Last night, T left me a message in response to a message I left him in the afternoon yesterday (that I don't remember leaving). He asked if he could call me today at 12:30, and I called back and said yes (of course), so we talked on the phone today.

I am doing a LOT better today than I was yesterday, which was good, because I was able to stay present and work through some stuff over the phone.

Yesterday in session, I was SO scared and triggered by voices outside of the room...that's one of my most triggery things, and it was coming from all 4 walls, literally - an office on one wall, another office on another wall, the waiting room on another wall, and people outside on the fourth wall. I felt absolutely surrounded and overwhelmed. At the same time, I had this feeling that T didn't want me to get into anything too deep...like maybe he had his own agenda, to keep me safe, or whatever. So, I didn't talk about the things I needed to talk about, left feeling SO anxious and horrible, and just kind of got worse (apparently a LOT worse) throughout the day, until I was able to find some relief at my meditation meeting last night.

When T called, we talked about my fear that he doesn't want me to talk about certain things. This has come up before. It feels VERY REAL to me in the moment, in session, and I feel like "well, T probably knows best" and I end up not getting what I need to out of the session. T and I talked about whether I could feel that in the moment, recognize it, and tell him. I don't know if I can. He said that he knew that it was a big thing to ask, but that maybe we could both try to stay aware of it. He said MY needs and MY agenda are always the most important. So that was helpful.

Then he asked "if we hang up now, is there anything you'll be left with that you'll wish you had said?". So, I checked in with myself and I realized that there WAS something.

I realized that I have a HUGE fear of T not believing that I'm working hard to heal. And it makes me scared to bring stuff up in session (quite a bit, actually). I don't want him to be disappointed in me, or think I'm doing a bad job, or think I'm "playing" the victim, or whatever. And at the same time, I really really really want to work through stuff and heal. It's this awful spot that I'm in so frequently, but I've never been able to put words to it. Today, I was finally able to recognize it and tell him about it.

He was SO reassuring. He said that he has never had a feeling that I'm trying to stay stuck, or that I'm not working hard. He said that it's clear from how much healing I've done that I want to get better. He said he has NEVER doubted that.

I told him that I would probably need to hear that about a million more times. For the first couple of years of therapy, I was afraid that he would refer me to someone else, and he had to reassure me over and over and over and over again about it. I told him this was like that, and he said that it worked before (the reassurance) and he is sure it will work this time too.

It was SO helpful to be able to finally NAME this struggle I have in therapy. Now we have words that we can use to talk about it. Being able to talk about it will help it go away, I am sure of it. It made me realize how important it is to name things, just like T is always telling me. Before it was just this free-floating anxiety bouncing around in my head...now it has a form. And now that it has a form, we can look at it, and deal with it, and put it away. I guess that's what I want to share here the most...how powerful putting words to something can be.

So. In a 20 minute phone call, I did WAY more work than I did in 65 minutes of therapy yesterday. And I feel so much better...cared for and HEARD, which is huge.

Thanks, PC friends, for being here