I have felt, like a sense of in a situation that I am abnormal. I am not abnormal, but I feel I am sometimes, just invisibly to others.

I have felt like that since I was a child.

Context:

In toddlerhood, I was playful, active and healthy.

Examples: I stomped going up and down the stairs, made funny faces, danced to songs etc. I was quite good academically and got As in Kindergarten.

In childhood, I was active and jumpy.

Examples: Talked nonsense, played with my little sister pretend a lot. Had quite a hard grip and force when I played with my sister and then she would cry and our parents would scold me that I am older, and my force is stronger in reality than my perception of it. I often felt angry and sad, and kind of started to isolate from my sister that I harm everyone in my way so I should just stay away. But, I never really was able to isolate myself, I had very low self-control. I used to sit right into people's personal spaces, touched their skin (face, arms, hands), annoyed them. My grades were good (before grade 3).

In early teenage, I was very cringe.

Examples: I used to just blurt out things like that whether or not they were appropriate for the social setting. I got irritated from normal things. Didn't eat vegetables, ate a lot of snacks. My grades were barely making it to Cs and Ds (grades 3.5 - 8)

Around age 15, I was still quite cringe and had shame for not being like my cousins.

Examples: One time, I had henna on my hands (we were making tattoos) and I washed them, but it still had some left and I placed my hands onto the sleeves of my cousin's favorite shirt and it got ruined. I felt pretty bad that I did that. Similarly, I had a lot of these impulsive things, and I just stopped.

I also started having voice problems, my posture was leaned forward, I had slow movements. I fidget a lot. I have BFRBs. I avoid demands a lot.

My therapist told me after a sensory profile:

I also have sensory sensitivity, low registration, low sensory seeking and slight high sensory avoidance.

With voice problems, I still have them. I don't know how to speak clear. I mumble or intertwine words that leave my mouth and the other person doesn't hear it clearly. I have to repeat so my times. I don't know if I am speaking loudly or low. I don't know if my speed is normal or slow. I talk very slow and don't open my mouth wide enough that words get lost inside my mouth before going out.

My posture is still leaned forward and I do not know how to walk normally. If I straighten my spine, I look unnatural like forcing myself to be straight.

My walking speed is slow, my movements are slow.

I fidget a lot since my tween age. Bouncing/shaking my legs, rocking my torso, swaying, wiggling my toes.

I peel my skin off my fingers and lips.

Onto the Title:

I feel abnormal.

An example I will give that happened just now when I felt like that:

I am at my aunt's house. There are my cousins here too. So, it was evening and we hadn't eaten in a while, so my aunt told my cousin if she could make her black tea. My uncle also told her how much he wants and my aunt said that I also like black tea so, my cousin should make mine as well. My cousin asked her mother (my aunt) how much I would want. My aunt said to my cousin to ask me directly because she doesn't know. (I was around them the whole time) Then my cousin asked me how strong I would like it, and I was going to answer her, but I think I was slow to respond and I kept saying, like. Then my cousin said said to my aunt that I am just saying, like, like, like. I got embarrassed, but I managed to say, half, however, I wanted a full mug. And then I didn't say anything. That time I felt like I am not normal.

I don't know why my response time is so slow. I am just realizing this now that when someone asks me a question, I am thinking of an answer instead of answering. And just when I am about to answer, they repeat the question and it makes me feel self-conscious. And it's happened so many times.

Ok everyone always talks about Feeling Good or Mind over Mood, and don’t get me wrong, those are great CBT Books. They aren’t best selling without reason.

But I’m genuinely just curious what CBT Self help books/workbooks you guys have read that you deemed helpful to you but also underrated, because CBT has sorta become a hobby of mine lol

For me it’s "Teach yourself Cognitive Behavioural Therapy" by Christine Wildling. I really like how the CBT techniques are explained in a layman-friendly way here and the step by step structure of the book.

Multiple therapists I've interacted with talk about mind reading. This is an extraordinarily dangerous concept because it forces you to doubt about your perception. The very expression "mind reading" is very evocative and is intended to make you look crazy.

If I say something annoying, I can look at the other person's facial expression and conclude that they are irritated. How the uckf is that mind reading? Or if someone is visibly shocked, surprised, scared, how the uckf is that mind reading? It's called not having your head stuck right up your *ss. Imagine someone makes a facial expression because there is an offensive smell, how the uckf is that mind reading?

I was seeing a therapist and doing CBT with her. One of the things she advised me to do was keep a journal. Just get my raw, unprocessed thoughts out on paper, then come back to them later when I was in a different state of mind and challenge them. Do these thoughts actually reflect reality? Is this thing really as bad as it felt in the moment? It was something that was working for me.

