You seem to have insight and answers to your own issues so there’s no need for me to offer any suggestions. I am similar in that I like to think I am the expert on myself. For both of us then, we need to emphasise the positive for the past and present. Can you see anything good happening to you at present? Today for instance, I took my dog for a walk this morning, and he was so appreciative, he hasn’t stopped smiling at me since then. I am grateful for this at least. But I can easily slip into negativity if I dwell on silly little melodramas that occurred in the past. (I don’t mean your past events were melodramas, just mine 🙂 )

Dear Brian:

More thoughts. You answered your own question (which you did call rhetorical, so no wonder you answered it): “It feels ‘safe’ in terms of familiarity.” The need to feel safe is how it all started: it was too unsafe to imagine your childhood circumstances indeed had nothing to do with you and therefore you were powerless to change them. So you took the blame so to feel you had control, that you could change the circumstances (because it is your fault and if you change your ‘badness’ the circumstances will change from bad to good). So now it is still SAFETY that is your main concern. It feels safe, at least relatively safe, but still… safe, the way things are. So… how can you argue with such an intense motivation as in the need for safety?

It was always about the need and search for safety. A human/ animal will pay a huge price for the feeling of safety, so no wonder however miserable you are, safety is still the main objective.

I am suggesting an answer that is IN your post that maybe you didn’t notice: your need to be soothed. You need hugs, real life hugs, you wrote- there is the answer- in those hugs, in the soothing. How else are you going to overcome the fear of being unsafe? Soothing by others, soothing by self. That needs to be increased.

It is the chicken and the egg thing: how are you going to get out of bed and look for the real life hugs that you need so that you can get out of bed?

I don’t think there is an answer to that. You either get out of bed and look for the hugs that you need, or you don’t.

anita

Dear Brian:

If “going through the same kinds of things I am going through” meant rewiring neural pathways, then I am going through the same kind of thing these very days and for a long time. But very much so this very day, right now. It is the most amazing and difficult thing to do, not a natural inclination since these automatic pathways, once formed, are not meant to be changed. Changing one’s neuropathways is … mind boggling, really.

anita

Yes, literally. In this and other posts you do have an excellent handle on what is going on. I am thinking you either have an excellent therapist or your therapist has an excellent client in you… or both. Keep going out, but wisely, so that you get a positive payoff from going out, maximize the chances that a going out will be pleasant, whatever it takes to make it easier, simpler and positive.

anita

Dear Brian:

You are welcome. About assuming the worst still and believing still, at times at least, that you don’t deserve to be happy: these are indeed well ingrained, well worn neuropathways. And it does take a mind boggling kind of work to disengage from them frequently enough and engage other neuropathways often enough to that the latter become “your nature.”

I will never assume the best about people because this is not reality, that is that people were… not dangerous, not violent and I only imagined them to be. As long as I exist something about me will trigger someone out there to attack me in one way or another, from a word to a bullet in my head. These kinds of attacks and all in between happen in reality every day, some here on this forum, some only possible outside the forum.

So for me it has been the sorting out of what is real out there so that engaging in new neuropathways, I am more committed to those new ones, believing in their objective truth.

anita