Or if that seems like it's a bit too big of a task, how about a list of topics you feel you need to talk about?

I journal about . . . whatever is on my mind. I don't focus on how I say things or why I say things, it's more a way to sort of access some part of myself that's not quite on the surface. I usually give my T a copy of my journal, not necessarily every week, sometimes every other week. When I first discussed giving it to him, I asked him if he would let me know if there was something in there that I should deal with. After a lecture on the word "should" and that I shouldn't (ha!) ever feel like I must do something and how it's so important to me to be in control, he said he would. And he has once said that when I was ready, it would be a good idea to look at ___. He has also mentioned specific things that I have written in my journal, last week he mentioned 2 or 3 things. Which is probably one way of seeing if I'm willing to open those topics up . . . and that hasn't happened. I generally spend about 5 minutes freaking inside my head at the mere mention of anything from my journal, because on the rare occasions when I've read some of it, I'm pretty horrified by what I wrote.

Some T's are really more or less directive than others. Mine is very hippy/old school social work/client-centered and if he ever says something to me like, here, now, discuss this, I will fall over. Once I said I was "stuck" in session and didn't know where I wanted to go. He replied, "if you knew, would you be willing?"

THAT was annoying. If his intent was that I never say I was stuck again, then he succeeded. Then he did a mindfulness exercise with me that was pretty useful, but really wasn't what I needed at the time.

Anyway, I think I am hijacking. What I wanted to tell you is how I plan to handle something this week. I want to start by saying that I want to talk about a difficult topic. For me, that's shame, and it has been peeking up its head in my life all over the place this week. So this is how it would go in my imagination:

"I want to talk about shame. Can you help me with getting this started?"

Anne