the panic has set in again

T has told me she cant make me talk
T told me reading this letter will help her help me
I want to please her
I choose to send her back the letter
I dont believe she will do anything differnt with this letter then before and i survived
I just want to know why am i so against hearing my own words,i hate it
how can it help me when i wont even remember what she had to say because i'm so paniced and all the noise in my head.i just want to be normal.i want to go to therapy like everyone here and be able to just say what is on my mind even if it is hard.i just feel so stupid all the time i just need to get over this.every week i say to myself this is stupid i just need to start talking.come up with something to say.i get to T and i swear something else takes over my body and nothing comes out my mouth.i hate it.i really like this T a lot and i dont want her to give up on me.she said she isnt going anyplace but i dont believe her.i'm worried she will send me away.i know this is my crap but it doesnt make it easier at all.

Granite... what you are experiencing with "going" to therapy is a big part of therapy itself. You put a lot of courage into showing up. You may not yet realize it, but that IS doing therapy.

When I was in my first round of therapy in college ages 23-26, I would spend MANY sessions sitting there in a staring contest with my counselor. He always kept asking me to come back. I thought for sure he would give up on me. He would ask me a question and I would either not be able to answer because of the noise you mention inside... or because it hurt too much to think about the answer... or because I was angry with him for making me be there. He could have me suspended from college if I didn't come to see him and I was not happy with that at all!

What I didn't realize is that even though I thought I accomplished very little in those sessions, he was doing the very hard work of unfreezing my insides. He was softening the ground so that when I was ready and able to do the therapy I would need to do, that I would be able to do it.

He was right.

It took 15 yrs for me to be ready to do therapy again... and it happened because it was "time" and I had no other option as it was a breakdown. But this time things were different. I was able to go into session and right away get to work.

The reason I share this is because I do understand how painful it feels to sit silently in that chair and not be able to share what your mind knows you need to share. And I want you to know that I am being very serious when I tell you that even though you don't feel like you are doing the therapy or doing the work when you are silent, you are doing very powerful and strong work at the deepest level of who you are.

Be gentle and just continue to show up. Relax into it a bit and do not try to force anything. Just BE there. The rest will happen naturally. I do hope this helps a bit.

(((granite)))

WePow gives you a great response. Just showing up week after week and thinking about all this *IS* therapy.

It bothers me that you call yourself 'stupid' every week. Feeling scared is not stupid. Really trying to get to the bottom of this issue is not stupid. Nothing I have seen in any of your posts indicates to me that you are stupid.

I see a person who is wanting to heal, and is working really hard. That is BEAUTIFUL!!

I hope you can find a way to be a little more kind to yourself.

I don't even want to try to top wepow's post, but just wholeheartedly agree. Showing up for therapy is a HUGE thing, granite. Just being there and staying there the whole time, week after week. Try to trust your T when she says she's not going anywhere. I think that the words will come when they are ready.

I really like WePow's response. I think she is right--you are working with your T just by showing up. I like how WePow described staring at her therapist week after week. Her therapist didn't go do paperwork or read a book while she sat there not speaking. He sat with her. Your T is doing the same. She is there with you. And you are doing hard work both in and out of therapy, thinking why it is you won't talk, what you are feeling, how you can get yourself to open up, how much you want to stay with this T. All this thinking is hard work too.

Does your T ever ask you questions? Would that make it any easier to respond? My daughter has a hard time with communicating and I remember when she was younger, I could sometimes get her to talk by asking her yes and no questions. It was kind of like a game. All she had to do was say yes or no. I could learn a lot sometimes. If you can think of anything (like asking you questions) that your T to do to help you talk, I know she would appreciate it.

Hang in there with therapy, granite. You are not stupid and you are doing hard work.

It is a very good idea to not compare. It might even be helpful if you don't read a lot here for a while. I only say that because it was good for me.
Everyone's therapy is different and you deserve your own therapy.

Wanting to be seen, to be known, and protecting yourself from it at the same time is hard.

I wonder if you think you have to talk about very big things, very profound things. Or things "right" for therapy. It's okay to talk about anything.
I saw my therapist for 9 months before I really trusted her and then it was tentative. But I decided I was going to talk about anything and if it wasn't for therapy, then so be it. I began by talking about baking Christmas cookies!

I still struggle. We talk about all the fears, some I am learning about yet. I still have those time when I am happy to be going to therapy, then I sit down and ... nothing. As if all my thoughts have dived under the carpet, are hiding in closets, and I feel totally unaware that they are even there. It is very frustrating.

You may feel like you are stuck, but you are moving toward being able to talk. Keep talking about the fears you have about talking for now. That's okay.

Granite, you are doing this in therapy for very good reasons. This noise in your head is triggering. Your past is most likely being triggered up as you sit there in front of your therapist in therapy feeling the pressure to talk. The only way that I see you getting out of this is to figure out what is going on with you and to work with yourself to get out. You are afraid to talk in therapy for very good reasons. You mention in this post that you don't want your T to leave you. Do you think/feel that speaking in therapy will make her leave you? When you have this fear of speaking in therapy what is it reminding you of in your past?

weepow thanks for this responce and what you said.it seems to come from a level of great understanding and experiance and for that i am sorry.i will definately take what you have said to my therapy sesson on monday and think about it when i have a hard time

thanks owel i just feel i should be able to do this

she does ask me questions ang urges me to atleast try to come up with one word to amswer how i feel.that can be really frustrating when i cant come up with one but a few times i did.

Granite.... something just came to my mind when reading your reply to sunrise.
There are times in session when we clients are being asked questions that only the young child part of us can answer.

As I watched myself in session during the bulk of the trauma work this year, I would find that there were times when the wounded child part of me would answer but never say a word. The answer was in the change of my body and my face. If the emotion I felt was anger, I could feel the child part get an upset face and crossing of the arms or even stamping my feet. T would take that as a valid answer and would say "I see." The same answer he gives when I say things.

I asked T about this as it was interesting for me as to why I did it this way. He told me that the answers were comming from the "pre-verbal" part of my brain that held the trauma. Because that part of me was too young for feeling words and expression, the only thing that I could use to communicate with was my body language.

Maybe if you relax your body a little and allow yourself to just FEEL the answer, your body can show T your reply without a word?

maybe weepow.my T always tells me that i sit like i am in a lot of pain and it looks like it the way i hold myself