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 when she tries to engage me on a no-go topic, I need to be able to stick to my boundary "mom this is not something I can talk to you about." "I need to leave if you're going to keep going there." I need to be conscious of my anxiety level and recognize when it has stepped up a degree.


-What is the next step after identifying the fallacies/cognitive distortions?
Honestly, I still think space is the best thing for me. Usually if I can get some space to cool down, I can get a handle on the distortions. One thing though, which is a huge boundary setting exercise, is that during a crucial conversation the other party isn't so interested in giving me space. They are interested in engaging me and winning their point. I need to ask myself: why does this matter?

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