[rainbow_rose]

i feel safe with my therapist.

but she's not always available.

how can i feel safe inside me when my therapist is not there? currently, inside my head doesn't feel safe. i have to fight fight fight the thoughts, the feelings and such. i try to not attach to them ... just watch them as they float by.... but they are so big, it's like they fill up the space in my head and there's no place for them to go, so they just stay.

sorry for all the sad talk... really really rough day at work. my self worth is about zero...

... i see her in three days. wish she had a couch so i could just curl up on it and cry.


thanks for 'listening'.

[Lexi232]

*hugs*!!
Is there anything she has given you like a note or anything? even her card? would holding that, and thinking of her help you feel safe?

Originally Posted by rainbow_rose

how can i feel safe inside me when my therapist is not there? currently, inside my head doesn't feel safe. i have to fight fight fight the thoughts, the feelings and such. i try to not attach to them ... just watch them as they float by.... but they are so big, it's like they fill up the space in my head and there's no place for them to go, so they just stay.

Oh wow, this is JUST where I was at last night. It's so hard sometimes.

Last night, I colored a mandala and watched part of a movie on Netflix. And I realized...that's how I coped as a child. I colored and colored and colored, and watched Mr. Rogers whenever he was on. Something about the coloring switched off my brain. And last night, it helped, a lot. I'm kind of grateful to my little self for learning to cope that way as a child, because it was like a gift for grown up me now. Is there anything like that? Anything that's worked for you in the past?

I have voice mails from T, and those do help, a little. Hearing his voice and remembering the safety of being with him. Do you have anything from your T that will help you remember a little bit of that safety?

What DOESN'T help (me) is being alone. I know that if I call a friend to say "hi"...even if it's the LAST thing in the world I want to do...it will help me feel a little better.

And sometimes naming things...listening for six sounds in the room I'm in, mainly...helps ground me a little bit more in "now".

It's so so hard sometimes though.
to you

[delicatefade26]

It's interesting because T has talked about carrying the safety with me-and the shift in believing in that safety 100% has just happened so recently that I'm not sure how to yet...so I fall back on things I did as a child-which is so funny because it sounds a lot like what Tree said...I have coloring books-Alice in Wonderland and Winnie the Pooh and I color in them and watch a movie that calmed me down as a child (I have a few)...and the only thing I am starting to incorporate into that is to think of T telling me over and over "you are okay...it's okay"...I've been having to remember this a lot recently...bleh...safe hugs to you (((rainbow rose)))

I totally hear you... I feel safe with T but nowhere else,really. She's been gone for so long and I want to just have her come home and back to work so I can go curl up next to her on her couch, and feel safe again!!!
I'm sorry you are having such a hard day.

[dinosaurs]

i made an actual little safe corner at home. screened off with cushions on the floor and a little bookcase to hold my safe stuff. safe books, colouring stuff, notes from t, stuffie, my comfort book, things like that. actually having a safe place to sit in made it that little bit easier to face inside stuff. it was really important for me to learn how to feel safe in a place outside of t.

[sweepy62]

Originally Posted by rainbow_rose

i feel safe with my therapist.

but she's not always available.

how can i feel safe inside me when my therapist is not there? currently, inside my head doesn't feel safe. i have to fight fight fight the thoughts, the feelings and such. i try to not attach to them ... just watch them as they float by.... but they are so big, it's like they fill up the space in my head and there's no place for them to go, so they just stay.

sorry for all the sad talk... really really rough day at work. my self worth is about zero...

... i see her in three days. wish she had a couch so i could just curl up on it and cry.


thanks for 'listening'.

i have recorded her voicemail voice onto my phone and in times of stress i just listen to it, i also have a little safe place at home where i read books and also read notes she has written for me, that helps

[Perna]

I look forward to the three days when I'll see her again? I write about that and what I want to tell her and how I want next year to start and go on, etc. I do a lot of reading and writing and planning.

