Do you push yourself to trust your t?

Do you push yourself to trust your t, or wait for it happen naturally? I mean, do you push yourself to tell your t things that feel awkward, or wait 'til they're less awkward?

If you feel like you have a reason not to trust your t due to something t said in the past, would you try to talk about that first, before sharing something difficult?

I bloody try!

I have tdoc appt tomorrow and am currently trying to find a decent excuse not to go because we briefly touched a subject last week which I know she wants to explore waaaay more deeply than I am wanting/willing to go.

Good luck Flooded

I push. Without a doubt.

The talk about why you think your therapist may not be trustworthy is worth having though don't you think?

It took me about 4 visits weekly with my T to realize I can trust him..

The T I tried for a month before him,, well to be honest she was USELESS!!! ,she just wanted to remind me each visit that " thinks will get better" and she didnt offer any ways for me to actually deal with it all. she really wasnt too concerned ...she seldom asked me questions.. she just sat there.. I was ready to quit therapy all together .

I am very open about my issues and problems ,,,how else can he help me if I dont talk about things ?

The rough stuff of course is harder to talk about ...but for me there is no point going for therapy and not working to find out what are problems and how can i learn to cope better.

I guess im just hell bent on figuring out my problems and thankfully I have found a fantastic T that is helping me solve problems and not just a handholder..

I think if you have seen your T for 4-5 vists and you cant " connect" maybe its time for a new T..

Just my thoughts

I definitely try to make myself talk to T about difficult things. But as I am not that long with him yet almost everything feels difficult. Things I can't talk about I try to write down and send him a mail. Sometimes still I can't talk about the mail then. My problem is that if I push myself to hard I end up dissociating though.

Trust is something that can't be really pushed. It happens over time, gradually builds up as you return to your T week after week and you see he is there every week, he stays kind and listens and doesn't react weird even with the difficult stuff.
Sometimes trust can get a boost, too... when you have one of those situations where the relationship has to prove itself.

I just had that happen with my T. And it has changed a lot about the way that I think and feel about T. I am already curious to see T again and to see how it will affect the way I can open up to him.

If I had to decide after 4 or 5 visits to my new T if he is the one I am not sure that I would have decided to stay with him.
I still have troubles adjusting and the past weeks were difficult. But now I finally have the feeling that it was worth it... that he really is the T for me and that I can allow myself to start trusting him...

I guess it really has to do with the kind of issues you have as well and you should always consider that too, when making such a decision.
For me it is generally more difficult to trust or to allow a bond to someone to build up. 4 or 5 weeks are not enough for me and I do know that... So for me that means to just hang in there and give myself enough time until I feel that I can really make a good decision that is based on my true gut feeling and not on my fears.

You know, one more comment (sorry).

I look back over my entire therapy experience and I wasted a lot of time not trusting my therapist.

Again and again I'm reminded of this quote that I may present to my therapist is some fashion on my last visit.

"If we knew each other's secrets, what comfort we would find".

I know that trusting requires a certain amount of willingness to tolerate and absorb hurt, because those things are going to happen. It's inevitable.

In the long run, however, the peace, comfort, connection and - well - love so much overshadow those hurts that it's just a waste of your life to spend it not being "there" with - of all people - your therapist.

I can promise you they will let you down. There is no such thing as the perfect person, or the perfect trust, but, really, isn't it good enough?

Isn't it why your there? To tear down that fear and build it up with love and hope.

Over the past year T has said/done several things that made me pull back and think I can't trust him. On the flip side, he has done a lot of really good things that should make me trust him. It's a ying yang thing for me, one week I trust, the next I pull back.

Little bit of both. There are some things I just kinda waited on, and some things where I told myself, "this is never gonna feel less awkward, just take the leap and trust her already."

I would absolutely talk about that first. In fact, I have...not because my T did anything, but a previous T did, and it made me have a harder time trusting this T. So, we talked about that before I felt safe talking about other things.

