Quote:
Originally Posted by velcro003
U
but then i squirmed about per usual and said it feels like it never gets any easier. she said it has seemed to get harder for me lately. i told her i didn't know what to do. i don't know what to talk about. she said there is no "should", just whatever is on my mind It doesnt have to be always about what to do with my life and goals, just what i'm feeling at that time. I don't know what i'm feeling most of the time. But I said I don't exactly know what it is that i'm afraid of--some reaction on her part to me, what she thinks of me. I could not get more detailed than that, AND she gave me an opening. She goes "Is it something I've said, my tone of voice?..." What I wanted to say was that the open-endeness/silence kind of makes me think about silence coming from my mom. Usually not a good thing--it meant she was angry about something. I tried to start to say it and she was like "You can say it, just say it dawn!". AND I COULDN'T. I just couldn't. It makes me feel so bad. I can't even
really place exactly why. Guilt, like I am comparing her to my mom and "accusing" her silence of meaning she's thinking negative things about me. It is my job to bring up whatever I need to, and i just can't! AH. I am really stressed/upset about this, and I don't know what to think or do.
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Velcro, that sounds very familiar to me. Here is something I wrote on another forum in January:
last week my therapist did this thing of acting in a very neutral way towards me. She was not approving and also not disapproving. She just kept asking me questions. And I kept spinning and spinning, trying to come up with the right answers, but unable to read from her if I was getting it right. By the end of the session I was in state of quiet panic, and then we ran out of time. About five minutes after I left though, I was run over by the awareness that if I do not have cues from whoever I am with, I have no idea how or who to be. It feels like I don't exist. And that is terrifying.
I don't know if that relates to what you were writing about, but it is what immediately came to mind.
One thing I have found helpful when I am sitting there not knowing what I am feeling, is to be reminded to check in to see what physical sensations I am experiencing. Sometimes by paying attention to my body I can get focussed and come closer to naming a feeling.
But I really do spend a lot of time just sitting there feeling terrified like I used to when I was a kid. That seems to be part of the work for me, connecting that feeling to the past and separating it from my therapist. It took me months of very concerted effort to get my emotional self to understand that although she triggers the feelings from my relationship with my mother, she
is not my mother. I made a point of noting how she behaved differently, spoke differently and even looked at me differently. At some point that made it possible for me to talk about the fear, and my expectation that she was going to judge / reject / abandon / vilify / (etc) me like my mother used to.
I hope you will just hang in there and give yourself a chance to learn to trust your therapist. It is not easy, but it is possible!!! Maybe try to be half as patient with yourself as she is with you.
