This is not intend to inflame anyone but a posting talking about sense of self and being true based on how many cards you lay on the table... it's really relevant to me right now and I would welcome a supportive discussion.

I'm new here. I suck at being a therapy client. I visited 2 therapists before age 18 (only saw each one, one time) and visited 7 in the last 10 years, each for only a few visits.

The child visits, I couldn't control going...that was my mother. The adult visits, though, I stopped going once I reached a point where I felt I had laid too many of those aforementioned cards on the table. I have serious issues with integrating the many versions of me. I give lots of people bits and pieces... but no one gets the whole.

How do you get through that in therapy? Is this something I should disclose at the start of a new relationship? Should I be mindful and force it? Is it ok to just go to therapy without ever showing all of my cards? I work in the field, so these are answers I should likely already have in my toolkit... but I don't... and I want to know how to be successful so I can move forward.

I am hoping that if I can learn to appropriately disclose these "private horrors" to a therapist, I can mirror that out in the real world. I suck at disclosing in friendships and relationships. I am always either too much info or no info at all... literally I'm that extreme... avoidant or dumping.

That point that a few people were discussing... about not feeling like I was being true because people didn't know the whole me... it has probably been my SINGLE largest struggle in my entire 29 years of life. I feel like I'm different people to everyone and a whole person to no one but definitely all of those sides of me are the REAL me... I just am too humiliated to mix them together.

Ok, thank you in advance for your help processing this... I am going to be starting therapy again by the middle of the month and my goal is to stick with it through the end of the year. That would be more consistent therapy than I've ever undertaken and I can use all the advisement I can get...

Be well.