this is where my hurt goes

During my last session, I brought up the topic of motivations around promiscuity. And while I consider myself to be highly sex positive, that doesn't mean that I should be blind to certain types of motivating factors. Being honest with myself isn't the same as a confession. - To the extent that I have a bit of an exhibitionism fetish related to gay sex, I recognize that it serves as a type of performative push-back against those who I would perceive as judging me. It's essentially fetishizing my internal response to that fear. The irony is that this fetish may be relying on maintaining the very conflict that eats at me in other ways. But, it should also be recognized that this part coping mechanism as well. What does it mean to recognize this dynamic? - I tend to be cruisier when my self esteem is feeling diminished in other ways. I think this is because I reflexively fall back on reliable forms of validation. I'm a pleaser and a have a bunch of feedback that tells ...

Here are the questions I need to think about for my next session. -What is keeping me from facing my fears? Judgement, rejection..... I need to think about this more. -How can I be an advocate for myself? I think the real question here is "how can I advocate for myself in a healthy way?" Because the main problem I've been having is that when I feel the most need to advocate for myself, it's violently. And this isn't good—in fact it's undermining because once I lose my cool, I also lose my credibility. That's a real problem. So how do I keep my cool while advocating for myself? This also brings up another issue which is my tendency to assume or conflate what is being said as a criticism. At that point, the question is: is this a criticism of me, or an observation that can be interpreted as a standalone observation? There's also the approach of verbalizing how I feel and my needs at the moment. So for example, instead of losing my shit at mom wh...

I'm sitting here trying to remember what my plan is, what my long term goals are, for my own treatment. Here are the topics that come to mind.  - Aside from brain chemistry, why do I think I ramp up so quickly? What fuels my anger?  I think part of what makes this so difficult to explain is that it seems like there are different feelings that cause me to ramp up. I recognize that just because they feel different, that doesn't mean they are.  So we have what we all know: fear drives anger. Since presumably that's what drives MY anger, I begs me find the courage to face my fears. What do I fear?  -- I fear coming out to my parents and sister. I feel like if my dad knew this about me, it would be the reason he needs to drop me like he's done with almost everyone in his life, including his daughter and grand children. I don't want to shoulder the blame. I don't want to talk to mom about it, in large part because I'd somehow feel like I'd be "answ...