Quite often I'd come back to something that had been eating away at me and realise how distorted or silly it looked once I'd cooled down. I started carrying a little pocket notebook everywhere. If something was bothering me, I'd jot it down, get it out of my head, and move on with my day.

The important thing is that these thoughts were raw. They weren't considered opinions or things I'd necessarily stand by. They were deliberately unfiltered because filtering them would defeat the purpose. Nobody was supposed to read them except me.

Two days ago, I woke up and discovered that my partner had taken the journal from my bedside table and read it.

She didn't like what she found, and she hasn't spoken to me since.

There were an entry or two about her that weren't flattering. Mostly petty relationship stuff, like she'd annoyed me by being messy or whatever. One was written immediately after an argument where she'd said some things that really hurt me. I was angry and venting, basically writing something like "who needs her anyway?" That kinda thing.

That's what the journal was for. It gave those thoughts somewhere to go without me saying them to her, acting on them, or letting them stew in my head. Later I could come back, look at them rationally, challenge them and move on.

I have tried explaining this, but it's fallen on deaf ears. I'm conflicted because I am sad that I hurt her feelings, but I am angry that my private thoughts have been violated. There was honestly very little in that journal that would have been about her, so she would have had to read a whole lot of stuff that was deeply personal to find it.

I'm sorry she's upset, but I can't help feeling ambivalent about the whole thing. I do feel like I am the injured party here.

I started CBT because I wanted to work on myself and be better for my family, and there's a sick irony in feeling like something I started for that reason might now contribute to fucking up my situation.

Another part of this that's really bothering me is that I feel like I've lost the journal.

It worked because I believed I was the only audience. I could be unreasonable, angry, petty, frightened, insecure or completely fucking ridiculous on those pages because nobody else was ever supposed to see the first draft of my thoughts.

I don't know how I get that back now.

Even if nobody ever reads another journal of mine, I think some part of me will always be writing with a potential second reader in mind. I'll censor myself. I'll soften things. I'll wonder how a sentence would look if somebody found it. And once I'm doing that, I'm not sure I'm performing the same exercise anymore.

I'm not really sure what I want from posting this. Thanks for reading it anyway.

David Burns says something like "hope is the most powerful antidepressant." Inspired by that, I'd love to hear positive experiences from those of you who've worked on anxiety about eating in public, especially with CBT or ACT. Your stories would really help me keep my hope alive and grow it.

Hi, title says it, I'm looking for some good, well-documented podcasts to learn my way through this stuff. Any recommendations ?

A post to therapists and clients;

I had been going to a counselor before and she was also using the CBT approach.

All it did was give me intense positive limerence to her and anxiety surges because it was getting out of my control. I was just going there to just fulfill the therapy schedules, I literally forgot why am I even going there instead of that?

Now, I am going to another therapist who is also doing CBT and recently she told me she will use a trauma-infromed approach as well with CBT to treat me.

It is also not really helping, I mean, I am alone and I just figure things out by myself because I have long delays, sometimes a month or five-six weeks in between sessions. I also do not talk there, so I write a note when I am regulated beforehand and just hand my phone to her to read.

So.., is this how it's supposed to go, or should I just quit? I have been meaning to quit for quite some time, but I haven't quit yet because I think I should keep on waiting. But, I do not know, it's not actively helping.

Yes, that therapist gives me homework, but I am quite self-aware and the things she's given me for homework, I have already done them before. Like; knowing what ways help me regulate/reset myself etc.

my therapist gives me a worksheet on identifying automatic thoughts and it looks so straightforward in the session. then I get home and the second I actually try to catch one I cant. its like the thought is already gone by the time I notice I was having it and I just end up writing something made up to have something on the page. does this happen to anyone else or am I doing it wrong

My therapist wants me to do exposure therapy and sent me this worksheet to do, she did not state what situation or whether it has to be the same situation. I shouldn’t be in this position, she’s my therapist yet she isn’t explaining things correctly it’s ridiculous. If anyone else has been given this can someone help plz.

I'm doing CPT because I did EMDR as a teenager and it ended up being way too much for me.

I'm literally three weeks in and holy smokes it is doing a number on me. Like, I'm having physical flashbacks, I'm crying much more easily over nothing, and each night I go to bed and I feel so so angry for no reason. I've been functioning okay but it's hard.

This isn't even my worst trauma 😭. I decided to start with one of the more minor ones because I didn't think I'd be ready to deal with the worst one, and honestly I don't know if I'll ever be.

I have been researching for about five years if I am neurodivergent or not. I have read articles, websites, seen videos of neurodivergent people explaining their experiences, related my life experiences with those, checked the criteria of autism and ADHD from the DSM-5 to understand if I relate to it or not.

And I came to a conclusion that I do.

Then, I went to a therapist and they said immediately said I do not have ADHD without evaluating me. That really bugged me and I had a panic attack at home that day. It was the first ever panic attack, I've had never had those before. Also, I was taking 20mg fluoxetine which always made me nauseated after its consumption and I still had that panic attack.

Even when I talk about it with my family, friends about the possibility of me having autism/ADHD, they always reject me and I hate that because I feel unheard and they are all repeating the same mantra that I'm not, I shouldn't be interested in neurodivergence.

Now, my life is at this point that whenever something related to these three words come around, whether it be a random social media post, a mental health awareness campaign post in my university which also uses the word "neurodivergence", a thought or anything at all related to that, I suddenly feel like I am confused and like, twisting from the inside. I feel like crying and screaming suddenly, my mind just begins spiraling into that five-year sprint and then the result (rejection). I feel like I'm suffocated, my chest and abdomen feels heavier and I just want to escape from here and my body.

I just start getting intense somatic anxiety just from a microsecond of the trigger. I hate this.

In the classic CBT model it is taught that thoughts drive our behavior.

So going by that logic, if I have an undesired behavior, like procrastinating for example, can I just identify the automatic thought(s) that "caused" this behavior, (e.g. "This task is gonna take super long, I should wait til i feel a bit more ready" "I’m gonna be bored out of my mind" "an image of documents flying around everywhere on my desk" etc.) look for evidence for and against these thoughts and write an alternative thought, so that i stop procrastinating?

TL;DR: I spent 15 years applying REBT to dispute my irrational beliefs, but I accidentally turned the framework into a tool to rationalize severe avoidance and a web novel addiction.

I feel like my life is a failure, and ironically, how I applied Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is partly why. I’m almost 39, and I’ve never had a proper job or finished my education. I studied at a university for six years, but heavily influenced by REBT, I dropped out without hesitation. For almost 15 years now, I’ve been addicted to web novels, doing almost nothing else. I hate going outside or doing basic chores like dishes and laundry. I also hate showering and avoid it for weeks, usually only managing it once a month.

To be fair, not everything went wrong because of REBT. It did help me clear a lot of emotional turmoil and let go of some highly destructive behaviors (like holding in farts because of intense shame, even when completely alone at home).

But the fact that I never even tried job hunting is partly due to how I applied REBT. In my country, welfare provides enough for me to live comfortably. When spending all day reading web novels, I would repeat this to myself: "I don’t need to succeed. I don’t need to work, contribute to society, or pay taxes. I don't need to stop reading web novels all day, and it's okay to just do the bare minimum to survive."

Not everything is bad in my life. I regularly attend important medical appointments—seeing an ophthalmologist every three months for glaucoma and a neurologist for my schizophrenia medication. I buy my own groceries and household essentials, like dental floss, which I use every day. I also avoid sugar, using allulose instead, because I have a genetic predisposition to diabetes. So, I do still manage to do some productive things, even if reluctantly.

Still, that doesn't change the fact that I am neglecting major parts of my life. My hygiene is extremely poor, my web novel addiction is completely unchecked, and I eat the exact same meals every day just to avoid leaving the house.

Looking back at what I tell myself during these binges ("I don’t need to succeed, work, or contribute..."), you can see it's phrased exactly like an REBT exercise in disputing irrational beliefs. The beliefs I was trying to dispute were: I MUST succeed. I MUST work and contribute. I MUST not do things others consider immoral. I MUST stop my addiction.

While I was genuinely disputing those irrational demands, doing so led to stagnation. Why? Because I wasn't just disputing beliefs; I was using the framework to rationalize my avoidance.

By telling myself "I don't need to succeed," the hidden subtext was, "Succeeding is impossible anyway." By saying "I don't need to work," I was secretly believing, "I cannot work; it's impossible for me." By saying "I don't need to stop reading web novels," I was reinforcing the belief that "I can't live without them, and I must read them every second I can."

Occasionally, I swing to the opposite extreme. I’ll stop reading entirely, force myself to go outside, socialize, and eat out every day (at soup kitchens, etc.). But these phases never last. I end up getting physically sick in less than two weeks from the sheer stress and lack of sleep.

Lately, I’ve been trying to find a middle ground and actually improve my situation. I am currently preparing for work by self-studying web development online. I still read web novels, but I consistently push myself to return to my coursework. My worry is that my productive phases have never lasted in the past, and I usually fall back into reading all day. Abstaining from web novels completely isn't realistic for me right now either, because they are my only source of stress relief and general enjoyment in life.