consultation T?

Then she is not hearing you. I don't think that every therapist we consult is the one for us. I went through four therapist before I found the one that "fit" for me. The first was a good fit but she was one year from retirement and we didnt' realize that my issues were going to take more than a year. Silly me! I should have know.

Anyway, what is her response to your expressions of frustration and rage? Usually one's rage gets some kind of response? I know it does from my therapist. She doens't respond "in kind" but she comments on the level of emotion that what she has said or what I have said raises. Do you have responses to what is said or what you say? Or is everything pretty bland and unremarkable? I think it's pretty telling if a therapeutic relationship is bland.

To me it means that either the client or the therapist is working really really hard to keep things "quiet and calm". ANd believe me, I know that it can be either party. If you're not invested in making things calm and unremarkable, find a new therapist who likes to stir the waters. Believe me, I figure you like the waters stirred and roiling, find a therapist who isn't bothered by that . . .one who calmly and cooly comments on the fact that things seem unsettled. It can be very disconcerning but also very awakening!

I am confused as to why you keep pointing out that I have expressed an emotion- I have admitted repeatedly I recognize I have emotions. I get that you may be kidding, and I am sorry I am very frustrated. I am somewhat understated in expressing them and most times they are fairly muted, but they come and go and I go on with my life. The others are not just the t, but friends and my partner and my family (god they can talk more about feelings than I can talk about anything). I admit to having them, but after that, what else needs to be said about them? What else really can be said that would be interesting or useful in some fashion. Of course I would like to be able to operate on a purely rational plain, but I do realize it is not possible. I may find it to be a bitter truth, but I do accept it.

I've seen you state several times that you have emotions.

I also find it hard to carry on lengthy conversations about my feelings. I'm only just barely able to identify them.

My conversations with T often are like this:

T: How did you feel about that?
Me: Angry.
T: [Silent T face as he waits for more.]
Me: What? I don't know what I am supposed to say now?!

The problem is that I am somehow stunted and I'm baffled as to how/why/what to describe next. I'm trying to learn though. If I encounter any stunning truths I'll be sure to let you know.

You said you hate having feelings and I think you agreed w Skysblue about having feelings of delight. How do you hate having feelings of delight?

Is the reason people want you to express feelings more just for their own purposes, because they like doing it? Or do people say that the reasons you went to therapy could be helped by expressing emotions more?

Do you want to say what the reasons you went to therapy are? I remember that you can't remember your childhood and you have extreme desire to hurt yourself after therapy, but those alone don't seem like reasons you would go to therapy (although they are pretty extreme symptoms).

I just find it unnecessary to have feelings of delight (delight not being particularly unpleasant - just not particularly useful)- but I do have the various types of feelings so I suppose there was no point in me expressing how I feel about feelings.

I am lead to understand the important people in my life (not the t but the others) think they would know me better (although why that is a good idea is beyond me).

I decided to try therapy again because I was experiencing some rather extreme and crippling internal reactions that have absolutely no basis in reality. I know they have no basis and yet no matter how many times I pointed out to myself all the reasons there was no basis, I could not rid myself of them. The usual distractions failed. And it was extreme enough that others were able to notice when I have usually been able to proceed without anything showing. As far as my childhood, it seems normal enough for the decade I was born into and my parents were not complete monsters and some non traumatic csa (I am not even certain the A in csa applies) as a small child.

Interesting that you should bring up vulcan. It is perhaps worth noting that Vulcans opted to give up emotion because they felt them too strongly rather than not at all.

Sometimes to this day I do wonder what all this talking has done for me. With reflection, it appears as though talking about things tends to have a normalizing, diffusing effect on the emotion for me.

We modern humans *are* odd among the animal kingdom for sure. When something untoward happens to us, we tend to hold onto the feelings associated with it for a long long time.

Contrast our reaction with that of, say, a zebra, who can experience moments of sheer terror when a predator approaches, and then later, once the danger has abated, they go back to baseline grass eating and, well, whatever else zebras do.

As long as the herd is calm, so are the members it would seem.

Perhaps as humans lost their tribal nature, the ability of the "herd" to calm us and normalize events must have gotten lost as well.

Clearly, I think, there is an advantage to belonging to a herd.

So I guess in the absence of such a group, we must find other ways to normalize our experience. I guess we just talk now.

I've heard it speculated that there really are only two human emotions: fear and love. The rest are variations and combinations of those two. I will admit, both are very motivating and evocative.

Yes. And they do seem to be felt too strongly - the ability to give them up is made all the more an attractive if unattainable option.

What do you mean by "useful"? How could it be more important than experiencing positive feelings?

Now I remember you posted about this before. It sounds like understanding your feelings more could help you understand the reasons for your reactions.

I thought you couldn't remember your childhood? Are there parts of it you can't remember?

If there's such a thing as cs without the a, I can't imagine the stigma wouldn't be traumatic. I can't imagine the a wouldn't be part of it as a small child.

Not a lot of detail. Perhaps it did not happen at all. And no stigma - no one else besides the man and I knew.

Or maybe you forgot the feelings you had.

I think the stigma and the laws against it must have influenced why no one else knew.

I'm posting this partly to bump the thread up again because I'm afraid I don't know what I'm talking about and now that it's daytime, probably someone else will add some posts.

