Reply To: Forum Case Study – Avoidant Personality Disorder APD
JamesGood afternoon (at least where I live), guys!
Paul – Thank you for the support, and I can only speak for myself but I do not mind at all – in fact, I welcome your and anyone else's input and support.
In this case your insight was particularly helpful – as I read your suggested things to blast I felt them deeply. Especially the “no-one really cared about me”. Oh man, that has been my life (and several previous).
I read your response, and Brain's, and got so much from both (I will respond to Brain's after this, separated for simplicity – although of course much of this is also for Brian's feedback too!), but for one of the first times in my life I didn't have quite such an intense desire to DO IT NOW, I HAVE TO DO IT ALL NOW, which was interesting. I went ahead and tried to work through your suggestions as they were directly laid out for me, and the benefit of an external point of view is of course massively valuable.
I hope no-one minds, I'll continue the “diary” format of the days since: (If Brian or any other mods would prefer I make a separate forum thread somewhere for this, please just let me know. I´m posting here because currently this is “home” for me on the forums in general)
Thursday July 19
18min BB on “I was so messed up”… and I fell asleep. I am fairly sure this is due to being genuinely tired, although I woke 40 mins later and was annoyed about it and wondered if I was avoiding it for “self-protection” or something. Don't know
Friday July 20
Woke up, did the Relaxational Accelerator (as per Brain recommendation). One of the best days at this job since I started.
Saturday July 21
18 min BB “I was letting everyone down”
18 BB “What made me good enough was doing things perfectly” – fell asleep
At this point family things came up, my sons, my wife – we all have ongoing issues to be honest (some I´ve caused directly, or not helped, some of their own) – frustrations and a small arguement with my wife. I should point out that in 10 years of marriage we've had maybe 5 fights, so yelling at each other is a big deal.
I had to get out. I left my wife tapping to a CT, made sure my sons were good playing Lego and knew not to disturb mummy, and got out of the house. I tried using the BB's while walking. Personally, I think this is not a good idea. Maybe it works for some people, but I´m not sure it's effective. It's certainly not ideal – hard to really really focus when you're avoiding traffic and navigating things.
While walking, 10min BB “I was such a weirdo” – this is what I felt at the time, and it was related to the “I was so messed up” which I had fell asleep during. I just went with it.
While walking, 12 min BB + last 4 mins of 18 min BB track “I couldn't fit in anywhere” – this was a little more effective, the part of the walk was more private. I believed it strongly for most. Perhaps effective-ish.
For both of the above, I´ll revisit in a week and see if I need to run something at home to finish them.
Then, in a cafe – “I wasn't worth having around” – again, this came to me. I was about 90% deeply focused on it, but occasionally distracted by other people around.
At this point I decided to just be out, walk, get some peace, then head home where I did:
18min BB on all the following:
– “I was only good enough if I did things perfectly”
– “I wasn't able to do what I needed to do” – not sure if this was quite right, I bounced around with the phrasing – it's around procrastination, so in the end I just went with this haha
– “No-one really cared about me”
– “I was all alone in this world”
– “I wasn't able to trust and follow guidance from my best self” – this came to me during a short meditation after the previous belief. I felt strongly that it was needed, so I ran it.
Again Paul, I wanted to say thanks for pointing out those beliefs and the general support both directly here, and across the forums. All of you mods are so so giving and helpful across all of these threads, and I am getting a lot from many of your responses elsewhere, even though I´m not posting.
Saludos desde españa!