Just needed to be heard for a little while

Pyxis

With regard to your guilt for the death of your friend's father, please turn it around. What is happening is that the news of her father's death simply brings back all the feelings you had when your father died. In exactly the same way as a bereaved person knows just what another bereaved person is going through.
So, those feelings are your grieving for what you have lost, all over again. Turn that guilt back into the true feelings, i.e. the grieving for your father, for what you lost, for what he lost.
Try to stop the grieving becoming guilt; no mean feat I know! Tell yourself, the guilt isn't really guilt, it's sorrow for your loss and sorrow for your friend's loss.
Not guilt.

I hope that helps, and isn't too waffly!

Waves_and_Smiles

Thank you, elsien and Pyxis. It is the guilt and grief I felt over my fathers death and later my mothers. It all gets distorted and turns into me feeling responsible for other people dying. A lot is grief because I never allowed myself to feel it either time. I was numb after my fathers death and then 'disappeared' for 9 months. When my mother died I didn't find out until years later and again, felt nothing. Even now I have never really grieved.

Thank you for listening to me, I can't tell my friend any of this as it would be very unfair. She needs my support right now, not a dialogue about how I am feeling and my worries about losing her friendship over something that didn't even really happen. Talking about it here helps.

lostinrates

dibuzz wrote: »

I also have low self esteem, my PWP spotted it quite quickly and my next therapist will work on it more. I've never felt good enough.

You know, its good to feel 'enough' but I don't think feeling not enough is the worst thing. Its a great driver at times, for success.

Those who feel ' perfect' ( rather than good enough' at the opposite of the spectrum are difficult.

In adolescence when I started getting performance twitchy a mentor gave me superb advice, that I've applied to every aspect of life since. She said something along the lines of ' you know, you feel shy or self conscious or scaredor like you might [make a mistake] well kid! drop the ego. Its just another way to be egotistical. It ain 't all about YOU you know, even if your headlining, its all about THEM, so leave the ego back there, awkward , scared, its just another word for that...come out and make them feel comfortable.'

I'm not terribly socially confident, but you ask any body who knows me but for my intensely close friends, and the closest of my ex lovers and my husband, they'll tell you that I'm fearless.:D.

Putting those issues of esteem, confidence and personal comfort in balance with how I want other people to feel around me makes it easier to balance. I know its not an easy concept to be open too because it makes very big, real emotions seem very 'disrespected' and its not that, I know they are real. I really know they are real! But its a coping mechanism and the positive feed back generally helps bolster the confidence. It doesn't SOLVE the problem, or it hasn't for me. But its like.....i near feel at sea with put that flotation device of the coping strategy. It might be my background and that I was doing it from quite young though.

Waves_and_Smiles

My therapist told me very similar, LIR. When I was repeating over and over how people didn't like me and I was scared what people would think of me she said that people don't actually spend their whole lives worrying about me and my preoccupation with my self image and presentation was a kind of reverse vanity. Of course it is totally correct, I don't actually feature in everyone's minds all of the time as they debate what they think of me! In reality to most people, not including friends, I am a passing thought at the most while they get on with worrying about their own lives. Remembering that tends to help me quite a lot.

lostinrates

Waves_and_Smiles wrote: »

My therapist told me very similar, LIR. When I was repeating over and over how people didn't like me and I was scared what people would think of me she said that people don't actually spend their whole lives worrying about me and my preoccupation with my self image and presentation was a kind of reverse vanity. Of course it is totally correct, I don't actually feature in everyone's minds all of the time as they debate what they think of me! In reality to most people, not including friends, I am a passing thought at the most while they get on with worrying about their own lives. Remembering that tends to help me quite a lot.

Vanity was definitely a word that instructor used in that dressing down!

DUKE

WaS I was confused when you mentioned good voices as I always imagined that voices would be bad. Now I know that the good voice can beat the bad voice (did I get that right?), there's hope for Harry & everyone with voices :j

I've no idea who quoted this but this is for everyone out there with voices

''I wouldn't change you for the world
But I'd change the world for you''

whitewing

This evening I got DH to drop me and DD at the park while he went clothes shopping. I sat on the grass, in the breeze and closed my eyes. I love the yellowy gold of the sunshine on closed eyelids. I thought about you, WaS, and how much I would love you to feel and see these sensations. I think one of the reasons that I am so drawn to this thread is that I feel that I understand a lot about why you are like you currently are, and it helps me to recognise where I've had similar thoughts and feelings and it makes me want to share what is good about my life with you so we can inspire and help each other.

You're more than a passing thought, but it's kind of an unconditional thing so that if you announced tomorrow that you were locking the thread and that was it, I would still think kindly of you and send good wishes every so often.

Waves_and_Smiles

The same therapist one day rolled her eyes at me and said "It isn't always about you, you know!" That made me think and again, she is right. Whereas I always lean towards thinking I've made someone hate me, I've made someone think I am horrible, the other side of the coin says how arrogant I am! People have thoughts and feelings and drives that are nothing to do with me, they react how they choose to because of their own reasoning, it isn't all about me all of the time!

She was my favourite therapist, tough on me but I loved her for it!

Waves_and_Smiles

Yes, there are good voices too Duke! My good voices tell me to ignore the bad ones because they are liars. I really like the good voices and oddly enough I wouldn't want to be without them. I am very attached!

Aww, that's lovely, whitewing. Thank you. I do love it when people think about me when they are outside because I feel like a little bit of me is there, too. Thank you so much for sharing that.

whitewing

I was thinking about that earlier, about the potential absence of voices. I was wondering if schizophrenics ever stop hearing voices (perhaps some of the Thread Friends can jump in with their experiences).

I personally think that if you stopped hearing voices at any point, it would be a gradual thing that you would notice but you wouldn't be perturbed by because there would be other things taking over in your life.