Awareness

These cycles are instinctive defense mechanisms developed in a scare and unstable world. They are often the only way we know how to operate. Until we have attention brought to them, have these processes described, labeled, clarified, they feel like “just the way things are”.

The process of psychoeducation is critical to bring attention to the fact that there are other ways. The way you’re operating is one way to exist, to respond, but there are others. The goals is not to change how you respond to your situation, but to bring awareness to it.

Your personality is your strategy for meeting your needs in the world. Strategies are like tools — if all you have is a hammer, everything becomes a nail. What if you learn that instead of just a hammer, you have a whole tool belt. You can use your hammer any time, but sometimes…might a wrench work better? What about a screw driver?

Often we feel like all we have is the one strategy to meet our needs. Our hammer. The process of psychoeducation is to slowly bring awareness to the fact that other tools exist. For me, it was like my field of vision was narrowed on the hammer for so long, and suddenly the field opened, and I started to feel the existence of other tools.

For me personally…what was my tool?

[For me personally, my tool was controlling others and trying to get them to think I was highly capable. I remember, when I first left the Gunderson Residence, I started to see my current psychiatrist, and he would become (what felt like to me) exasperated, that I would flip into this “lecturing” state. I would basically walk into his office and present a polished case for why I was fine and right. We’d get through the whole session]

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But even once we know the other tools exist, we have no experience using them. We feel adept with our hammer, but are scared to even pick up the wrench for fear that we’ll fail with it.

The only way to get better is to practice — first we practice in safety (a great use of therapy) and then we practice where it matters more. Over time, with enough practice, we can become masterful at using these other tools.

[we’ll talk about practice more in the specific section on practice]