TRIGGER...RELIGION, MENTION OF SI, AND SEVERAL INFLAMMATORY STATEMENTS FROM MY T. ALSO VERY LONG POST.









I have mixed feelings about my session today. Mostly anger, some sorrow. I'm going to tell how it went, facts only, then at the end post my gut reaction now that I've thought about it for a couple of hours.

She addressed my anxiety first. I came in quite anxious following yesterday, what I was going to talk about in session, and a work meeting this morning. We talked about reacting vs. responding. She told me to try to remove myself out of a stressful situation if I could, even if for a few minutes, to walk or sit in my car at work. That would give me time to respond, not react. Reaction is rooted in perfectionism. I consider myself a recovering perfectionist (I dealt with that with my 2nd T). I told her a perfect storm of problems happened yesterday to cause the anxiety, not the least of which was that something is wrong with my right hand which is causing me trouble writing. She suggested I get a manicure. I was like, "How's that going to help?" They massage your hands when they do it. I've had two manicures in my life and they didn't do that. I said maybe I should get a massage. She told me she couldn't have massages anymore because she cannot lie on her stomach since her surgery. So I then managed to distract her by asking about it. I asked if she had a mastectomy, which she did; double. She has "spacers" in right now to stretch the skin for reconstruction, but no one will do the surgery until her heart problems clear up, which they aren't. I felt kinda bad for her.

She then asked me to talk about the hard stuff. I asked if she would sit next to me on the loveseat and she did. She actually sat sideways and faced me and I did the same. It helped me feel safer. I made sure I thanked her at the end of the session because it really did help.

Terrible-sounding tangent: by having her sit next to me, and really looking at her when she talked to me, I realized something. She is really not an attractive woman. I've never really noticed the details of her face. The part that sounds terrible is this: she reminds me of someone who has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. She has so many physical characteristics it makes me wonder; low-set ears with attached earlobes, epicampal folds around her eyes, small wide-set eyes, a very short nose that sticks up...puggish, very thin lips, and a small head (like her neck is as wide as her head). She must just have unfortunate genes, because I thought mental retardation was pretty much a given with FAS.

Anyway, I told her I didn't know where to start. She said with whatever I wanted. So I went into my bisexuality and affair I had two weeks after I married my H. She asked me question after question trying to get me to keep talking; not about details, but about what I was trying to accomplish at the time and culminated in her asking how it made me feel about myself. I said, "I was a horrible person." She said, "That's not true. Let's turn that into the truth. Did you make mistakes?" "Yes." "Did you make some bad choices?" "Yes." "Did you realize at the time how much your actions affected everyone involved?" "No." Did you realize at the time how much your actions affected yourself?" "No." "Do you realize those things now?" "Yes." "Were you a horrible person?" "No."

I told her that time in my life is when I SI'd and diagnosed bipolar and borderline and she said, "That's what sin does to people. It destroys lives. You've decided not to live that way anymore and now you are much healthier. Since you don't present that way (bisexual) anymore, which is not the way God intends for us to live, you are doing better." She told a story about when she worked as a volunteer in a ministry to women who were post-abortive. The leaders told her to make sure she told the women that they had sinned and her response was, "Don't you think they know that already? They killed their children." Then she said, "What I told the women is that God had another plan for their aborted children, that they dwelled in heaven."

She said "We have to realize none of us are worthy of the gift of salvation. We all sin. Sin is sin. I could say, 'At least I'm not a pedophile or rapist or murderer.' But I've gossiped, I've lied, I've stolen. To God, the process of forgiveness is the same. So I'm no different than a pedophile." She choked up and got teary at this point. She said she realized that thousands of years ago, God knew she was going to be born. He knew she was going to sin. And he sent his only son to die for her anyway.

I asked what if I don't want a relationship with God? She asked why not. I told her I didn't know. She said "Because you're not worthy? None of us are worthy." She then told me the next statement may sound cruel, but it was stated to her when the gospel was presented to her. She told the person sharing with her that she wasn't worthy of God's gift. That person told her none of us is. All God is doing is handing out the gift. We just have to take it. If we refuse his gift, then we are saying that we are better than God. Our "humbleness" is an insincere attempt to reject the gift. Our "unworthiness" becomes an idol. This almost made me cry. I'm unsure why. Then she told me that was my homework.

At the end, we set up appointments through the end of the month, then we hugged (she let me hang on for a while, which was nice). The receptionist wasn't in her office, so T did my payment for me. She called me a pet name for the first time ever; "here you go, darlin'" which was kinda endearing.

What is not endearing to me is some of her statements in the middle. If I could send her an email right now, this is what it would say:

Session today is making me feel uneasy. I feared exactly what happened today; it's one of the reasons I've been hesitating and it's one of the reasons I started with the bisexuality. I do appreciate you sitting with me on the couch because it did make it easier for me to share about myself.

But, you said a lot of things, one thing of note being, "it's not the way God intended us to live," in reference to my bisexuality. What I heard is the same damn thing I heard in the past: "Inherently, who you are as a person is wrong."

Actually, uneasy is an understatement. The more I think about it, the angrier I become. You inferred that my bisexuality is a sin. You told me you thought it was "wrong" at the end of a session about eight months ago. I asked why you felt that way and you debated whether or not to tell me then. You decided not to and it never came back up.

You say I don't present myself that way anymore. Actually, I still very much identify as bisexual. I don't shout it from the mountaintops, but if the subject comes up, I tell people that I am. Not a "reformed" or "healed" bisexual, an actual bisexual. I AM BISEXUAL. I am attracted to men AND women...and honestly, I'm actually more attracted to females. I don't "present" per se because I am married. I made a choice six years ago to stay in my marriage for better or for worse. I made vows and I love my husband.

In my eyes, what "made me a horrible person" was not the fact I acted on my bisexuality. In my opinion, what "made me a horrible person" was that I had an affair two weeks after getting married. That I decided to continue the affair for five years despite what I was putting my H, my gf, and myself through. I was selfish then.

You believe the Bible is the inherent word of God and should be interpreted literally...except like you said once, Paul didn't like women. So it's okay for women to serve in the church. Well, that's hypocritical. That's not taking it literally. That tactic is called cherry-picking (choosing parts of the Bible that supports your beliefs and ignoring context or anything else that refutes it) and the type of religion I was raised in was full of that.

It seems like it is a given that who I am is wrong in your eyes. You're just somebody else who thinks I am wrong. That I need to repent for who I am.

The comment about the ladies who had abortions bothers me also. I am pro-life, but what if I wasn't? I know a woman who has had five abortions and she doesn't believe it's sin. She believes it's her reproductive right. I have no qualms with that. I just wouldn't choose it for myself.

The part that I couldn't get out because of all the talking you did (I should have interrupted you) is that I feel bad now because I still love and am attracted to ex-gf. Ex-gf still loves and is attracted to me. We started talking about divorcing our H's two weeks after she got married. We still think we were meant for each other. Neither of us want these thoughts. She has two kids to think about." Even if we don't spend time with each other, it doesn't stop the thoughts.

I have to sit six days with this. I hate it.

I feel like this: