Maybe this is a really bad and stupid behavior. It might be kind of arrogant.
I recently read David Foster Wallace' Good Old Neon. The main protagonist David Wallace tries to find a solution for his hellish mental torment. He visits a psychoanalyst. He hopes the person is smart enough in order to help him to escape the cage he lives in. DFW concludes the professional is not a big help. And that the main protagonist is way more self-aware and intellectually superior to him. I think the differentce to me is the following. DFW was probably smarter than his therapists, in contrast to me who just falsely believes that. I sometimes have the feeling to be more realistic about my whole situation.
Though it is true during the last 2 years I have improved. I would have never believed to stay stable at college. It is always often at the edge of a collapse but I am still preventing the worst.
I think we have to differentiate two things. Being smarter than your therapist or just knowing more than your therapist.
Though there is a problem. It is called intersubjectivity.
Here is a thread I once made about it.
https://sanctioned-suicide.net/threads/the-problem-of-intersubjectivity-and-mental-illness.91724/
I think it is true I know more variables, details about my past, have deeper knwoledge on my mind than my therapists. But there is the problem that I am not distanced to my emotions and feelings. It is difficult to be perfectly rational. It is very very difficult to estimate that.
I have the feeling my therapists and parents have a positive bias. And if I told them how dark I imagine my future they would tell me I had a negative bias.
Very soon my appointments with my therapist will be over. He is extremely optimistic about my future. One reason for that is he calls me so self-aware and intellligent. I am very skilled in coping with my fragile mind and I have learned a lot of skills how to cope with it. Yeah I don't tell him how pessimistic I really am. Due to the fact we could not change anything. It is impossible to extend the appoinments. I like him he did his best, we made some progress. Yeah that's it. Nothing more. I need several miracles so that my life won't end with suicide. For the moment I have gained life quality. But the way bigger problem is. My illness very likely proceeds in cycles. No matter how smart or savvy I behave. A new crash will come sooner or later. I think this will be the price for my current stability. I really feel like that. I got better to cope with stress. It felt like my brain chemistry changed. I don't know I am not fully manic and not fully depressed. Something has changed and I did not really have control over it. I think similarly I won't have control over a decline when it will happen.
We both had a deal. And I accepted it. We always deal with the current problems. We concentrate our energy on the current problems not the ones that might emerge in the future. Yeah I pretended I could do that. Obivoulsy I can't. To ignore them kind of helps my productivity. And sometimes it feels very good and helpful to ignore them. But there are a lot of ifs and buts. I concentrate all my energy on college. But it is really difficult to predict whether I will be able to hold a job. In my last jobs I mostly was crippled due to my mental torment. The work really triggered me. It is not unlikely that this will happen again. Noone can predict it. Yeah I try to be agnostic about it. Maybe I am al little bit too pressimistic on it but I would also say my current therapist is way positive about my future. I think I gave him the feeling I had everything under control. On the surface this might be right but there are lot of developments which are very dangerous and warning signs.
I don't know how I shall solve some of the coming problems. My life in college will be extreme next semester. There will come extremely difficult curses. Honestly I think this will probably break me. In the past I was too pessimistic about college. But the problems and difficulties will just grow more and more. I really cannot see how I will survive the next semester. It might force me to commit suicide. I won't go into details now.
The thing is: I think I just know more than my therapists. I know so much about my mind and I am quite self-aware. At leat this is how I feel. Yeah maybe inter-subjectivitiy is a problem. But my therapists are clearly short-sighted. They often forget a lot of stuff I tell them. I know way more details about my mind compared to them. This is why I sometimes feel superior to them. This is kind of dangerous because yourself can become an echoe chamber easily. I still listen to feedback. Sometimes with my therapists I tell them about some of my fear without admitting how negative I feel towars them. In my opinion they are more like "yeah everything will be fine. There will be an happy end for sure. Why shouldn't be there one?! Yeah I sometimes leave some remarks which should let them question this assumption. But If I am not very explicit about it they ever notice it."
To add one thing. My therapists often ask me how stable I consider myself. And they often have admitted that I probably know more about that than they. Yeah if you rely on my information and I am the complete source for that. I just feel like I have an advantage to predict the development of my mind. Though this might be a little bit arrogant and megalomaniac due to the fact I have not studied this subject. It is probably a dangerous behavior and I would not suggest it to anyone else. But it is just how I feel sometimes.
