I have never lied, but I know many people who do, and they tell the same lies you do. They don’t talk about pot and sex, etc.
Your therapist likely knows, because whatever your diagnosis is, this behavior is part of a pattern. It would help for them to know the pattern is confirmed. The pattern you mention is characteristic of the disorder I have. Almost every single person I know in my support group has done these things.
The thing is that the reason we don’t tell is shame. We are ashamed of what we have done and are doing. This is because we don’t understand why we do them. It’s really pretty simple. It’s self medication. Yes, even the sex. It’s how we cope with the pain. Of course, your therapist can’t tell you that if they don’t officially know. And you can’t get comfort knowing that what you do is part of your disorder, and there are good reasons for you to do it.
Then you can’t work on finding other, less disruptive and harmful ways to cope with the illness. Which is the whole point of the therapy. I’d say you were wasting your money. I hope you don’t have big copays. But if you don’t talk about everything, you can’t really get good help from a therapist.
Now it is possible the therapist will start telling you what to do. If that’s the case, then you have the wrong therapist.
I tested mine. I told her what I was up to. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t beat me up about it. She didn’t. She said she didn’t want to stop me from doing anything. She just wanted to help me make sure I didn’t harm anyone in the process, or harm myself. She was able to do that.
She helped me understand why I do these things. She helped me lose my shame for doing them. She helped me figure out how not to harm people and how to stay safe. She was able to be very helpful since I told her everything.
It is also helpful to tell your psychiatrist about the drugs you take. They really need to know everything, in order to keep you safe. There can be harmful drug interactions between pot and other drugs. Or alcohol and other drugs. They need to know so they can prescribe properly.
Of course, they will tell you you should stop. Then you can discuss that. But if you don’t tell them, they can’t really help you, and they could harm you, unknowingly.
Sometimes we don’t tell our therapists and psychiatrists the whole truth because we are self-destructive. That is very common. We don’t want to be well. We don’t think we deserve to be well. By keeping secrets, we can keep the crucial information, thus keeping ourselves from getting better. There are a lot of reasons why we do this, and most of them are pretty individual. If you want to talk about it, your therapist is the person to talk to.
The sex, believe it or not, is about finding the only thing possible that might make it feel like life is worth living. It is the only thing that might possible fill the black hole in the pit of your stomach that feels endlessly empty. It’s about love. About connecting to others. I believe some people need this in a much more comprehensive way than normal people do.
But most never get it, because people are afraid of the intensity. Don’t know how to live with it all the time. Plus, people often stop at sex, thinking that’s all they are allowed to have. They can’t push it as far as they really want to go, and most of them, I believe, don’t even know what it’s about. Often they stop themselves, too. Knowing it’s bad. Or that other people think it’s bad. They internalize that message, which means they can’t even get the thing that feels like it would cure them.
This is almost impossible to explain. It sounds so ridiculous to most people, I think. But in my experience, a lot of people are like this. They act out all over the place, sort of knowing what they want, yet unable to allow themselves to have it. Happiness is not for us. Not in this society. Maybe in Europe or in other nations, but not here. It is incomprehensible here. But until you tell your therapist, you can’t work on it.
Composing members:
0