Have you ever told this to T? I mean specifically THIS sentence.

I said something VERY similiar to my T and it led to an interesting discussion. He said several things that I wouldn't have been able to generate on my own, not even if I was trying to brainstorm possible responses that he might have.

Yes. The t believes things worse than they were.

I have an appointment next week.

You are very goal directed. I was too.

I often complained to T that there was no plan. She insisted that there is a plan. "Well it doesn't look like a plan to me!" And it still doesn't.

From your perspective and mine, therapy is essentially planless. You wander around your psyche hoping to find something significant and helpful. It's a lolly scramble and a goldrush. To the organised mind, it is a complete shambles. Even those who practice it don't really understand why it works.

I can relate to this. I am a super 'organizer'. I want lists, plans, outlines, step by step instructions, target dates and on and on. I would pound my head in frustration trying to do the 'work'. I didn't know though what the work was.

I've found that analysis doesn't achieve much in the realm of emotions. I mean it can offer some things but it cannot do the final work. I would get so frustrated when T would say, 'trust the process'. I kept asking, 'what is the process'. I never could really understand it and I still do not understand it.

BUT, I've made progress and IT MAKES NO SENSE. I don't understand how or why. Like T has said, 'it's not linear and sometimes there are changes we cannot understand." It's a somewhat mystical organic process.

But the brain scientist explain it well. I cannot explain it. Something about changing the synaptic connection between neurons in the brain. I've read a lot about it - still don't understand. But somehow or another 'talk therapy' is working for me.

Thank you for the sharing. I do appreciate it.
The funny thing is
I am actually not super organized, I am barely organized at all. I never make lists, or outlines or plans etc. I can be goal oriented, but not always. I have some perfectionistic tendencies. I do very much value thinking over feeling. I certainly am goal oriented here. I do not want to sit and chat with some stranger who I am paying a fortune to without some discernable reason. And I hate that no one can explain something they are telling me to trust. I think there is really no such thing as "the process" - it is just a phrase they teach them to use because they do not know what they are really doing.

I am very glad it is working for you.

I find this very distressing.

I go into each session with a list of stuff I want to discuss. I have a notebook specially for this purpose. During the week I will make notes of things that happen that affect me emotionally. And just before session I will prioritize the list of that which seems most important at the time.

I usually do not have time to cover the whole list. I share my thoughts, my ideas, my feelings about each item. T helps direct my thinking by her questioning. She can evoke feelings in me by her gentle methods and helps me clarify some points.

Although there have been times I've gone into session 'blank', I don't prefer to do that. Therapy is way too expensive for me to just 'hang out' in her office. Those non-directed by me sessions have had their value occasionally but I don't think they're the most productive.

The reason I like control over the topics is that only I know what's going on with me.

The problem for me is I do not know what to discuss that will help with the issue I have - that is what I thought her questions were supposed to do - direct me to the area of talking about whatever it is I need to talk about to fix it. My week is usually pretty much the same with nothing of note and I rarely have emotional changes over the week and my real life is not the problem. I have tried a list a couple of times but it was more frustrating to have a list that did not get resolved and I was still not certain anything was actually going to help with the reason I went there. Plus I have read in several of the books that clients are always wrong about what they think they should be talking about and talk about the wrong things. I suppose I can try repeating the reason I decided to try - but that only takes about three sentences and I have repeated it about a thousand times. Oh well, maybe the consult t can help me.

"clients are always wrong about what they think they should be talking about"?????????

Thanks for sharing this. I've also occassionally found it helpful when I went in blank (well, once, but I don't go that often). But overall, I don't think it's helpful either and I'm frustrated with it now. Sessions end up having no connection to what I thoght about between sessions or to anything I can tell is helpful. I hope my t cooperates with me not doing it so much so I can continue going. But if not, that's okay too.

EPIGRAM: The questions stay the same but the answers change.

For at least the first year with my current T, we had enormous difficulty communicating. She was always asking about feelings and I was always giving her intellectual answers. We spent a lot of time debating ideas in abstract terms. That was fine by me, as this was a comfort zone and a personal strength. She tried to make the discussion more personal and emotional. I felt this was cheating! She kept asking questions I couldn't answer. Questions I felt were irrelevant.

Also, I wanted to have control over the relationship. I had clear picture of what her role should be. Unfortunately, she had other ideas. I was determined to beat her (I was very competitive), to make her admit she was wrong, to put her in the wrong, but she resisted. So I felt she was trying to control me, to put me in the wrong. And she told me things I did not want to hear.

I was very frustrated.

Sometimes I felt she wasn't listening. In fact, she was listening with her heart, something completely beyond my comprehension.

Fortunately I was desperate and I held a deep irrational conviction that T was my last, my only chance. Somehow she won my trust. I guess it was her persistence and stability.

I don't know if this is any help to you, Stopdog, but I sincerely hope it is.

How did she tell you what her role was? What is the problem wiith them just telling you what is going on? Or at least explaining why they will not. I can anwer the therapists questions, and have done so. It is insanely repetitious.

I don't know, but maybe it's time to just move on. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

If it's just not happening, and it's just not helping, then trying something else may be a alternative. I don't know. What do you think?