I have a picture of T I lifted off a website and I get it out and talk to her as though she were there. Like a pretend session, it helps me.

I look at T's photo on facebook. I read a lot. My T also drew a little diagram for me once about interrupting my distorted thoughts about what happened to me. I hold that. I don't unfold it to look at it much anymore because it's kind of falling apart. If things are really bad, like when my dad was dying, I asked my T to call my phone and leave me a voice mail I could listen to over and over to reassure myself that the outside world still existed and I was still ok.

[rainbow_rose]

Thank you EVERYONE for the hugs and sharing of ways of feeling safe. I read them more than once.

I do feel better ... emotionally. That's half my battle and shows much therapy has helped. I may go to that place that feels so 'not good', but i didn't stay there for days and days.

Thank you again. Your support really did make the difference.

[lostmyway21]

Originally Posted by rainbow_rose

i feel safe with my therapist.

but she's not always available.

how can i feel safe inside me when my therapist is not there? currently, inside my head doesn't feel safe. i have to fight fight fight the thoughts, the feelings and such. i try to not attach to them ... just watch them as they float by.... but they are so big, it's like they fill up the space in my head and there's no place for them to go, so they just stay.

sorry for all the sad talk... really really rough day at work. my self worth is about zero...

... i see her in three days. wish she had a couch so i could just curl up on it and cry.


thanks for 'listening'.

I have been feeling the EXACT same way the last week. Hopefully I remember to bring this up in session tomarrow, because I need help with it as well.

[sittingatwatersedge]

Originally Posted by rainbow_rose

i feel safe with my therapist.

I'm glad for you.... I don't. I can't even put my tote bag down, most of the time.

Rainbow Rose (and others who feel safe with T), have you & yr T talked about your feeling safe? I don't think my T and I ever have, not in so many words.

Sometimes she tells me stuff like "but it's OK to be angry in here, it's OK to be angry at me" (even when we both know she didn't do anything) but that's not the same, it doesn't make any sense to me.

[rainbow_rose]

Originally Posted by sittingatwatersedge

Rainbow Rose (and others who feel safe with T), have you & yr T talked about your feeling safe? I don't think my T and I ever have, not in so many words.

It's come up a couple of times ... but only a sentence or two. She knows I feel safe there. But we've never actually had a conversation about it.

sittingatwatersedge, do you think at some point you'll have this conversation with your therapist?

[sittingatwatersedge]

I have told her that when I am not there, I fear her, her knowledge (of the psyche & of me), her power, which can probably be used to twist me like a rag & throw me out of the window before I could even see it coming, much less protect myself (she nodded, I was not happy to see that even if she just meant "I'm listening")

but that when I SEE her, when I interact with her, I do not fear her.

Well, on one level, that's true.
Then again there is that tote bag.

Last time I saw her I reminded her that for the first 18 months, we met in a classroom and sat on two corners of a long U shaped table. Now there's not even a coffee table between us.
She didn't say anything.

[dinosaurs]

Originally Posted by sittingatwatersedge

Rainbow Rose (and others who feel safe with T), have you & yr T talked about your feeling safe? I don't think my T and I ever have, not in so many words.

Sometimes she tells me stuff like "but it's OK to be angry in here, it's OK to be angry at me" (even when we both know she didn't do anything) but that's not the same, it doesn't make any sense to me.

i think early on, safety was discussed... i guess you would say covertly/vaguely. like talked around. but things were not improving because i literally had no comprehension of what it was to feel safe, of what safety entails, how to feel safe, etc. i knew it was a word, but had no experience of it. i couldn't even comprehend that i was actually feeling unsafe because that was all i knew (it was "normal").

so we needed to start talking about safety openly/specifically/overtly. Actually work out what felt unsafe about things (like sitting there with t), how we might change things to feel safer, see how it felt when things were changed. i had to start to learn the difference between feeling unsafe and safe.

i never would have been able to do this if safety remained some vague concept.