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Originally Posted by Lrad123
Is it important for you to figure out why you have this ambivalence? I didnt expect to have it when I started therapy because it was my choice to start therapy, but it has been incredibly strong. For me it may be some guilt about setting time aside for myself and allowing myself to be the center of attention which can feel really self-indulgent. It sounds like that might be at least partly what is happening with you. Im curious how the ambivalence shows up for you.
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I expected the ambivalence--I've been in therapy multiple times and have been deeply ambivalent about it every single time--but didn't anticipate how it would show up this time around. With my first good therapy experience, I spent the first 6 months berating the whole concept of therapy nearly every session, before grudgingly settling into things. With every subsequent therapist, I spent more or less the whole time wondering if going was helpful or worth it, being unsure if the therapist was competent (made more complicated by the fact that several ultimately really weren't) or a good fit, and having a lot of trouble justifying the time and money involved.
With this therapist, I'm very sure that he's competent and helpful, to an extent that is really strange and unusual for me. I've only seriously contemplated quitting once in 2.5+ years, I never cancel sessions or consider canceling unless there's a clear and unavoidable work conflict, and I've made therapy a high priority in my life in some concrete ways.
So the usual ways I express ambivalence aren't happening. Instead, I show up to my session and my mind goes blank. Or I'm struck with a sense of terror that makes it impossible to speak. Or I silently berate myself for only having unimportant, trivial things to say. Or feel guilty that I'm taking my therapist's time away from patients who are more deserving, or for taking my time and attention away from my patients.
I seek out extra sessions, but then when I get there I start berating myself for being needy, and for not being able to resolve my issues on my own. I get into issues I've never addressed before, and then have to contend with an aggressive backlash of feeling like I've committed a terrible crime by inflicting those conversations on my therapist. So really that's the crux of it: realizing my therapist is helpful and trustworthy is terrifying, because it brings up all of my fear and ambivalence around the idea of ever relying on other people. It brings up every way I was taught from childhood onward that burdening someone with my feelings is grotesque and unacceptable.