There was a lot that went on yesterday. This is going to be a long post.

Before the session started, I was waiting in the waiting room for about 5 minutes. The sound machine was on the “thunderstorm” setting, which was triggering to me. When T brought me back, he asked how I was doing, and I told him that I was admittedly mildly anxious and triggered. I told him that it was because of the sound machine, and he asked if I changed the setting. “No?” It would never even cross my mind to touch anything in the waiting room. He went on to tell me that there were some children in the waiting room the other day and they were playing with the machine.

I laughed and said that I was fully aware of the precociousness of children. Somehow that conversation segued into Peeps. Peeps are disgusting, and T agreed. I told him my joke about Peeps and he laughed hard and informed me that he was going to steal the joke. I knew I liked him for a reason.

Then we settled down into more serious things. He asked what I wanted to talk about. I said I was torn. I wanted to not be there, to finish processing from two weeks ago, that I wanted to talk about the thing with my dad, and then I also wanted to talk about cute animals and be best friends with him.

He said that it was normal to have those “best friend” feelings with the therapist. And I know that it is. He asked if I had any idea where those feelings come from, and I said that it was avoidance. That I wanted to start dipping my toe into more difficult topics, but that it’s scary. It’s easier to talk about cute animals and be his best friend.

He said that first he was glad I was there, fighting the urge to not come. Then he said that perhaps we could talk about why the noise machine triggered me. I told him about it, which I’ve discussed on PC before…basically a time in my childhood during a thunderstorm where my mother and one of her boyfriends were verbally abusive. I was also in a closet when this happened. T asked me if the feelings of being confined took me back to another time where I felt uncomfortable in a small space. It does. But I wasn’t able to tell him what the connection was. I’m hoping that I’m able to tell him next week. Upon later reflection that will be a really good memory to process in EMDR, though I imagine it will be frightening for me.

I started to cry when T asked me about small spaces. He said I was doing a good job sitting with that feeling, even though I wasn’t comfortable telling him what the memory was. That I didn’t need to. A similar conversation from last week came up, where I am doing a good job tolerating difficult emotions compared to when we first met. I said that I agreed, though I don’t give myself as much agency in that as he does. I see it as more of a function of the antidepressant doing its job. He said that it’d be difficult to figure out where my work ended and where the antidepressant began, but that it was obvious that I was working hard to tap into difficult things, both in and out of the therapy room.

There was a lull in the conversation where T said that he wanted to ask me about something that I’d mentioned at the beginning. What was the thing around my dad? There was a moment a few days ago where my stepmom was upset by something that was going on with my dad. That I was very upset by it, and my H very astutely pointed out that my reaction to the thing with my dad seemed out of proportion to the amount that what was going on affected me. T asked me who I felt like I was trying to attend to or take care of. I said that it made sense that it related back to me.

T asked me to think of a time where I felt similarly to when I had the emotion to my mom. I told him a story about an event that happened my freshman year of high school. I was attending a boarding school and there came a point in which the school said for me to continue to attend and live on campus, I needed to meet weekly with the in-school psychologist. My dad fought it at first before he eventually acquiesced.

T asked me what I think that I needed to hear as a freshman. I struggled to tap into that. T said, “okay, let’s try something.” He grabbed the chair that sits at his desk and turned it so that it was facing me. “Talk to the younger version of you. What would you say to her that she needed to hear?”

Anyone who has followed my story knows that the empty chair technique was basically my exT’s favorite technique to use with me. I always hated it, and apparently I was very triggered by it. I instantly got defensive, angry, and refused to talk to T.

T asked what I was feeling, and I said I was very angry. “Okay, am I right to guess that you’re thinking about something related to your former therapist?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, and we were just talking about your father and how it felt when he didn’t hear you, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you said that the former therapist was somewhat of a father figure, yes?”
“Yeah…”
“Okay, so am I jumping too far or do you feel like that connection is accurate?”
I sighed. The connection made sense, and I told him so.
“Okay then, Daisy. What do you need?”
I pointed to the chair. “I need to not do that.”
“Okay, thank you for telling me that explicitly. I want to make sure that you feel heard in this room, and it’s easier to hear you when you say exactly what you need.”

He then went onto talk about the connections between the story about my dad and how I felt unheard, how my mom made me feel wrong for being emotional while in the closet, and the story last week about how my dad told me not to cry when I was a child. “I’m really getting a very clear picture that the message that you received as a child was that it wasn’t okay for you to express emotions. But it is okay.”

I told him I knew that it would make my life infinitely better if I were able to express my emotions in the moment versus bottling everything up. “Yeah,” he replied, “but if it were that easy to have the cognition, then I’d see you…never again and you’d be just fine.”

I chuckled and looked at my watch. “And on that note, let’s schedule for next week.”

After we scheduled, he was sitting there awkwardly, waiting for me to leave. “Umm, do you want money? Because if you want to give me a freebie that’s fine, I’ll leave.”

He laughed and apologized. He really isn’t good at the administrative bits. But he’s such a good therapist. I’m glad I stuck with him through a difficult beginning.