Who Needs a Therapist When (Pt. 24)

So, I'm trying to do some introspective type things in preparation to see a therapist.

In that, I don't know if therapy is going to be helpful at all, so I am trying to figure out what it is that I want from it at all. I mean, I've always gone into therapy with goals before. "Hey, I'd like to stop this behavior," or "Hey, so my depression is a little off the charts, can we figure out how to fix it?" But, that isn't really the point. Because, looming far bigger than any question of stopping me from chewing my fingernails or getting myself back into a healthy sleep routine is the question of what to do about the big issue under it all.

Because I keep slipping back. And I feel like I've made some good progress in finding things that work to make everything more manageable. But, if I'm sleeping on the edge of a cliff, no matter how careful I am, sooner or later I'm going to fall off the edge. So I need to figure out something to do about this giant, gaping hole.

And, I think I've done pretty good in narrowing it down, in getting to a point where I know what is wrong.

What is wrong is that I don't feel like my actions are related in anyway to results. So, there isn't much point in trying. Because I look forward, and I don't really see things worth working toward right now. My future feels like a giant hole of capitalism and health problems making everything slowly worse forever. So, I don't have goals. And, maybe that's okay for a little while. Or I guess it would be okay if my anhedonia wasn't making even small pleasures feel empty and pointless.

But I use duty and obligation to keep me going when things are bad. I use longterm goals to make the dumb stuff, right now, manageable. I use daydreams and potential futures to give meaning and sense to everything I do. If I am not moving forward, then maybe the swamp and misery of my life will claim me.

Without goals, I feel adrift and unbalanced and off kilter. So I've been sort of trying out some narrative therapy stuff on my own, trying to look at all of the various stories that I've told myself and figuring out which ones are actually appealing to me—which of these pieces of who I am are the ones that I want to build future me around. I'm trying to figure out, if I'm going to therapy, what the long term goals are going to be. What the point of it all is.

And I'm struggling with the idea that any of these ideas could find new life in me. I genuinely don't know where or what I could possibly do that wouldn't fizzle out. Most of my dreams have slowly been eaten by the poverty machine, or failing body, or just acceptance of my own limitations. And I feel like there has to be a version of me that is worth looking forward to. I just can't figure out what that version is when so many important pieces of me have been lost.

So, I really, really hope that I can have a little more luck with a therapist than I've been having on my own, because I don't know how to invest in dead dreams anymore. I don't think I can keep doing that. And, without the dreams that have been keeping me going for, well, forever, what on earth even am I?

Anyway, let's see what the professional says, because I'm sick of being sick of my own future.

Last Week's (Pt. 23)

First Week's