Posted by Noa on January 4, 2003, at 8:00:09
In reply to Re: Pot and the produce aisle-- Rated PG13 » wendy b., posted by Miller on January 3, 2003, at 8:50:41
Miller, you mentioned on another thread that you experience a lot of guilt. Just a thought (and forgive me for the armchair analysis here and if I am being impertinent)--could the shoplifting have been a substitute place to "hang" your guilt feelings--ie, maybe easier to obsess about that than about the more difficult stuff you've experienced in your life? Or, by shoplifting, you somehow maintain the image of yourself as someone who has reason to feel guilty or someone who is somehow "bad"?
I read this book once about cognitive therapy for personality issues and I found it helpful for myself--not the whole book or all the approaches, but there was a checklist, kind of an assessment of the "schema" we have about ourselves--the deep rooted core ideas we believe about ourselves. The idea was that our problems serve to either avoid coming into awareness of these ideas about ourselves (because they are so painful) or our problems can also serve to maintain these ideas about ourselves (like stealing to maintain the idea that one is a bad person). I think the book is called "Cognitive Therapy for Personality Disorders: a Schema Focus" . If this link doesn't work, I'll try to get the exact title. Anyway, I found this book very helpful for myself. After I read it I brought it up in therapy and it allowed me to develop more insight into my thoughts and behaviors, and kind of launched us in a new direction for the therapy. Warning: it was also painful for me to read, but helpful.
poster:Noa
thread:34284
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030104/msgs/34514.html