Posted 11/23/2022 11:04 PM (GMT 0)
I would consider going to those kinds of meetings that you have a connection with, like domestic violence. You may can either help or be helped.
When I was having martial emotional violence, I sought Al-Anon meetings, for friends of alcoholics, like you wouldn't believe. Many of them did not help me so much, other than put me around people, which I needed.
But one of them was worth all the trouble. I was listing my difficulties with a feel sorry for myself tone. And the woman sitting next to me said, "Oh, you were having a Pity Party. We've all done that." Now, that has about 10 layers of help.
One is, she put it in the past as in, you were having a Pity Party but you're not going to have anymore. And I didn't. And, "We've all done that." In that, I wasn't alone like I thought I was.
I had felt sorry for myself all of my life, because my mother who had some domestic violence of her own when she was a child, had gaslighted me into thinking I was truly an idiot.
In one Al-Anon meeting, in two sentences, with a certain tone of voice that got through my defenses, she rearranged my thinking, she erased 40 years of my mother's emotional destruction. And I've never felt sorry for myself again. Ten years of therapy couldn't have done that. It had to be her and those words.
That's why I think you should go to self-help groups that pertain to your situations, whether it be depression, domestic violence or whatever. She was my friend for a moment. Just what I needed.