I have had therapy for about 14 months now. It's been unusually intense, most months I spent five or more hours a week in session and did lengthy email sessions in addition. I was doing the Jillian Michaels version of a psychological workout, I now realize.

I started therapy because I was falling short as a mother, but then began discussing my own childhood as a result, and I have been worried about my life basically exploding or imploding ever since.

I've gone through the therapeutic process of opening up to my therapist, coming to trust her, experiencing some ruptures along the way, and getting to the point now where I feel that while I find certain things difficult to talk about, that I have told her the most disturbing, and I now have nothing I would withhold from her. I learned on the way that my childhood, which I already knew was traumatic, had given me PTSD, which I hadn't realized, but made perfect sense once I learned about the symptoms, though it's hard to deal with that sometimes.

I also made incredible progress. I've made a number of practical and emotional changes in my life. I've returned to college (a lifelong dream, to earn my degree after dropping out of high school) and completed several courses toward a more fulfilling career. I have controlled my temper maybe 80% better than pre-therapy. I take better care of my daughter as I've worked through some of my triggers and understand her needs better. I have gotten my husband into therapy. I take better care of myself and am learning to relax a little more, which has always been hard for me. I communicate better with my husband and can relate a little better and be more honest with others too. I've even started managing my money a little better. I've also gotten promoted at work and received a couple awards, which is just to demonstrate that despite my fears, my life has not gotten worse at all during therapy and I haven't performed noticeably worse, though the therapy has been very difficult.

Yet I still worry some about therapy being destructive, I will note that it was harmful in one of the therapeutic relationships I had as a teen, so my fear isn't completely unfounded, but I think maybe today it's overblown.

I worry about depending on my therapist too much, about being addicted to her, about regressing, about losing my independence, about losing my family (that happened when I was young, partly in conjunction with being in therapy), about missing the family I have lost so much that I'll break.

The one negative effect of therapy I have experienced was spending too much, but I have cut back on the spending significantly, so I am feeling better about that. I'm down now, to an average of 2 one hour sessions a week, and one email in between, which I hate but think will be good for me in some ways. Less intensity and less expense mainly, though the less support part is hard.

I realize I have to ask myself a helpful question that I haven't asked lately: what is the worst that could happen, because I'm always feeling anxious now that I'm in therapy.

For example, one of the things I worry about: she read me a story for a few minutes yesterday, a fable, because I find it soothing to hear her voice and not feel pressured to do all the talking. We did typical therapy for an hour or so, then she spent 5 or 10 minutes reading to me. I worried so much though, that I was asking for something babyish, that I shouldn't open up that part of myself to her that wants the comfort of hearing a story or motherly nurturing, even though she doesn't mind and often sends me songs or comforting words and understands it's something I'm always short on.

I think I have to examine my fear. What if I let her read to me? What am I so afraid of....

Am I afraid I'll only want her to read to me and not do any work on my life?
Am I afraid I'll turn into a helpless person? (I'm well established in my life, stable home, stable job, school, family, all seem okay)
Am I afraid I'll feel comforted in a way I haven't for decades that will bring up enough grief to drown me?

I'm changing during this course of therapy. I'm getting more vulnerable. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, to be more emotionally open, to be a little more interdependent after being fiercely independent my whole life. I'm getting a little used to the idea of her being there for me, though I feel as clingy as a baby kangaroo at times.

I'm starting to wonder, even as I write, if some of my fear is old baggage, but I thought I'd post and see. Is letting her read me a story for 10 minutes or be around a lot going to ruin my life in some way I might not understand? I'm getting tired of the anxiety and tired of worrying about therapy and missing her between sessions but I think she's an excellent therapist and am so impressed by and grateful for her too.