[Possible trigger: Mention of SI.]

Just curious, have you ever explicitly asked your T about their expectations of you in the therapy process? Do you feel like you just know? Did your T volunteer this stuff?

I had a weird moment last week when my T said something about thinking that I was doing *better* (since I started therapy 6 months ago).

Um, no. Not really. In fact, I find therapy very destabilizing, and wonder if I should forget about it. I was doing pretty great without therapy, and since restarting, feel like things have gotten worse, including SI (actual and urges). When I was not in therapy, I had stopped SI altogether - it just wasn't an issue. Something about the stress of therapy and getting all the icky crap in my head stirred up just... pushes me more than I can handle, I guess.

Therapy also makes me feel more confused, more unstable, more incompetent to deal with stuff. It just feels like getting sucked into an underwater vortex where suddenly I can no longer feel up from down, or see anything clearly, or breathe. It's disorienting.

Ahem, but aside from that I realize he probably doesn't have much of an idea of what things I'm struggling with, or the SI issues. I wrote about it once, but didn't really talk about how much of a problem it is in the present. And, I don't know if I should. It would be helpful to know what the "ground rules" are for therapy... like am I expected to go in and confess when I do that? What if it's not a priority, to me, to work on that? I feel like just going in and saying, "hey, look what I did!" isn't productive if I'm not in a place where I want to focus on working on it, it just seems like... teasing and hurtful, a little.

Ugh! Do you know what's expected of you, beyond showing up and paying?!?