Painful realization

I made a very painful realization today, with the help of Ms. N. She was telling me how well I did last week in DBT in expressing my feelings of anger about the other assholes not showing up. She said I showed great restraint in that I articulated my anger without swearing. Guess this lack of sleep really has me acting strangely because I know the thoughts were there about all these other stupid fuckheads not showing up and making it more fucking difficult for me to attend and I wanted to explode in a rageful tirade of profanities.

Told her I didn't understand how I was able to contain the rage I was feeling because, as discussed in one of the earlier groups today about personal acceptance, my perception of the situation was "colored" by my past experience with the previous DBT group. That it brought up all the rage again that I felt when the leaders of the first group kept telling me they might have to cancel because no one else had shown up yet.

She then says that anger is not nearly as intense as rage, and asked "so what feelings or thoughts generated the rage?" I sat there dumbfounded for a minute, trying to think back to what had triggered the rage. Apparently she could see me struggling to find the words to answer her, so she says "I think it came from feeling that none of your needs will ever be met." After she said that it was like being hit with a ton of bricks and I'd had the wind knocked out of me.

That answer was right on the money. I never knew that's where my rage came from, but I think she's totally right about it, at least in this instance. I nearly burst into tears with such a painful realization. I wasn't able to hold them all in, so a few escaped, but I was too afraid to let the pain of that discovery take hold. Afraid that if I started crying I would never stop.

The two of us had talked briefly before all this about another thing during the earlier group discussion on acceptance. I read her part of a quote in the paper we were given that said "How can we accept ourselves when we have no hope? Why should we pile despair on top of hopelessness. The combination could be fatal."

I told her that's exactly how I feel. I have no hope. It's something she's well aware of, but I keep bringing it up. Told her I have acceptance, acceptance that I'm defective. She keeps insisting that I will continue to believe that until I have proof otherwise. But yet she, nor anyone else, tells me where that proof will come from and how will I learn to believe something different after 38 years of thinking there's some major defect in me. Having the diagnosis of several mental illnesses only validates and proves my belief of defectiveness on a daily basis, how could I possibly be shown that it isn't true?