Unproductive and/or Unfulfilling Sessions

Don't you just hate it when you have an unproductive or unfulfilling therapy session? Especially when it comes on the heels of a very insightful or connected one? That's what i experienced this week.

Something very important had happened to me over the weekend, and I'd emailed my t about it. I think i may have even said i wanted to talk about it on my session. At least i expected that we would. But instead, my t used a big part of the session trying to get me interested in going back to college to finish my degree.

My husband is partially disabled, and we're barely getting by living on my income. I guess t thinks that if i got my degree, i could be promoted and make more money. The problem is, I already work full-time, and i don't have the energy to go to college too -- especially when i also have such a problem with anxiety and stress. Also, my husband and I don't have the money to pay for college classes (yet we make "too much" to qualify for any financial aid). And I'm already 45 years old. By the time i got my degree (while working full-time), I'd probably be retirement age. It felt like a waste of time to have her going on and on about it, when i knew already that it probably won't work for me. I mentioned about my age, and the money issue, etc., but she just didn't seem to want to drop it.

I didn't get a chance to bring up my important personal issue until toward the end of the session, when we didn't have time to delve into it. I tried to briefly sum it up (it had to do with a problem i was having regarding a fromer friend). Instead of validating my feelings, she seemed to take the other person's side, saying "Well, what's wrong with having somebody who cares about you and . . . .?" I had to point out to her that what my former friend was doing was a trigger for some past trauma I'd gone through. By then, i was actually feeling retriggered again, but it was time to go. We took 5 minutes to try to contain it and get me relaxed, but it wasn't enough.

Then, as i was heading out the door, t says "Oh, wait. I just want you to know i'll be out of town for the next week, so you won't be able to get in touch with me."

Oh. Great.

I really like my t and know she can't always be in synch with me. But i sure hate sessions like that.

this is what i call a total disconnection...

Sessions like that totally bite, but unfortunately they happen. It sounds to me like your T, for whatever reason, wasn't present for you today. Maybe next session you can just start by telling her..last session really sucked because of X,Y,Z.

Right there with you, Peaches. Just had a similar one myself (lots of me feeling like she was taking the other person's side and not listening to me). Add to that 3 separate interruptions (some at door, buliding maintenance) and I just left feeling like she doesn't get it and why am I wasting my time trying to make her understand.

But, I'm sure after my initial frustration wears off, I will be able to see more clearly her point of view and that she wasn't trying to hurt me.

Anyway, sorry you had a frustrating one, too.

This must be the week for frustrating sessions!!!

I think sessions like that are EXTRA frustrating on the heels of a super-connected session. The connected, deep sessions feel so big and important, and when I have one, I want them ALL to feel like that. It seems like more often than not, a super-connected, deep session is followed by a lighter session. Maybe it's something T does to keep us on an even keel...with the thought that if we dive too deep too often, our coping skills might not be able to keep up.

I'm sorry she wasn't hearing what you needed her to hear today. I hope you can bring it up with her at your next session.

bugger those types of sessions, hey?

i hate it when they happen, too.

Peaches, I know what you mean. I hated when my T and were not connecting, and I had to sit and listen to her talk about something that I thought was totally irrelevant! It's so frustrating, but they mean well.

Treehouse:
My T did tell me that after an intense, close session I should not expect that the next one would be like that. I'm not sure if it's because SHE would make it that way, or if it would be a protective device on my part, but it seemed to work out that way, much to my disappointment. Maybe we just can't keep up that intensity, two weeks in succession, like you suggested.

Peaches, I agree that it is especially frustrating after a session like that to find out your T won't be available next week. Do you mean you won't have a session at all, or that you just can't contact her until your session? Didn't you discuss the letter from your ex-friend at your last session, the one that was intense and you cried? Or didn't you get to it then?

Thanks everybody for responding. I don't feel so alone now! I guess it's just par for the course to have a disconnected session every now and then. But yuck! I just hate it!

Rainbow, Yes, we did talk about the letter from my former friend. But this had to do with the other former friend. You probably recall from me talking about that horrible situation that it involved two of my friends. Well anyway, I ran into the other one at a convention over the weekend.

It was ironic to come face to face with her in a crowd of 4,500 people. (Talk about ironic!) I had actually cut contact with her a few years ago because she had gotten way overinvolved in my life and problems, trying to talk me into leaving my husband, and being very unsympathetic about my clinical depression, which she felt i should just "get over" and that i was wallowing in self-pity and just had a negative attitude. It was the lowest time in my life, for once i needed support and help, and instead of doing that, she blamed my situation on me. It felt every bit like she had kicked me while i was already down. After getting a number of emails from her, trying to correct my attitude. . .i told her i didn't want to keep in touch anymore and why.

