It sounds like you weren't ready / willing to talk through how you felt about having MS. If therapists really push... Well... I know that that gets me resisting them (I'm contrary like that). Whereas if it really is important to me (rather than them) for me to talk about that... Then if they just back off of it and give me a little space... Then I'll bring it up myself sooner or later ;-)

Resistences (denial and the like) come up to defend you against pain. Pain is hard and best avoided in general, so it is understandable ;-) That being said there are some pains that can be healing, but we have to be ready to go there. There are things therapists can do to help the process along, but it can take a bit of time for them to figure out what works for a particular client. Resistences are inevitable. I read somewhere that if you can do free association (say whatever comes to mind without resisting / censoring) then you don't need to do free association / therapy! Therapy just is a process of working through the resistences and coming to see why the resistences are there and coming not to need to employ them so much. (That is my conception of therapy anyway).

> Other than just trying to be honest, how do I get myself to actually deal with my true feelings and let myself express them...

The process does take some time... The first thing is typically working on building up basic trust and rapport. What happens with me... Is that something occurs to me (a thought, a feeling, a memory) and I can tell it is important for me to talk about precisely because I get an urge to talk about it but then I feel this intense shame / embarrasment / humiliation. So then I guess I struggle with the feeling of shame etc and try and find the courage to tell my therapist what the thought, feeling, memory or whatever was. Some things are too hard (the shame around it is too intense). Other things are hard, but have less shame associated with them. I start small by sharing something that I have mild to moderate shame about... And then I assess how that went. I have a good basic trust / rapport with my therapist now where we seem to have an unspoken agreement on this process. Basically (because of the amount of shame I have) he is really validating and says something (where the content isn't as important as the fact that he is still sympathetic / empathetic to me and he doesn't recoil from me in disgust). And that is healing :-) To see my worst fear disconfirmed (he isn't disgusted by me!). Over and over... And over time I get the courage to talk about things that have more shame associated with them. And tears sometimes. And that... Is healing for me.

That is one process, I guess. I suppose different people need different things. I really do think it is about finding someone who you think you can build basic trust and rapport with... And someone who will give you the leeway to attempt these little disclosures / tests and assess things... Someone who will let you talk about whatever YOU want and who won't push you into having to defend yourself even more...