[velcro003]

I have been in therapy for a year and 7 months, and still have major problems opening up and just talking about whatever is on my mind in therapy. Just last week my T said that maybe a different therapist would help, because she feels that I am feeling so bad about being in there and she doesn't want me to continue to feel this way. This was VERY hard to hear at first. I immediately went to "Great, I am a gigantic failure! I failed therapy!" I mean, SERIOUSLY. She said I wasn't, and that she didn't necc. think that I should stop seeing her, but that it was her duty to bring it up because I brought up again how hard this is for me. That she wasn't going anywhere.

I, of course, focused on how awful I felt. She really IS sick of me! I spent the next few hours after the session feeling terrible at work, and finally just wrote my roommate an email at work venting all that I felt. I felt better and was able to see (at least a little bit) that my T wasn't kicking me out. The urge was strong though to call her and be like "are you SURE you're not kicking me out!?" But I sat through it, and that feeling went away.

ANYWAY (sorry for the rambles), I was watching a tv show last night (Intervention- I it) when suddenly a thought popped in my head: I don't think my feelings or thoughts are valid. At all! I then thought about how I go to my roommate whenever I am ruminating about something or about to make a decision on something to get her opinion. I don't trust my own. What if I am wrong? Other people will know better than me!

Which then brought me to the therapy room. WHY does my mind go blank all the time? HOW do I open up? WHAT does opening up even entail? My T just tells me to tell her what I'm feeling, whatever is on my mind--there is no "should." Well, I DON"T KNOW! So I thought "If I can't even trust my own feelings or thoughts, how can I trust my T?"

I don't know, I feel like I'm missing something, a piece of the puzzle and I don't know how to figure it out. Its like I partially understand this.

Sorry this is so long, but I am trying to figure this out, and thought maybe with others experiences or thoughts might help!

[3velniai]

You trust your roommate enough to write her that email, right? This means you can trust ppl to some extent. Your feelings don't have to be valid to talk about them. If talking is too hard, maybe you could email her. My T allows me to email and I tell her a lot of crazy things in my letters, it gives us something to talk about in session. Actually, the crazier things were in my email, the better the next session is, lol lol

[chaotic13]

I was talking to a friend who just recently started T. She mentioned going blank in her sessions when T asked her how she felt or thought about different things. She asked me if I ever had that problem... I about laughed out of my bar stool. I admitted that I spend at least the first 6 maybe even 8 months confronting the blankness. As we continued to chat we decided that SOME of the blankness and inablity to say and discuss what we feel stems from HONESTLY not knowing ourselves enough. I mentioned that one way I've been able to start communicating better was to...do things to explore who I was. I'm finding it easier to trust myself and the feeling I have now that I have reconnected or at least created some vision or idea of who I am or who I might want to be. In my case I HAD a Self at one point, just kind lost her when I became a wife and mom. In my friend's experience she never really had an independent self, she went right from childhood to wife and motherhood.

Maybe your struggling because you really don't know what your think and feel so its hard not to look to others to define what is OK and not OK.

[hangingon]

Velcro,
Are you an individual who is very hard on yourself?
I wonder if perhaps you can't open up in fear that you will disappoint your T, or that perhaps you feel like you can't do therapy the right way, so it's safer not to talk at all, even though you want to really badly. You want to connect but there is an underlying fear holding you back.....it's taping into that which may be key.

For me, I am very hard on myself but I think my biggest fear was that she was going to ditch me before I was ready, so in my case I think I just need lots and lots of reassurance from her.

[velcro003]

Yeah I am hard on myself, but I really don't know what it is I'm so afraid of! Blah.

[hangingon]

Originally Posted by velcro003

Yeah I am hard on myself, but I really don't know what it is I'm so afraid of! Blah.

I know and that is the stinking hard part, isn't it? It's so hard to figure out what makes things so difficult.
In time Velcro...it will come

I think alot of my issues narrow down to the fear of abandonment. Anytime she mentions anything about future event's I get worried. For instance, she said she would tell me if she ever hits a bump in the road. So I sent an email tonight asking what that meant, she said something she can't control, or that was unexpected. (meaning something that could happen that would make it so she couldn't see me anymore)

I sent a response back like this....
#####,
Thanks, I was thinking something similar. In all honestly, hahaha....grip yourself......here it comes,.... I guess it didn't really help me to hear that with all of my crazy fears....but I asked you for the interpretation, so thank you for sharing (even though what you said could become a reality, I wouldn't ever, ever want anything like that to happen).

With that said, I believe I need to refrain from any similar talk of such future events right now (smiles), because as you mentioned last night (although it was more in reference to future termination), I'm not really ready to even think about that yet so it just plays into my fears and causes me to want to hold back at the very thought of that possibility. Now is that denial?(smiles).
Good night #####!
########