Group Therapy Book Club

I was just reflecting near the end of the meeting about that discernment between gaslighting yourself and invalidating your fear and calming down so you can hear what it's telling you and understand the message in a useful way. The part about judgment is really helpful I think. I think it plays a big part when healthy dysregulation becomes dysregulation that's stuck that we can't get out of. It's sort of like a feedback loop of judgment on judgment. The judgment that's hypercritical and judges you for judging and then judges that is different from the judgment that's more like discernment or a part of healthy anger. I remember a video I watched from someone very woowoo Kyle Cease years ago. (I don't like him/ his kind of thing anymore but these scientific books are helping me discern what about them worked for me that was healthy.) Anyway I remember him talking to this man who I think had lost his son and he said to him "Can you accept this?" and the man basically said hell no. And he said "Can you accept that you can't accept this?" and he said no again, and he asked again "Can you accept that you can't accept that you can't accept this." And he was like "... I can do that." So it's interesting getting out of this feedback loop where you're judging the judgment of the judgment until it's overwhelming, to get to a place of awareness and acceptance where you can at least be with what is long enough to face and understand it so you can know and work with what is. Dysregulation is there for a reason and we don't want to be forcing ourselves to be happy and chill if someone has just died but I think the loop there is kind of the part that makes it no longer helpful in the way it was meant to be by nature.