10:51am November 26, 2013

➸ Lists and doing them sadly

clatterbane:

thegreenanole:

nicocoer:

[Content: Mentions of Depression, of Partial Hospitalization programs, and of the feelings/enjoyment/strength charts?] One of the exercises I learned as a kid about depression involved making a list…

A bit about lists, how they can be both poorly and well done, and about reforming those tools into something that works for my depression/ND combos rather than as something that normalizes my expression.

I included the content note about those sorts of chartings because I have a hard time with them, specifically the “identify the feelings” charts, sometimes. Sometimes they remind me of things that were going on around me, and sometimes they remind me of how they were used in a not so cool way by some people. But yeah…

This sounds like a good post and I am off to go read it right now!

Interesting.

The only lists I got less-than-helpfully pushed into making were of goals. Where nobody really explained how or why, or seemed to recognize that this could be a difficult thing. I’m actually still not very good at figuring out goals on basically any timescale. Especially if they’re called “goals” rather than “what do you want to do?” or similar.

There were also the supposedly self-esteem building “what you like about yourself” unwritten lists that made me feel worse because I have trouble not just sputtering under that kind of pressure to word on command, even if it’s not based on uncomfortable subjects. That was invariably deer in headlights awful, which of course seemed to get interpreted in some odd ways.

But, I still have trouble with using lists similar to the ones you describe where they might actually be helpful, and feel oddly resentful whenever I consider it. But, much like scheduling, that sort of thing can probably work so much better for you if you are planning it yourself, to suit your own needs and purposes. Demand sensitivity/resistance is even a thing dealing with myself a lot of the time, though. :/

goal lists are so hard. I didn’t have much difficulty as a kid planning longer term goals as I did immediate and short term ones. Now though it feels pretty hopeless to make big goals anymore. Too many realities push back against it most of the time.

Unwritten lists were super common in therapy when I was younger, I ended up developing a script for it.

Planning it yourself makes alllll the difference. Be kind to yourself making it though… I was keeping in mind some of the unhelpful at best, destructive sometimes plans I’ve had or seen that other people drafted and thinking about them to build my own lists.

The DD people always want a “list of yearly goals”, I’ve been telling them since I first signed up “my brain doesn’t work that way”. They quoted that on an IPP once, years ago, with a tone of extreme skepticism. :-/

Notes: