I haven't explored the 'rehearsing' with my T outright, since I haven't told her about the rehearsing I do in my head. But wow, just thinking about having that convo with T makes my stomach do flips! I think I have a fear of the unknown - if I walk into my session and don't know right away what I will talk about, then what? I want to know where we'll start out in the session, even if that isn't where we end up. Yes, it's a major control issue I have.

I always seem to come up with issues in between sessions that I really want to discuss in my next session, so I completely overthink them, and then it's almost a letdown after T and I discuss the issues, and they seem so simple compared to what I drummed up in my head. T knows, she once called me out on it before I even realized that's how I was feeling. I swear, my T is more inside my head than I am sometimes!

I have expressed to my T my need for being in control... more of my emotions in front of her than anything else that is happening in a session. So in that respect, I suppose it is about worrying how I look or sound. I have told T a few things that I was afraid I'd get a negative reaction, that she'd judge me, and of course she didn't.

So much to explore indeed - oy!

That must be hard! Usually, I don't realize that I've held back until I'm journaling about my session, and I'll remember something that I should've added to our convo. One time, I told my T a dream that I had, and she proposed an interpretation that was spot-on - the dream symbolized that I was pretending like I didn't know the answers to all the questions, when in fact I did, deep down. I about fell off my chair when T asked if that could possibly be the case for me in therapy. After a minute of stunned silence, I realized that my own unconscious had brought this something out that I hadn't even realized, that a lof of the answers do lie within me, and that I was indeed holding back some things that, if I shared them with my T, would help me on my journey - wild!