Six years have gone by, and at the last two shared events we've been at, I've heard that she was looking for me. She told my mother-in-law, "I'm going to give her a big hug whether she wants one or not." I successfully avoided her at one of the events. But at this one, she walked up to me and said, "You're not going to get away from me this time." I was glad, in a way, to know that she must still care about me. But i had this weird kind of "resignation" feeling. . .like i might as well hug her because she was going to track me down until i did. It kind of scared small parts of me that remember my SA, when my neighbor made me feel obligated to have unwanted physical contact with him. Not that my friend would ever try to touch me in that way. . .no. . .but it was the same feeling of being closed in and anxious, of not "not having a choice." A boundary thing.

Also, i had not wanted to hug her because i did not want small parts of me that had looked to her as a mother figure to start getting hopes up that we could have a mother-daughter type of relationship again. Because she had hurt me so much in the past, when our contact ended, i had to put up an emotional guard to protect my feelings. And having her force a hug on me was kind of like pushing past that emotional barrier into my vulnerability. Like a boundary violation. I had not wanted that.

So i had really wanted to talk about this at my session Wednesday.

Oh well.

It's very odd that i've had contact with both of my former friends recently who hurt me so much 6 years ago. It has been one of the biggest major hurts in my whole life.

Now that they accept me again, should i be happy and the pain should just disappear?

There's just this unsettled feeling. . .

The one friend I contacted recently by letter, wanting to discuss what went wrong and reconcile. She wrote back but said she wasn't going to reply to what i've written. . .putting it off until "perhaps this winter."

The other friend I'd been trying to avoid, but she was tracking me down.

See, that is what i mean when i say that "they have all the power." Since they are the ones that criticized and rejected me. . .why does it feel like any reconciliation is on their terms?? Somehow, it feels like they have all the power. i'm the one at their mercy. It doesn't matter if i want to talk to and reconcile with E; she will "perhaps" respond to me in a few months if at all. And it doesn't matter that i've wanted to avoid C, because she will track me down and force me to acknowledge her.

I dunno. Maybe i am just being mean. maybe i should be overjoyed that they seem to accept me and care about me again. But something feels. . .i dunno. . .yuck.

I really needed to talk about this on my session last week.

The whole situation that happened with my 2 friends has been such a huge emotional issue for me the last few years. . .that i can't think straight about it. coming into contact with them again has sort of confused me. i don't know how i should feel about it.

peaches, I hope you can talk about this very important issue at your next session with T. Your last session sounded so difficult. Your T may not have realized how the college topic was not what you wanted to be talking about that day. It is up to the client to choose the topics, so next session, can you announce at the beginning what you want to talk about that day? If she tries to veer off and talk about college again, could you say not now, another session, let's talk about what is important to me today? I know it's hard to control our sessions and easier sometimes to sit back while T says whatever, but it is your therapy, not your T's. Easier said than done.

Peaches, if you did go back to school, what field would you study?

Sunrise,

Yeah, I'll have to do a better job of speaking up.

I was taking college classes, along with full-time work, before i had my breakdown. The plan was to get an AA degree with an emphasis in English and Psychology. I got about halfway there (10 classes). But when i had my breakdown a few years ago, college came to a screeching halt because i was finding it hard just to do my full-time job while being clinically depressed.

I had thought that I'd finish my degree when I my depression went away and I was my "old self" again. But for some reason, I've never regained the level of energy I had before my clinical depression began. It has changed me, leaving me with less energy and less ability to handle stress. All the while, i've been getting older and older. Add to that the money problems, and it is starting to seem un-doable.

Peaches, would it be easier to take your last classes online than in person? That might not require so much energy and time since there would be no commute. I found that the community colleges in my area offer quite a few online courses for credit. My daughter is taking one right now. The cost is the same as if you go in person and is fairly reasonable (way cheaper than taking online classes from a place like Walden U, one of those online college providers). Anyway--just a thought. I'm in my 40s and will be applying this Fall to go back to college and get a degree in a different field. I'm actually pretty excited about it, but I understand about the depression. I could not go back to school if I was still depressed--not enough energy, just like you said.

Peaches I hope you are able to revisit the friends issue in therapy. It sounds to me like you are trying to figure out how to effectively managed this situations. Therapy sounds like to perfect place to analyze what when well and what conscious/ unconscious behave patterns might be working against you. Maybe next session you can tell your T, forget the college thing today I need to talk about my friendships today.

Ugh, I think we all hate these, but they seem inevitable. I often feel like it's a bit of a pendulum--a session that seems really productive and intense in a good way is often followed by one that seems the opposite. I guess they can't all be that way. It's probably too difficult to sustain that level of connection every week.

My t occasionally has an agenda as well. It doesn't happen very often. One time she was very stuck on this idea of encouraging me to do something that would be way out of my comfort zone. Not a bad idea and I was cooperating to a degree by suggesting things that are out of my comfort zone that I'd actually like to do, like run a 5K, but she was suggesting stuff like skydiving and parasailing and all of this and we couldn't seem to meet in the middle at all. She wouldn't let it drop. At least your therapist isn't telling you to jump out of a plane