* A cleaner print of my above post:

Dear Soufiola:

Welcome back! Today you shared that you are finally over your ex, that you are happy to be single, that you are  no longer feeling inferior to your peers, that you are “actually more optimistic and more peaceful than ever”, and that you learned to silence a lot of voices inside and outside of your head.

You shared that last February, six months ago, you were diagnoses with OCD, and have been doing CBT therapy ever since with a therapist who “does work hard and is super attentive”. She has you log all your OCD thoughts as a way to understand your triggers. As a result of therapy, your “panic attacks, depressive episodes and ruminating spirals” are less frequent (from happening daily to happening 1-2 times per week).

But you are doubting that your therapist’s methods work because in the last six months you attempted self harm twice (once after your sister expressed to you that she believed that you were not struggling emotionally and you got very angry as a result- “My mind became blurry from anger”, and a second time when your family told you that you are objectively beautiful and lovable and you got very angry as a result, believing they were lying to you so to make you feel good-“I called them liars and other horrible things”).

* “My sister believes my OCD diagnosis is wrong and that I have unreleased anger..”- the two things are not mutually exclusive. I grew up with lots and lots of unreleased anger and I suffered from OCD- both.

You shared that you are upset with your therapist because she insists that you do you log your OCD thoughts, but it is not always possible for you, and sometimes you don’t want to because you don’t want to relive the events, and/ or you feel that are lousy at expressing yourself in writing.

Also, you are upset at your therapist because you feel that she doesn’t want to address your “problems with self acceptance and self esteem.. possibly even dysmorphia”, which you say trigger your OCD, and instead, she “focuses solely on the OCD”, and refers  you to a psychiatrist when you talk about your self harm tendencies.

Before I respond further, a little summary of what you shared in your previous posts starting December 2019:

You had your first date with a man at 23. He paid you a lot of positive attention right away but proceeded to treat you very badly, including not giving you a ride from his place to your place when you were sick with fever, allowing you to take 3 busses and walk a lot back to your  home while feverish. When you arrived at home that night, after the 3 busses and long walk, you texted him that you “love him so much and .. was so lucky to have him”. You wrote about your sexual experience with him: “I enjoy and adore being submissive/ or mistreated.. Liking the man to get off his sexual tension on me with rage.. is what I find sexy.. My role is to accept all of it and obey his  needs. Kind of like a ragdoll”.

You later met another guy who treated you well, but nicknamed you puppy because he said that you are such a “yes-girl”, that you “agreed to all his terms”. He then turned “soooo cold.. downgrade my diplomas”. “Like a scared puppy, really politely”, you apologized to him when he was annoyed with you. He threatened to end the short relationship and later told you that he has no feelings for you, and that he doesn’t want to waste his time. You “asked for a final meetup.. he denied.. Then he vanished”.

You described submissive behaviors in other contexts: “I wouldn’t even stand up for myself, knowing I was wronged or mistreated. Even when a stranger pushed me on the street for example, I wouldn’t say anything, not wanting to be rude”.

About your childhood you shared that your father warned you about not being intimate with a guy because he will use you and get you pregnant, that he was in the habit of shouting at you for making the smallest mistakes, such as dropping food on the floor, that when you made a small mistake, he over-reacted, saying things like: “Why do you want to destroy your mom and I?”

You shared that your mother used to warn you when she believed your father would be coming from work angry, instructing you to “pretend/ act like nothing happened/ like you know nothing.. say nothing it shall pass, I don’t want any fights in the house”. You wrote about your mother that she is a coward, that she doesn’t stand up for herself, and that “she prefers calmness instead of justice”. But you love your mother “more than anyone”, and you “cannot bear” to see her being such a coward.

You wrote: “I can’t grasp how I got to be so like her”- you got to be like her because you loved her, and you still do; because you were loyal to her, and you still are loyal to her. “Truth is, there’s nothing I hate more, nothing I am more afraid of than being/ witnessing unfairness. More than death, more than loneliness, more than pain”

Your sister was “FULL of anger and explosive behaviors”, that she was your parents’ “Main preoccupation.. the center of my parents’ attention”, and that you were your sister’s “exact opposite, the obedient one, the selfless in order to be a priority”. But the result was that they didn’t make you their priority, expressing to you that you are strong, and therefore you don’t need their attention. You wrote; “when I truly am helpless, they don’t get it”, that you appear to b e “the sunshine girl”, a carefree girl,  on the outside, but “I don’t want to always have to be strong… This ‘sainthood’ is driving me insane. I want to make mistakes and be wrong and be loud and so  on”.

* I need to take a break and will return to your thread to conclude this post later on. If you read what I wrote so far and want to share your thoughts about this summary before I return to your thread, please do.

anita

Dear Sofioula:

I hope you are sleeping as I am typing this, it being almost 4 am your time. It seems to me that your therapist is a good one. I am not sure but I think she is, from what you wrote about her. I don’t think it’s a therapist’s job to give you answers, but instead to lead you to the answers that are already there, right under your awareness. By focusing on you getting some control over your OCD, she may be working toward calming your brain so that you can get to the answers you need.

She may not know the answers to your questions herself. I don’t know the  answers:  I am learning over time. Here is how I will be learning further, by asking you the following question:

Was I correct when I suggested that your father mistreated you and your sister directly, with his angry  words and behaviors?

Or do you think he mistreated only your mother?

* Can you give me a few examples of him mistreating you (besides the one example you already gave), and of him mistreating your mother?

anita

• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by .

Dear Sofioula:

“being brought up in the Greek culture, this doesn’t register as mistreatment”. You referred to “this” as “lots of spanking and word shouting” by your father.

As an older teenager and adult, after all you read and watched (TV, movies, comedy shows, etc.), you look back at your childhood and you say to yourself: oh, that was not abuse, that was how parents acted during that time, everywhere, nothing unique about it, it’s the culture.

But as a child, you didn’t think that way: when you were shouted at and spanked- you were scared, just like any child, in any culture.

anita

Dear Sofioula:

“Not do I tone down the severity of the matter”- better acknowledge the severity of matters. If we fully do, the severity will lessen.

“I want to escape my memories”- it is very difficult when you live with the memories (“I have to live with my parents”). It will still be difficult when you no longer live with your parents.

Are rents high in Greece, where you live?

anita

Dear Sofioula:

No need to apologize for when you happen to post, good to read you had a happy vacation. I understand about the rents situation, being crazy high.

“I’m not where .. my parents want me to be”-

– is where your parents want you to be the same, or different from where you want to be?

anita

Dear Sofioula:

You shared that you and your parents do want the same things for you: “a stable job, get married and have kids”, but it’s the ways that they express to you what they want, that is keeping you up at night. Their ways are: (1)”to get stressed about it”, (2) to be critical of your mistakes, or alleged mistakes, (3)  to guilt trip you.

Clearly, their ways are keeping you away from getting what you want in life. I wish they changed their ways. I wish you become able, sometime in the future, to no longer follow their ways by getting stressed, being critical of your mistakes, or alleged mistakes, and guilt- tripping yourself (1-3).

“I have a morbid fear of mistakes. They can never be reversed in my dad’s head and so in my head”- what if you could get your dad’s head out of your head, so to speak. In other words, what if you could one day,  form your own, independently- chosen attitude about mistakes.

anita