Told my therapist I was fine for 8 months then finally admitted my trick

I had this thing where I'd smile and say everything's great when people asked, but I'd go home and just stare at the wall. Last Tuesday I hit a breaking point after my third panic attack that week and actually told my therapist the real reason I was pretending. She had me try this weird thing where I write down the fake thing I said and then write what I really felt next to it. Took about 5 minutes each time but after 2 weeks I noticed I was actually telling people the truth more often. Has anyone else found a dumb little trick that cracked the wall?

3 comments

3 Comments

lindag331mo ago

Haha so the trick was basically gaslighting yourself on paper instead of in real life? Love it. That's like training wheels for honesty, which is way better than my method of just full-on verbal diarrhea. I tried the "venting raw" thing too and all it did was make my therapist look like she needed her own therapist. Maybe I'll give the write-it-down thing a shot, though I'll probably end up with a notebook full of "I'm fine" crossed out ten times.

the_alice1mo ago

Training wheels for honesty" is the best way I've ever heard it put. My friend Sarah did this for like a year and she said at first it was just pages of "I hate this" over and over, but after a while she started noticing patterns in what she wrote and actually figured out what she was mad about. She still does it when she's too fired up to talk to anyone, and it honestly saved her from sending some terrible texts at 2am.

knight.dylan1mo ago

Whoa wait, that actually makes sense. I've been doing the opposite where I vent everything raw and it backfires, maybe holding back and writing it out first is the real secret.