I called T today to see if she could see me today. Fortunately for me she was able to see me this afternoon. I'm not in a good place at all. Fell apart yesterday and none of the usual things I do are helping. I called her yesterday but didn't ask for a call back; I told her I hoped that leaving her the message would work. But it didn't. I didn't feel well enough to go to work. Now I have the manager being mad at me to deal with, when most of what this is about is work.

But 2 things struck me. One is about working on not idealizing T. I was confident I was past most of that, and it seems I am because yesterday it was real T, not fantasy (dream mother come to life) T that I wanted. The other is that I could actually reach out today and call and ask if she could see me. I wanted to be there talking face to face rather than wanting her to call me.

I am now exhausted from it all, the falling apart, the struggle to deal with it and move past it, the session. My sessions have been kind of light and superficial lately, as I have stuck to safe things or safe areas of things. This was deeper and we talked about the stuff past the things, we talked about my fear of feeling and of feelings, my fear of expectations, and my negativity. I'd been feeling terribly overwhelmed and trapped. I guess I still can't shake that, but talking about it was somewhat relieving. That she recognized my fears and just named them without judging them, denying them, ridiculing them... Oh my gosh, it is just so accepting. I just so needed that tonight.

She also talked about the feeling being trapped may be from being trapped by my negativity and we could work on directing my energy toward something else. Toward the issues around this job, looking for another job, moving back to where I lived before I moved here 6 years ago. I feel like a failure at my job (in spite of 2 good reveiws the last 2 years) and I feel like my job is constant stress and chaos; that things just come at me right and left and there is not much predictability or orderliness. I keep working on trying to create more orderliness but there is so much to do that I can only devote bits of time here and there to it. I don't like these working conditions but I feel like I can't say that. T said there was nothing wrong with making a decision that this job isn't what I want, that I tried it and it just isn't for me. Why in the world can't I come up with that perspective myself, I'd like to know. It sounds absolutely right, logical, and self-assertive coming from T.

But not only can't I perceive this, my negativity here says But I will never find anything else, or I will only find the exact same job, or no one will want to hire 'someone like me', etc. So that makes me stuck, trapped by my negativity.

She also talked about my taking myself somewhere else when I don't want to or don't know how to deal with something, including in session. I know I do this when I feel it happening, but applying this to a thinking process is something new to me, so I'm going to try to catch that happening.

Nothing about work has changed and I will face that tomorrow.
I am so exhausted. Yet I feel lighter.

I really don't know how I would have got through this day without T.
I know I ramble and don't articulate well, but thanks for reading