Talking is Hard

Right now I’m assessing my speech and finding better ways to communicate. I’m also trying to piece together how to verbalize my interest in improving speech with my therapist, like fallbacks when I’m too emotionally stressed to give a thoughtful response. I also find difficulty to shift from self-referential language to more inclusive language when chatting. I would like to be more approachable and open-ended, so I try to avoid using too many “I”s and “me”s both in text and verbal speech.. haven’t been exactly successful lol.

Even when I Google endlessly on better communication skills, setting boundaries, etc. I find it near impossible to talk in a way that’s cohesive. CBT at-home exercises kind of help but I feel myself running into circles with the “but why?” Not sure how else to explain it other than these exercises beg of me to account for emotions that I don’t genuinely feel is applicable.

Sometimes I cry when I’m angry due to me being easily excitable, and crying seems to be how I can safely process my emotions. I’m not always sad when I cry! Damn some of these emotion charts suck and I don’t appreciate how therapists keep insisting when I already have a hard time verbalizing that the methods they’re offering can only help with so much.

I don’t always ascribe sadness when I cry because it just isn’t my experience sometimes! And sometimes at my most hypoaroused I force myself to do things just to feel human. It feels like I’m forced to rationalize my feelings to the point of inauthenticity, like a linear view of how my mind works. I’m crying right now just frustrated while thinking about this! 😭

DBT I found much more helpful, as it helps place words and action over fixation on emotions. It gives me actual, tangible input and output. Even if things don’t turn out well, using methods like REST has helped me take better charge of my emotions and behaviors.

I don’t know how else to communicate this without being pedantic as s#%t! And I could never verbalize the way I can type and keep notes on things. I feel odd though by the idea of handing my therapist written notes. I think I’m worried that she will think I’m lying, so many therapists before would give me 💩 when they hear I Google things. Ironically me continuously Googling is due to improper healthcare my entire damn life! It’s because they’re insistent on issues that was truly irrelevant in my life at the time. Or issues that would naturally require build-up for, issues that require long-form conversation and background. You know, how supposedly therapy works? Apparently they missed the memo lol.

My first psychatrist saw me digging into my arms out of frustration and how bad I cried when he kept insisting my details of events are inconsistent. I was no older than 13! That’s child abuse, why the *** was he so cruel? And even therapists after that would give me issues on the dumbest stuff. I learned the hard way to not mention gender dysphoria or gender anything with therapists.

Even me just gently bringing up that I’m trans, even as an offhand comment, I was suddenly slammed with “That’s not you’re whole identity” lecture… Did they not realize the irony in that? Me mentioning I’m trans shouldn’t be a ceremonious event nor frowned upon, right? So why couldn’t these therapists also approach it with neutrality? F*%k those ***.

Tl;dr: if I could summarize it I wouldn’t need to write this wall of text, now would I? 😶