T and I have worked on some deep and difficult problems in therapy--past trauma, divorce, etc. Now we are working on things I judge to be more surface and less momentous. But I'm discovering even working on what seem to be smaller problems can be really big and profound. It's like the significance of our incremental work has caught me by surprise--this isn't so "small" after all!

I went to my last session thinking we might have a conflict, and I dreaded that, because I do not handle conflict well. I do not have a history of lots of ruptures with my T or with other people in my life, although T and I have had a disagreement or two. I wanted to bring up a conversation from our last session and be very direct, but I also felt that by questioning what we talked about, this would somehow bring us into conflict. Last time T seemed to insist on talking to me about certain things and telling me to "listen, this is important", and then after I heard what he said, I wouldn't get how it was even relevant to what I thought we were talking about or why it was so important. We were not on the same page at all. I left feeling confused.

When I told T I was confused about the previous session, he was immediately very open and wanted to hear more. He did not get defensive at all and I was able to state my lack of understanding with "I" statements. It was a model conversation, actually, and went so well, it is hard to believe I dreaded it so.

T had said he would do 2 things for me before this session, but he had forgotten to do them. He explained that he has so much going on now that he needs to write things down or he won't remember. Before our session, I had decided he probably was not going to have done either of these things because of the latent conflict I felt at our last meeting. Not doing these things would be a passive aggressive way of saying he was unhappy with me because of our last meeting. But when he said he hadn't done these things and apologized for forgetting, I realized he really had not “forgotten” deliberately in order to send me some kind of disapproving or censuring message. He had just forgotten! It was so simple. And I learned that if I wanted to help him remember, I could ask him to write something down. It just all seemed so uneventful and clear and without ulterior and secret subtext.

I want to bring this kind of “small” realization to my life outside therapy too. These things have the potential to change my daily life so much. After I finished with the trauma work, divorce, etc., I was anxious that I should quit therapy because now I didn't have anything "important" to work on. I have just been so wrong on that. I want to encourage people who slay their big demons in therapy to keep on for a while. With the so-called big stuff out of the way, there is a lot of progress that can be made.