Unnecessary guilt?

The first meeting of the Resilience workshop seemed to drag on towards the end, as 3 hours is a long time to be taking stuff in. There was a 15 minute or so break in the middle though which helped. Some of the subjects had been shuffled around to different days because of attendances by outside people, and so yesterday we went into the "Challenging Negative Thinking" subject which turned out to be highly helpful.

This was broken down into a lot of different thought processes, of which one in particular was exactly what I've been confronting lately with Simon. It was directed at an individual, but I related it to what Simon had been saying to me a lot. 

This thought process was called the "Should Statements" (instantly jumping into my mind was Simon's "You should be feeling happy now" statements). These so called "should statements" involved impossible rules, constant disappointments, guilt, anger, frustration, standards and expectations excessively high. On a personal level this is about someone making these should statements to themselves, but for me I related to them there how I'd just been experiencing exactly that from a bloke I knew. That yes he was trying to help but it was probably one of the worst things he could possibly say. I went into all this the other day here, which I talked about some of that yesterday.

I also mentioned the Ian Thorpe thing too, about how clinical depression was independent from life events. Everyone agreed with the bits and pieces I was mentioning. I felt very vindicated; that the direction I'm going with all of this is the right one. I've had a few doubts, maybe thinking Simon is right and I should be making more of an effort of some shit like that, but there it was in black and white exactly the situation I was dealing with.

Has taken me some time to come to this realisation. I've not had the opportunity to take part in things like this before as I've always been working. It's only now that I've actually got time to go into this and look at better psychological ways of dealing with HIV. It gives a very clear focus on what exactly is happening here. Making me think that I should be trying to do something that's impossible only makes me feel bad; guilty and all that. 

Haven't spoken to Simon since we had the disagreement. He's not rung, is either pissed off (frustrated? angry?) or just giving me space, or both. Think I needed that space actually in hindsight. This issue has become a major one with us now and I can't see any way of going further with the relationship unless it's resolved. For now I'm just going to email now and then I think, a "Hi" or something.

Oh yes, there was another related issue that was discussed as well, being the idea of getting away and living somewhere else as some kind of answer to things. The instructor was saying how there's been a lot of gay people move up the coast out of Sydney as the big change for the better. Some of them are fine up there, some not, and end up coming back to Sydney a few years later. In short, you take your problems with you, and getting out of Sydney isn't necessarily a magic solution to them. I thought that was interesting in regard to Simon constantly wanting me to get out of Sydney and live somewhere else (with him of course). Going so far as saying that I needed to get away from all the bad memories here.

And this has led to a certain amount of guilt on my part too. Like, maybe I'm doing the wrong thing staying here. He gets frustrated because I don't actually want to move, am very comfortable here presently. I like inner Sydney, can't stand the thought of suburban death. There's been a lot of extremely good memories here too, and I think I've established to myself that moving out of Sydney won't do anything for my depression and PTS. Triggers could come from anything, anytime, anywhere. 

After the session I actually felt a bit sort of hopeful and brighter. It's been a while since I've felt much of that. Perhaps I've been carrying around a bit of unnecessary guilt?