I recently read David Foster Wallace' Good Old Neon. The main protagonist David Wallace tries to find a solution for his hellish mental torment. He visits a psychoanalyst. He hopes the person is smart enough in order to help him to escape the cage he lives in. DFW concludes the professional is not a big help. And that the main protagonist is way more self-aware and intellectually superior to him. I think the differentce to me is the following. DFW was probably smarter than his therapists, in contrast to me who just falsely believes that. I sometimes have the feeling to be more realistic about my whole situation.
Though it is true during the last 2 years I have improved. I would have never believed to stay stable at college. It is always often at the edge of a collapse but I am still preventing the worst.
I think we have to differentiate two things. Being smarter than your therapist or just knowing more than your therapist.
Though there is a problem. It is called intersubjectivity.
Here is a thread I once made about it.
https://sanctioned-suicide.net/threads/the-problem-of-intersubjectivity-and-mental-illness.91724/
I think it is true I know more variables, details about my past, have deeper knwoledge on my mind than my therapists. But there is the problem that I am not distanced to my emotions and feelings. It is difficult to be perfectly rational. It is very very difficult to estimate that.
I have the feeling my therapists and parents have a positive bias. And if I told them how dark I imagine my future they would tell me I had a negative bias.
Very soon my appointments with my therapist will be over. He is extremely optimistic about my future. One reason for that is he calls me so self-aware and intellligent. I am very skilled in coping with my fragile mind and I have learned a lot of skills how to cope with it. Yeah I don't tell him how pessimistic I really am. Due to the fact we could not change anything. It is impossible to extend the appoinments. I like him he did his best, we made some progress. Yeah that's it. Nothing more. I need several miracles so that my life won't end with suicide. For the moment I have gained life quality. But the way bigger problem is. My illness very likely proceeds in cycles. No matter how smart or savvy I behave. A new crash will come sooner or later. I think this will be the price for my current stability. I really feel like that. I got better to cope with stress. It felt like my brain chemistry changed. I don't know I am not fully manic and not fully depressed. Something has changed and I did not really have control over it. I think similarly I won't have control over a decline when it will happen.
We both had a deal. And I accepted it. We always deal with the current problems. We concentrate our energy on the current problems not the ones that might emerge in the future. Yeah I pretended I could do that. Obivoulsy I can't. To ignore them kind of helps my productivity. And sometimes it feels very good and helpful to ignore them. But there are a lot of ifs and buts. I concentrate all my energy on college. But it is really difficult to predict whether I will be able to hold a job. In my last jobs I mostly was crippled due to my mental torment. The work really triggered me. It is not unlikely that this will happen again. Noone can predict it. Yeah I try to be agnostic about it. Maybe I am al little bit too pressimistic on it but I would also say my current therapist is way positive about my future. I think I gave him the feeling I had everything under control. On the surface this might be right but there are lot of developments which are very dangerous and warning signs.
I don't know how I shall solve some of the coming problems. My life in college will be extreme next semester. There will come extremely difficult curses. Honestly I think this will probably break me. In the past I was too pessimistic about college. But the problems and difficulties will just grow more and more. I really cannot see how I will survive the next semester. It might force me to commit suicide. I won't go into details now.
The thing is: I think I just know more than my therapists. I know so much about my mind and I am quite self-aware. At leat this is how I feel. Yeah maybe inter-subjectivitiy is a problem. But my therapists are clearly short-sighted. They often forget a lot of stuff I tell them. I know way more details about my mind compared to them. This is why I sometimes feel superior to them. This is kind of dangerous because yourself can become an echoe chamber easily. I still listen to feedback. Sometimes with my therapists I tell them about some of my fear without admitting how negative I feel towars them. In my opinion they are more like "yeah everything will be fine. There will be an happy end for sure. Why shouldn't be there one?! Yeah I sometimes leave some remarks which should let them question this assumption. But If I am not very explicit about it they ever notice it."
To add one thing. My therapists often ask me how stable I consider myself. And they often have admitted that I probably know more about that than they. Yeah if you rely on my information and I am the complete source for that. I just feel like I have an advantage to predict the development of my mind. Though this might be a little bit arrogant and megalomaniac due to the fact I have not studied this subject. It is probably a dangerous behavior and I would not suggest it to anyone else. But it is just how I feel sometimes.
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