sexual thing.

i dont realy understand why people act so against logic, but iam pretty good at analyzing them and predicting. iam not sure how good my "acting normal" ability is, but i think iam good enough. but this is very exhausting. and that is mostly what keeps me away from people.

the problem why i reached out for professional help was basically that both, the exhausting and this "something" both grew stronger over time and it was accellerating. it was tearing me apart inside. something within me wanted realy badly something from other people and at the same time it got harder and harder for me to be with other people.


what the therapy did for me so far was first the diagnosis. it gave me certainty about whats wrong with me.
the second thing is the therapist managed it that i kind of trust her to speak openly about most things.
the third thing and the most important thing for me is that she adds a lot to my thought process.
when you spend a lot of time thinking about things, mentally simulating possible scenarios you seem to end up in loops, missing obvious details. my therapist asks the right questions to enable me finding problems with my schemas myself.

also iam not sure why, but since my therapy started, that being "teared appart from the inside" disappeared for now, i think it stoped the downward spiral. i have not fully identified that "something" yet, maybe trusting someone and being myself is what i was looking for.

Necrionos wrote:i can supress anger/rage very easy with logical thinking about the case. doesnt take more than a few seconds to overcome even the strongest anger.

I'm very like that - and also find it easy not to bear grudges. Perhaps its a function of emotional detachment in SPD.
Reminds me that anger management is really misnamed and should be called temper management - there's nothing wrong in being angry about something, it's losing one's temper over it that causes the problems.

UK SPD wrote: - and also find it easy not to bear grudges.

yes.
I have "invented" some sort of score system to adjust my behaviour/reactions towards different people.
its not realy a number that is attached to everyone, but more a general standing and a tendency.

everyone starts with a slightly negative standing, and then i try to add and substract everything i like and dislike, and things that i find usefull or that hinder me.

in case that the standing value is positive i see that as owing that person something. i dont want to owe anyone anything, so i try to reduce the score back towards neutral by accepting requests or even actively trying to help.

in case of negative standing i see it as my right to reject help requests for what ever reason. that doesnt involve trying to damage the person or being unfriendly or so. my basic behaviour is the same for everyone. i use this score thing only for decision making.


i think it offers me 2 advantages. first thing is i can see people as a whole and balance out good and negative sides. i can completly ignore everything that is negative as long the overall score seems to be positive.
and the second thing, it helps me to protect myself from people withoutthe need to remember everything that ever happend. if something happens i just adjust thestanding score and after that i donth ave to care anymore.

a disadvantage i found, is that i cant split a person in to coworker/"friend"/importent to me in another way. that may be not very obejective in some cases. or you could call it interesst conflicts.

the second disadvantage (iam not sure about this one) is that my therapist always tells me that people are not machines/robots, it wont help me finding access to some of my feeling if i reduce people to "numbers".

Necrionos wrote:everyone starts with a slightly negative standing, and then i try to add and substract everything i like and dislike, and things that i find usefull or that hinder me.

in case that the standing value is positive i see that as owing that person something. i dont want to owe anyone anything, so i try to reduce the score back towards neutral by accepting requests or even actively trying to help.

in case of negative standing i see it as my right to reject help requests for what ever reason. that doesnt involve trying to damage the person or being unfriendly or so. my basic behaviour is the same for everyone. i use this score thing only for decision making.

That's interesting. I think that it correspond to something i might do unconsciously.

Possibly i begin with slightly positive number.

Some people make the number always positive. They are nice friends but i had to accept that it's difficult to reciprocate.

Some people make the pointer get mad. I think it can be a symptom of manipulation.


(I'm not schizoid)

I will do 3 different therapies, one of them for SPD for social skills training.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bcpj-q0Snc
had to be done