</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
it's not that i worry about T laughing or betraying my confidence.. not in this case. There are times i worry about some of that stuff, but this time i have to believe in what he is telling me. He is not telling me which choice to make, he tells me what he sees and hears in what i tell him. i believe him... or i try to. i hear what he says, i understand the reasoning, and the "whys" behind it, but to truly believe would mean undoing several years of "stuff" that got me here in the first place.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">Yes, you need to identify your own fears about trusting T. Do you know them? It is not fear of his laughter or betrayal of confidence. What are they? I'm not sure I understood but are you saying that if you trust your T, it will mean undoing a big part of what makes you who you are? Kind of an existential crisis? Can you talk to T about that? Maybe this is really not so central to your being, or maybe he can give you something to replace it with if you give it up. My T has said before to me that I am losing a lot in giving up the marriage, and we must work to replace the losses with other, positive things, not just leave a vacuum. We haven't done much work in this area, but it is in the queue for the future.

Jello, I'm not sure what your big issue is in therapy and what your decision is all about, but I had a big decision/life transition I have been working on (ending a marriage) and we worked on it a long time in therapy and I had a therapist before that who I worked on with it too, and got stuck. I just could not move forward. With my current T, we did a lot of stuff, it took us ages before I could even talk about the marriage. Early on, if conversation veered toward the marriage, I might say a few sentences and then say abruptedly, "I don't want to talk about this anymore," and change the subject. Baby steps. He was very patient. Eventually, I could talk an entire session about the marriage. He never pushed me to get divorced and I really appreciate that. He let the decision be mine as it should be. Once I made a list of reasons to end the marriage and reasons to stay in it. I brought it to him. There were about 25 reasons to leave, and I had dashed them off in a flash. I had about 5 things on the "stay together" list and it took me a lot longer to think of these. T read the list and said "this is great". One by one he went through the "stay together" list and commented on each one, saying he could help with this one, I could do such and such about another one. I guess the evidence was overwhelming, but still I didn't decide. I just had to get there on my own. I think T was greatly puzzled about why I didn't move forward to divorce and one day he said to me point blank at the beginning of a session, "are you staying married for the financial security?" It wasn't my reason at all, but it was really the only thing he could think since all the other reasons to leave were so strong. It's a crazy process. Really, the therapist cannot make your decisions for you and shouldn't. They just have to be patient, work with you, support you, be your confidante and sounding board, and be able to hold your hurt and pain.

Anyway, that is my example of an issue that took me a long time to decide on. I was truly a wimp on it and took forever. I was petrified to tell my husband I wanted a divorce and when I finally did, I did it in T's office so I would have his support. It's a crazy journey. So scary but I am feeling good about it now. T is my divorce buddy, there with me every step of the way.

Good luck, take care, keep moving forward if you can, tell everything to your T, lean on him, trust him, use him, he is there.