MzJello, I've seen enormous change in you in the last 6 months. Your inquisitive side has come out rather than your knee-jerk, automatic snowballing. Yes, things still snowball but not as often and not as quickly. Your avalanche doesn't swallow up whole villages anymore?

You heard, understood your T, and laughed when he said, "Just stop it!". Think about yourself last summer, would you have laughed then or been insulted he said that shallow, too pat answer? Would you have been able to write this post back then?

It takes time. Let it. I think you laughed at "just stop it" because it's an enjoyably painful paradox to be stuck in, like the one I always felt I was in, "not being able to box my way out of a wet paper bag". The biggest problem is we keep going at these things with our head and one can't use one's head for heart matters. You can't "figure it out," it's not linear.

One of the most pleasant, comforting, helpful things I learned/figured out in therapy is that it's all a process. Sometimes I picture it kind of like a path through the woods, wild flowers and tall trees sometimes, bogs and dangerous footing other times. My T is "with" me but not in front leading, it's my path and I have to "lead". T is just companion, sometimes dropping back when the path gets narrow, sometimes going first and helping me across a tricky spot, suggesting where I should put my feet. But time is passing and I'm living on, moving on to. . . wherever I'm "destined" to move on to. When we look back we can see where we've been and sort of see how we got to where we are. However, we can't look forward and see where we're going, we just have to keep working our way there and trust that whatever comes up, we'll deal with it; climb the rocks, shoot the rapids, get a little fire going to dry our clothes after we fall into the creek :-) etc. One's T is just a companion though on this journey, for the space of however long we're in therapy (between towns :-) T's been on other trips like ours but not our specific trip. I know my T cared because, as companion, our trip is partially their trip too? If the trip gets truncated, they have to find their way, alone, back to "their" particular town in their own journey. Yes they are on many journeys, or helping weave many pieces of life cloth at the same time, if we can jump meaphors now and be in T's weaving room, but if you leave your loom, there are other looms but yours being empty until it's moved out of the room is a sad, lonely sight for T. And you were weaving such an interesting design, never seen before and T was into it, watching how you worked and how you were weaving those defiant little pieces of velcro into it to give it texture and make it stick to itself in some places and give it added depth and beauty

I'm having too much fun here, LOL. Yes, it's very confusing. I grab a feeling expression or two from people I respect and take them at face value instead of trying to think about them. "I care". Take that as a fact and look for how your T tries to get across that caring. Look for where it is instead of concentrating on where it isn't? When you get pissed, start with, "T cares, so he didn't %#@&#! me off on purpose so that means. . .(1) I'm pissed because I don't understand something here (2) T doesn't see anything here that would %#@&#! off other people so what am I seeing differently (3) What exactly did T say again? Maybe I'm pissed because I'm anxious or afraid of something in what T said. . ., (4) etc." Keep your view on yourself rather than "out there" with what others are doing and sometimes you can move quicker. Climbing the rocks can be easier than trying to figure out who put them in your path or trying to get someone to come move them out of the path; focus on your moving ahead rather than on the path and what's on it. Yes, sometimes we need to move rocks or wait while we get others to move things out of the way for us but that's what therapy is, learning to assess what's in front of us and how we want to respond to get us closer to where we want to be. Arguing that the rocks shouldn't be there in the first place is neither here nor there. They are there and have to be dealt with.