Quote:
Originally Posted by Lrad123
Yes, we talked about it in session a couple of days ago. And then I went home and processed things some more and sent a long email which, of course, he hasn’t responded to. He assured me he will read my emails though. The tough part is that I can’t be emotional in session with him. So although I feel tremendously disappointed, I don’t know how to express that to him in person. He seems to want me to be angry and although I can send emails that express negative emotions towards him, I can’t be angry in person. I’m not sure how to do that or if I even should.
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I'm not trying to be critical about it, but I can't quite understand what the real issue is. You "can't be emotional in person" yet you sent an email after session where you expressed your emotions, just like before? Or are you saying that you can only "be" emotional when you get a response to your email from him?
I'm not sure I understand why the point of therapy is to "express emotions" and even if that were the point, why is expressing emotions in a one way dialogue via email not even in real time supposed to be life changing? And you are still able to express emotions in all the emails you want and he will read them. So I just can't wrap my head around what you are being prevented from doing and what the exact problem is. apologies if I'm being dense.
The other thing I'd say is that when you say you "can't" be emotional in session and supposedly it would be a good thing if you could "be angry" in session, isn't that still an open question or something to work on? I don't think emotional responding with a real person in real time is something that can never happen for you, and I don't think being able to write down your emotions and email them is necessarily a step towards this. My version of this is that my emotions were pretty dissociated from both my past experience and my present experience. I feel like I started to become a whole person when I could think and feel at the same time. I'm not really sure that this had much to do with other people in the sense that I had to express my angry or resentful or hurt emotions; for me it was being in the present with brain and heart and soul together. It was me understanding in a wholistic way how these things came together and T was a witness rather than a part of it.
What it feels like to me is that you haven't yet really identified the problem except there has been a change imposed on you and you'd rather things have stayed the same. But that doesn't seem to be the problem from what you've said. If the real problem is you can't be emotional in session, then why not work directly on that, in session. Personally I can't see how emailing your emotions is helpful to this but you can still express yourself all you want in emails. You just won't get a response. So how does not getting a response block you from experiencing emotion in sessions? Maybe there's a key here.
Telling him you are very disappointed can be done in one sentence to start. You don't have to be prepared to say everything about that, but I think if you can start by saying "I feel very disappointed that you won't respond to my emails" he can help guide you after that.
I haven't used emails as part of my therapy so I'm skeptical that it's as helpful as claimed. I can understand how the connection developed in the sending and response can feel positive but I doubt it impacts therapy progress very much. Emailing people is safe because you can carefully construct your words in a kind of static way and because it isn't interactional and you don't have to change what you say in response to what the other person says. I can see how email can help with the expression of any emotion but in an artificial way because it's not dialog and the physical presence of the other person is absent.
But real life doesn't happen in email, nor do real relationships. Being able to communicate with a real person in the room, with all your messy emotions as part of the mix, seems to be what you are aiming for. To me email seems like a distraction from this, in your situation. I don't think it has to be, in the sense that I think there have been multiple examples from other posters that have shown that emailing can be helpful to their progress in terms of generating greater security in being able to open up more in session. For you email seems counterproductive.