Lightbulb moment 💡

I am currently working with my second therapist. She does lots of somatic, emdr, humanistic therapy. We connected right off the bat and I was so happy to be able to be myself around her, VIRTUALLY anyways. It’s been about 4-5 months working with her, but the more we are meeting the more i still have doubts about her understanding where i am coming from or understand how my brain works, or being able to help me. And i feel myself closing off and just being superficial about everything, or just resisting my thoughts /feelings. Sometimes i feel like i can open up just fine, but it’s starting to feel unauthentic. Sometimes i wish she would be like my first therapist, and help prompt me to talk or find a way to dig deeper into my issues…sometimes i feel like she doesn’t say the right thing, or doesn’t point out things my first therapist would do and work that out….idk…and the whole humanistic energy work freaks me out. Im a practicing Catholic and when we do certain somatic/emdr/humanistic work i start to think: what if i get possessed or what if what i am doing here is wrong, or this feels like its too much for my brain to handle and i might end up freaking out badly, or what if i something bad happens….idk…any thoughts???

Just a quick question how did you guys who have gotten better learn to accept these thoughts and not fight them ? What tips and tricks did you guys use to truly get better.

Just noticed something that helped me today. I was having the realization a lot of my issues stem from me not taking responsibility for my own life, and also not recognizing my own self-limiting beliefs (SLBs) and automatic negative thoughts (ANTs.) In doing this, I learned that the only way forward is confronting my deepest darkest fears head on and associated irrational/self limiting beliefs- and that for years and years, I have simply retreated and run away. One of my deepest darkest fears (one of my obsessions) is rooted in the understandable fear of the worst of humanity, and the 'what if' I was that (like many of us.) I actually can have compassion for myself because it is perfectly okay to be scared of the worst of people, and if something like that is perpetuated throughout pop culture-media- it would make sense to have associated thoughts about it. The fear is that I am a serial killer or have motives of one. And the OCD has caused me to constantly question my motives and actions to no end (how OCD latches on- makes you look for evidence where there is none.) For the longest time, I have been convinced I am one, and need to hide myself from the world, avoid people more than just because of social anxiety, what my main anxiety was back then. I look for signs everywhere- and the OCD latches on to any perceived (not real) evidence that I am one, that people think I am one. When I decided to confront this fear rather than run away like I have for years, it made me realize it is just a fear- it has nothing to do about who I am as a person, despite how strong the OCD tries to convince you otherwise. It is so sad how strong OCD can be, to make so many of us good intending people be convinced that they are something horrible. Anyway, I hope this can help people realize the best way forward is to confront it head on. It's akin to shining a light on the monster and seeing it for what it is - a goofy thing with fake prosthetics for a movie that isn't a monster after all- a sheep in wolfs clothing. It's just you have been running from it so long, your imagination has gotten so detailed about how horrible it is, hearing its fake growls, instead of turning around and blasting it with a spotlight. This is I guess what ERP is about. For me, one of the struggles with ERP and a specific exposure is that the OCD will jump to a different obsession , which then tells me ERP is a waste because Im not confronting the 'most recent' fear. This is faulty thinking though- because the solution is to confront the fear, not the specific thought. By doing that, you learn to not run away and do all the compulsions in your mind. Tl;dr- long winded post about me realizing how I have actually been avoiding the solutions (ERP) and making up reasons to not confront my fears this whole time. I have been running instead of shining a light on the sheep in wolfs clothing.