One thing that helps me is that I keep a nightly journal. The night before my sessions when I am writing in my journal I look back at the past two weeks of entries. (the entries between the last session and the one the next day.I pick out the important stuff that I want her to know and then either list it on a paper or things related to that issue. I put them into my back pack. That way when I leave the next day for the local library my therapy stuff is already in there. While waiting for my therapist in the lobby I look over the stuff I brought so that its fresh in my mind what I want her to know. During the sessions if I get stuck all I have to do is open the backpack saying I brought some stuff with me. I have been known to tape record what I wanted to say to past therapists or call their voicemail between sessions with a I don't want to forget to tell you type message or just ramble. My past therapist loved my middle of the night "babbles" as I call it. she found out so much through those 2-3am calls. things I probably never would have said otherwise. Workbooks are a great starting point too. I do them on my own then hand them in to my therapists. They read them, ask questions and ideas and so on from that and I don't have to worry about "what do I say now?" As for smoke screens therapists can see through those anyway regardless of if they say so or not. They're trained to recognise snow jobs and avoidance so I don't even try. I flat out tell them something is wrong but Im not ready to talk about it yet. for me usually the reason I don't say something is that I am worried about how they would react or I don't want to tell them something too soon. and I tell them that its too early they wouldn't understand. If the therapist is on the wrong track from where I am I tell them words like "thats not it, its this instead" The therapists never get mad at me for it and have actually thanked me for getting THEM back on track.