The reason I am in therapy is because I was taught in childhood by my parents not to trust anyone, both explicitly and implicitly. That is, they told me not to trust the outside world, but they taught me not to trust THEM either, by going back on their word to me, tricking me, abusing me, treating me unfairly, etc. So - 20+ years of THAT, plus my adult relationship with them, isn't going to be changed over night, or over a month. I think it's like learning a 2nd language - do it when you're a kid and it's easy, but after a certain age it's a lot harder and it will never come naturally to you. So do we even know HOW to trust? I don't think so. When we "trust" the wrong people, that's not trust, that's being blind, fooling ourselves. It's not KNOWING something about someone, it's NOT knowing something about someone, if you get the difference. You trust them when you know who they are, and like them anyway, can live with them anyway. Does that sound right? Not, I trust him not to hurt me, but if he does, I can divorce him. That's my mother's definition.

I have to push myself really hard to trust, to open up, to share things with T, especially if they are negative in any way. It has been SO worth it.

I've had to push myself to talk about my issues, my fears of intimacy, my painful past...and also trust that T could hear what I had to say. I grew up thinking that my truth, if expressed, would cause relationships to ...vanish. I thought my therapist would FIRE me if I brought up issues with the therapy itself.

I did it ....whew!

Now, I'm seeing major willingness in myself, outside of therapy, to open up and even have the hard conversations with friends. Like just recently, a friend REALLY took advantage of me. I won't bore you with the details, but I noticed that the relationship was fundamentally unbalanced. One evening at a very high-end bar where I can generally afford no more than one drink. This particular friend was bragging about another person (a third party) who brought her there quite often, and always paid the tab.
It was like some sardonic joke on this third party. And I thought...wtf???

A light bulb went on, brightly! I realized how my friend basically uses people. All the time. And laughs about it to others.

I took a deep breath and I mentioned something.

I hope I was diplomatic. Maybe I wasn't. Either way, the friendship is going to change. Or end.

There is no way that I could have done this without spending time in therapy, and learning to be clearer about my needs .....which I practiced in therapy itself. What I guess I'm saying is that in therapy, I pushed myself to trust my therapist, and moreover, learned to trust myself to bring things up, even when they were painful.

Sorry for the giant long novel of a post. Trusting my t, my situation, and my instincts....a skill that I need to sharpen, no doubt, but ...well it's a beginning.

blessings, MCL

Man, is that ever true for me too! A second language (without the dictionary!).

It took me almost a year to really trust him. We laugh about it now but I came off a tough situation.

I read something today about the Penn State outrage, a column by a woman who talked about being with a former boyfriend who was abused in childhood. She said, "He struggled with self-hatred, and what was later diagnosed as "Borderline Personality Disorder" which I think is just a name for a broken trust."

I think she is so right. Anne

I've seen 5 Ts and each time I changed Ts, I trusted the new one more easily. I still had to get used to a new T, but I "knew the ropes" by then, and I WANTED to trust them.

It helps if the T makes it easy to trust, of course. My T makes it very clear that she will accept me and like me no matter what I say, and I've seen that happen. The harder part is trusting MYSELF.

It is not a novel at all. Well, it's the kind you don't want to end if it is.

You wouldn't have bored me with the details if you wanted to write about your friend, but you may not want that on the internet and I got the gist of it.

I'm identifying with the being able to be more open with people outside of therapy. I think I've slowly changed and become able to have more intimate conversations with friends, colleagues, acquaintances, etc over the years. Some of it came through therapy I think. I suppose I still have a way to go though.

When I went from T #1 to T #2, I found that trusting the second T was easier, even though I had to get used to her and even though I felt that T #1 had broken my trust a little. But, then, after feeling that 2 T's had broken my trust, and a break of 5 years between T #2 and T #3 (current T), it was MUCH harder to trust my current T.

You're right, it is helpful if the T makes it easy to trust, and my current T does that. It's way harder to trust myself, and to get past the history of trusting people and having that trust broken. My T and I talk about this a lot, as it has come up several times.

As I have said elsewhere, trust has many facets.

* Trust her to maintain confidentiality - no problem
* Trust her not to humiliate me - no problem
* Trust her to know about therapy - no problem
* Trust her to care about me - difficult
* Trust that therapy works - serious issue

Yes, I push myself to trust. I entered therapy trusting no one. After a few months I decided that my T was worthy of trust. The question was ... was I capable of trusting? If I can't trust him, a professional who has proven that he is smart and is there to help me, who can I trust???????

It's now or never. I'm working on the trust thing. And working ... and working .... and working.