When I began my work with T, he would ask me what feeling was attached to a particular memory and I could not always describe it. I had, and still have, difficulty describing my feelings and allowing myself to feel.

I love words and their qualities and I have always been more comfortable in the intellectual realm; attaching definitions to things; using just the right word to describe something; looking at a situation through a different lens to see if I could glean new information.

That propensity has actually been a hindrance to my therapy. I hide behind these words, these definitions; the textual context of experience. In that way I don't have to feel the hurt, the pain, the abandonement, the loneliness, the despair.

Letters and words are static. They stay where you put them. Their meaning can change depending on the reader but once put down on paper, they don't go anywhere.

I know that many of you, my friends, are able to use psychological terminology to describe your therapeutic experience. I am jealous of your ability because it is in that concrete foundation that I am most comfortable. The tower of words that we buld around us is a blanket of safety.

However, I have avoided this part of our repartee in order to try and force myself to stay in the feeling state while I am in therapy. I have not read as many of the psychology books that you have, although I confess to buying one of Yalom's early on. However, I put it away. If I begin to read these books I will not be able to feel. Anything.

Words can numb me.