Same here. I'm coping. I don't do serious damage to myself. You don't sound out of control either.

E-mail therapy is something that I have been interested in for a long time. In fact, it was part of how I communicated with my previous T. He gave me his e-mail address after I had been out of therapy for over a year and had just had a really bad relapse, and I wished that I had access to someone I could talk to about this stuff. I was never good at talking when I went to therapy, so I never really got anywhere. When I started writing to him, I was able to get things out on the table that I never could have otherwise. But he was no good at answering e-mail, so I wrote to him, and made an appointment, and went to therapy to basically get his responses. At least that was the way it worked some of the time. Eventually he decided that I was doing well enough, and he didn't think that e-mail therapy was appropriate, and there were other things involved too so he dropped me. My new T is someone I have just had a feeling I could trust and would be able to talk to even about the things I never could bring up with my old T. But she is too far away - was 2 hours away before I moved, and now it's at least 4 hours. I was getting a lot out of her replies to my homework from the class I took with her, and I just couldn't stop writing to her, so I talked her into trying e-therapy. She has never done it before either! But she is really good at identifying the things that are important, and I just feel like she has what it takes to help me with the stuff nobody has managed to before. We've only been officially doing this for a couple of weeks though, so I guess it's really to early to know if it is going to help. The way it works, she had me start by writing my autobiography and sending it to her (I've sent in as much as I have gotten done each week, and I'm still not done) and she pulls out themes and things that need to be addressed - only a couple of things at a time, and we write back and forth and discuss it. It's still trial and error, and I wish I could go sit down with her and talk to her, and she says that we're missing a lot by not having all the nonverbal stuff too, but I do think it is going to work.

If you are interested in e-therapy, there are links for it from this site, or since I have researched it quite a bit I can e-mail you with what I've found. Privacy is an advantage, and it also tends to cost less than face-to-face therapy. There is one site that has unlimited access for about $30 a month.

So, you're usually the one other people go to with their problems, and you don't usually talk to anyone about yours? That is an important pattern to have noticed. It's hard to let people help with your problems, especially when you are used to being the helper. But it's too much to carry everybody else's burdens and have nowhere to go with your own. That's a good thing to work on.