Where is therapy headed?

I am so confused. For the last two sessions I feel like T boils every conversation down to the idea of making a list of what I need to do and then crossing things off of it. Simultaneously I’m telling her, or trying to tell her, that I feel numb and cannot access feeling and am just doing the next thing on my list like a robot. And her solution? “Tell me what are the things you need to get done at work?”

Wednesday I overhead the previous client mentioning that T would be away next week, but T hadn’t told me that, and these changes throw me for a loop, triggering feelings of being abandoned. So as I sat down I asked if she was away next week. She confirmed she’d be away and apologized. I felt paralyzed, even less able to process what is going on.

She asked what I was feeling, and I said I wasn’t feeling anything. So she asked me to make a list of what I needed to get done at work.

I said somethings that were bothering me. First, H woke me up at 5:30am because my alarm didn’t go off at 4:30 and I was frustrated he didn’t wake me up when he got up. She responded that 5:30am wasn’t too late to wake up.

I told her my mom sent an email with a subject line of question marks, asking if I had received her text, which was her way of saying my dad had a minor stroke early in the day. T said that was just my mom’s anxiety.

So I felt I didn’t have a right to be frustrated by these thing.

Then she kept writing while I was silent. I asked what she was writing and she said that I was planning on working the next day from 8 am to 6 pm which was “not good.” So basically all I got from here that day was being told that I was not good. I told her I needed to leave to go grade papers and left 20 minutes early, which I have never done.

I’ve been feeling like a box with no inputs, no outputs. No feelings. And her response has been to ask me to list what I need to get done at work.

Last week I told her that it was frustrating that all of my diagnoses were NOS: bipolar NOS, GAD, social anxiety NOS. I asked her what she writes when she bills my insurance and she said she wasn’t sure, probably depression NOS. This was one week after telling me that she needs to talk to my insurance every three months to get more visits authorized, but she cannot tell me a diagnosis beyond NOS? She tells me I need to take Thursdays off for my mental health, but can’t tell me why? I just feel like the world is spiraling out of control for me and there is nothing to hold onto. About once a day I feel like I am fighting back tears at work.

I feel like I try to talk about hard stuff and she doesn’t get it and then never follows up:



I see my pdoc monthly and she always asks what I am working on in T and says I need to keep going. My H says that I need to keep going. And where I live there are not many options in terms of finding another T.
I cannot even remember what therapy is about. H says he walks on eggshells around me to not set me off. I am out of touch with my feelings and have a therapist who is out of touch with me and going on vacation!
H says I should continue with this T because she has been on my side for so many years, and honestly, there are no other options in the town where I work. There are options, not great ones, in the next biggest town, which is 1.5 hours from my work.

I guess I just want some empathy in the world. Anyone have any to share?