Dear T,

I’m annoyed at you, no, I’m really, really mad at you. The problem is I feel I have NO reason to be angry with you, which only adds to my frustration and aggravation. I’m upset that you didn’t read what I gave you, though I know it is unrealistic to expect you to read all the stuff I gave you and you explained why you didn’t read it. Then that makes me wonder what you DID read, if anything. I thought you were reading everything I gave you, and I was taking comfort in that knowledge and thought it helped our sessions. Then today when you told me you didn’t read my stuff, it made me wonder if you read ANYTHING. Have I been operating under false assumptions that you were reading what I wrote and implementing the changes? I feel like all these good feelings I’ve had over the past 2 weeks, all the realizations, the progress that I feel like I made and wrote about, are founded on false pretenses. I guess it doesn’t help that to find out you haven’t been reading the stuff I gave you reminded me of last year when I gave H something very important to read and he said he would read it, but never did, no matter how much I asked. That hurt me very much, the same way I feel hurt now.

I feel guilty and unjustified in writing this because I really feel I have NO right to be angry with you. You did nothing wrong, I’m the one who did wrong. I had unrealistic expectations of what I wanted from you and from therapy, and today I realized those expectations are not being met. Instead of accepting it maturely, I take it out wrongly on you. I remember one other time this happened, where I had unrealistic, unspoken expectations from someone and I got angry with them. It almost cost me my friendship with soandso. I do NOT want to go through that again, but I can’t stop these feelings of anger, betrayal, and rejection. What’s worse, I know if I bring this up with you, you’ll probably say something that will justify your behavior, or explain everything. Then I’ll realize you’re right, I'm wrong in my perception and I’m just overreacting and blowing things out of proportion, as has happened many times in the past with other people. Then I get more upset and frustrated at myself because I was wrongly angry and upset with you without all the information necessary to justify my feelings towards you and that leads me to feel even more guilty and small.

I’m also angry with you, unjustifiably, because you are making me hurt. You are stirring up emotions in me that I have not felt for YEARS, if EVER. I do NOT like these emotional feelings, it’s extremely painful, scary, overwhelming, and really pissing me off because the emotional pain combined with all the racing thoughts generating the emotions are consuming all my time and affecting my productivity. I know, again, I have no reason to be angry with you because you are only doing your job. I know my anger is displaced, but knowing that my anger is unwarranted only makes me more frustrated and angry because I CANNOT control my emotions.

The worst part of it all is that I feel like I WANT to quit, to just give up, to go back to the way things were before I started seeing you. Yeah, my life sucked, I was miserable, but at least I was getting my work done, and able to function day to day without breaking down in tears, or having to take a nap to cope with my feelings, or spend hours writing things down just to clear my head. I think I wrote MORE in the past 2 months than I have in the past 10 years, seriously! Yes, I know you said I would feel worse before feeling better, and I know this is the “feeling worse” part, but I don’t know how to get through this part. I don’t know if I CAN! I can’t tell you how many times since I’ve started feeling these emotions over the past few days that I’ve had horrible thoughts of how to cope – thoughts of drinking myself into oblivion, thoughts of hurting myself just to make the emotional pain go away, thoughts of just giving up completely. Then I realize the promise I made to myself, that I WOULD not do any of those things because I’m trying, I’m trying to change, to improve, to break bad, old habits. I know you’re going to say that I’m trying to hard, but I CANNOT help it. I’m an all or nothing person. I throw myself 110% into everything I do, and give it my all. Yes, that’s probably very unhealthy, especially in this situation, and yes, it places extreme undo pressure on me, but it’s all that I know.

I feel so helpless, so out of control, like I’m drifting in an open sea with no sign of help in sight. I know you’re going to say that’s not true, that you’re here to help, but you’re NOT. You’re only there an hour every other day, and usually when I see you is when everything is somewhat okay. I need you NOW, I needed you Sunday evening, I needed you Friday after our session, I need you when you can’t be there. I need you BETWEEN sessions, or I need to KNOW how to be able to cope between sessions. What’s worse is that when I come to our sessions, I never seem to be able to address the issues that affect me between sessions. It’s like you always say, I’m not “in the moment”. Well, that’s the problem! I come to see you and my moment of crisis from the day/night/weekend passed and then all is fine. Then those issues just get pushed on the back burner, or buried but never resolved until they fester up again, and they usually resurface at the most inopportune times. HOW is that helpful to me!?

Maybe I’m looking at this all wrong. Maybe I have this warped perception of how therapy is supposed to work. Maybe therapy isn’t intended to solve my immediate problems, but rather the bigger issues and give me the ability to solve my immediate crisis on my own. That’s all well and good, but HOW do I survive until I reach that point of being able to solve my immediate crisis on my own? HOW do I cope when I’m flooded with emotions and feelings that I’m not used to experiencing? I know you said feelings are like a wave, and they’ll pass, but it sure doesn’t feel like it! How long do they take to pass? How frequently do they come? What do I do when I go home after a session and fall apart like I did today, and Friday and other times? I know what I WANT to do, I want to bury the feelings, push them away, ignore them, but to do so is counterproductive, and would undo what little progress I HAVE made. So instead, I take your advice, I let the feelings be. Easier said then done. When I let the feelings exist, I end up experiencing more feelings and writing angry letters to you expressing just how I’m feeling, and thinking unhealthy thoughts and doubting myself and what I know.

Do you know how many times in the past week or two I have actually debated quitting coming to see you? How many times I thought that maybe we aren’t a good fit as therapist/client? How many times I thought maybe someone will be better, different, and not make me feel what I’m feeling now? Then I realize that if this is all part of the process, a different therapist probably will NOT change that. I am the one that will need to change, to embrace the process. I wrote this all down a few days/weeks ago, but since you probably didn’t read it you don’t know that I’m having these doubts and questions. And because our sessions go by so fast (or so they seem) and we always talk about other issues because I’m not in the moment or I forget to bring these issues up, these things never get addressed.

Okay, I think I’m done, I’m just repeating myself now, going in circles – heh circles, just like you say, everything is circular, not linear. So true…I’m still angry with you but at least I feel more controlled, like I got everything off my chest and I can go back to work now.