Therapy, Counseling, Mental Health: Things That Keep Us in Work | Petar Sardelich, LMFT/PT/MAC, Therapist in Pasadena, CA 91101

As I've said before, I try to work in the spirit that it's my job to put me out of a job. There's some things I see pretty often though, that seem to be both counter intuitive and appear to keep me and my type in work. My experience with therapists is that we often see these things, but rarely talk about them in a semi-organized way. As much as loss, abuse, and abandonment cause depression, sadness, shame, low self esteem, anger, pain, addiction and etc, there are things we do that perpetuate our suffering in this way. Some of these are survival or coping skills and thus necessary, but don't really go very far to help someone get, and stay out of places like my office. Here's a list of some of those things off the top of my head:

Absence of critical thinking.
Responding to struggles by simply "staying busy" or just "trying harder". AKA, operating as a "human doing" instead of a human be-ing.
The kind of thinking that "Time heals all wounds...", "It's water under the bridge...", "You're just giving __________ power over you...", "The past is in the past...", "Just stay positive..."...
Using ideas and principles that got us suffering in the first place, to resolve that suffering. Drugs, alcohol, isolation, shopping, food, gambling, etc.
Simply not knowing, and/or avoiding feelings.
Thinking and/or behaving as if the only answer to our suffering is for someone else to change or stop their behavior- even if their behavior was the cause.
Money, property, prestige.
Carrying the torch (or stick, if you will) of someone else shaming or diminishing/devaluing us.
For those that can and should, not being self supporting through one's own contributions mentally, emotionally, physically (food, clothing, shelter...), and "spiritually".
Perfectionism- both imposed on others, and ourselves. Same is true for managing and controlling everything.
Going where the love "should be" in our lives, instead of going where the love is.
On a related note- staying in abusive or emotionally unavailable relationships.
This one is a little backwards from the context in the opening paragraph: took me a while to realize that I don't have to do everything I think.
Blame.
Poor boundaries. More specifically, not knowing where one person "stops" mentally, emotionally, physically, and/or "spiritually", and another "starts".
Operating as if our feelings are facts.
Euphemistic language.
Behaving or thinking as if we have to not be, or stop being afraid, before we can accomplish a task.
Same as the above, but instead of stop/not be afraid, that we have to be "motivated".
Being an "island". Meaning, not having closeness with other folk, using ourselves as a sole resource for support or perspective or interpretation or encouragement, etc.
An inability or unwillingness to be "present".
Can't emphasize this one enough: not knowing who we are, and how we are.

Am guessing I'll be adding to this list as time goes on. The ideas above certainly warrant a deeper look/discussion to both understand and make them practical. It appears to me that there's a lot of fairly simple myths that might be dispelled that could help us all reduce chaos, and "increase the signal to noise ratio" in terms of our perspective and thinking. The ideas above, I think, are a pretty great start at doing that.

You can find out more about Petar at: http://www.april30th.org