I am angry. I don't know why. I want to quit. I don't know why. I feel stuck. So, stuck. I feel like 2 and a half years ago I started therapy because I was severley depressed and suicidal but, most of all- the biggest reason that I know today but, didn't know then... was that I bottled in so many of my problems and issues my entire life, up to about 19 or 20 years old. Bottling in so many experiences and feelings was the true root of what really brought me to therapy in the first place. I didn't know that at the time. I just wanted her to figure out what was wrong with me. After a year and a half of processing through traumatic events and stories with my old therapist, I finally felt the weight of heaviness lift from my life. I finally felt like I could breathe a bit again. Was I still depressed? Yes but, that big heavy weight that depression carries, where clients carry a load of bricks with them to sessions disappeared... My old therapists calm, gentle, and empathetic nature gave me the strength to speak up about things that I never thought I could talk about. Unfortunatley, I left that alliance with my therapist feeling like she hated my guts and I was nothing but an annoyance to her. I was nothing but, an annoyance to her because I couldn't stay positive. I always said... "I just never felt validated growing up, so I feel like I have to be negative in order for people to hear me or listen to me..." I guess that line was old to her after a while ( a year and a half while-- dang, that's a long time!) but, I kinda wish instead of her being impatient with my negativity (although I understand her impatience, I was not a pleasant person...) I wish she could have TRULY got it. TRULY understood my story of me weeping and barely being able to stand up and my well-meaning dad but, misplaced statement he said while I was weeping: "You have never experienced pain...You don't even know what pain is..." I wish she could have truly understood what it really felt like to hear things like that while you are in tears and can barely stand. Instead, my therapist was so annoyed with my negativity I remember she said her abuse was worse then mine... which I can't say I disagree with that? I believe hers probably was. I just wish she could have put aside her resentment and patiently walked me out of that negativity and negative spirit...Maybe I could have learned something...maybe I had more work to get through with her... It would have been a fight. It might have left some scars but, I bet I would have came out stronger on the other side and more willing to abandon my old pattern of thinking for her view and opinion on optimisim and positivity. Anyways, thats actually sort of a tangent. It's over 2 years later.. and I have a new therapist. My old therapist supported me through the process of speaking up but, the speaking up was only limited to therapy and thats really as far as we got. I never learned how to speak up anywhere else but, in that room... 2 years later, I am still too afraid to say everything I am feeling to all of my family. I can say some to my moms but, I still hold back. I don't trust a single person to share anything with thats a supposedly "friend." I am thankful for my friends and I enjoy hanging out, especially in groups but, I'm not really a fan of close, intimate friendships anymore. People always seem to leave. And so I am stuck, stuck in a place where I like therapy because it's finally my moment to talk about what I have bottled inside... but, the problem is, I don't want to bottle it inside and wait for therapy to talk about it anymore. I don't want to do that because therapy makes me feel like I am not a valuable person. It makes me feel like the only way someone will listen to me is if I pay them. This makes me sad. It makes me sad that I feel like the only way the person will even see me is if I fit in their time slot. It makes me feel like their is something wrong with me because the only time I will open up is when I am in a room with a therapist. It makes me sad that I can't control when I will run out of money and not be able to afford it... yet, the therapist will move on... and make a "healthy detachment," and be done with it. A lot of these things make me sad. It makes me sad that I am not the client who works best with an hour. I am the client who needs 30 minutes just to get to a peaceable state... in order to really make progress but, thats not possible. The fact that I even desire that makes me feel guilty. It makes me pull back from even wanting to attend therapy.. it makes me desire the ability to open up my bottle and let my family (pretty much the only people I'd consider opening up about anything too) know what's going on in my life. Why am I always hiding? Why am I so afraid to show all of me? I don't get it. I'm stuck...I am stuck because I like therapy but, theres so much about therapy that makes me so sad. It kinda makes me feel like I am incompetent in a way to handle and tough out life like some of my other friends. I feel silly that I actually miss the sessions sometimes... when, again, it's just a slot.Anyone I would talk too would just tell me "Jazzy, they are just doing their job. That's all it is." It makes me feel weak. Yet, at the same time... if I don't go, I will bottle everything up inside again.. like I did 2 years ago... and then that may evolve into me becoming that suicidal, depressed girl again... someone I never, ever want to meet ever again. I feel stuck. I feel sad. I feel worthless.

Good thing feelings aren't fact... maybe they won't sit and stay too long... if theirs anything I've learned about therapy it's this...

"& This too shall pass... This feeling that the world is caving in on you and you feel you don't have enough space to stand. Yes, it will pass. You will feel light-hearted another day, as if none of this stuff ever bothered you. Yet, you will wake up another day to this lingering sadness again.. and you will feel like the storm clouds refuse to change pace and the heart in your chest will never stop the race but, it does. It all stops eventually... cus' at the end of the day, feelings aren't facts... No matter the pain, this too shall pass."

Jazzy.

--Some people want to know they aren't alone in their experiences or shortcomings... I just want to know that all of this is a normal part of the therapy experience. Is it? I mean, can you relate?