Maybe I need to just say it out loud or I want some support or maybe I need to hear someone else's experience...

I had a session where my T. did something I asked to help me and I shared something really hard for me to talk about.... It felt safe and okay at the time....

But now I'm twisting up the session in my mind... I'm trying to remember what he said and I just feel like I lost that connection and now I'm starting to regret sharing... and I'm starting to turn it bad in my mind...

[mixedup_emotions]

Oh YES!!! I have done that MANY times.....What seems to happen, for me, is that I allow the shame (or whatever difficult emotion) to play a bigger role...and then start putting words into my head, judging what I did, or imagining how T must think of me (of course, in a bad way), or just feeling the vulnerability and becoming embarrassed by it.....At this point, I usually need some reassurance from T...as a reminder of reality, so that I don't get caught up in my imagined version, which is never good.

Originally Posted by Readytostop

Maybe I need to just say it out loud or I want some support or maybe I need to hear someone else's experience...

I had a session where my T. did something I asked to help me and I shared something really hard for me to talk about.... It felt safe and okay at the time....

But now I'm twisting up the session in my mind... I'm trying to remember what he said and I just feel like I lost that connection and now I'm starting to regret sharing... and I'm starting to turn it bad in my mind...

I used to do this A LOT. It's hard to be so vulnerable, and it makes sense that it would bring up a lot of fear and doubt.

That's partly why T and I started leaving messages for each other after session....so I could have a record of having T saying that things were still okay, and that I was still okay.

Is there any way you can call or e-mail T for reassurance?

That's something that's good about posting here, too. Can you go and read what you wrote after the session, to remind yourself how it was?

It's hard to trust our perceptions sometimes when we're accepted and cared for if that's not what we're used to. But what you felt in session was real, and true, and right.

[ECHOES]

I did this a lot early in therapy. I went back the next session and told my therapist what was happening in my mind. Several times I even "remembered" her sitting on the opposite side of the room, where she never sits!

Then I began to understand a bit about how it was the fear of intimacy at work. The feeling good set off warning signs, so my mind 'turned' the memory into something that matched the warning signs, that justified the warning signs. Eventually, it works the other way - the feeling good dissipates the warning signs, and we can take in the feeling good.

So you are where you are, which is the only place you can be . And it would be helpful and interesting and relieving and reassuring to talk about it with him

[granite1]

i swear i am the queen of doing this .i can take one sentence and turn it into a lifetime of horribleness.it doesn't matter if it is T or me who speaks it.i felt so good after my last session and i wrote a lot of the stuff that i could remember here and in my journal.when things start getting all twisted in my head i was and am able to read some of the words that i remember my T saying.it really is helping me to keep things from spiraling out of control for no reason.i also have my friends here who are great at gently reminding me that she isn't all bad or keeping things in perspective

I'll second what Tree said about calling your T. I have done this to myself and agonized until the next week when I saw my T again. He kept telling me to just call; he's not a mind reader and doesn't know what I need unless I tell him. So the last time I thought it might happen, I asked as I was leaving the session for him to call later in the day and leave me a message so I could save the message and listen to it repeatedly during the week. He did, and it was it so much easier to get through the week.

Originally Posted by granite1

.i can take one sentence and turn it into a lifetime of horribleness.it doesn't matter if it is T or me who speaks it.i

Thats what I'm doing...I'm stuck on one sentence he said... and a question he asked that I couldnt answer....

And combining that with something said earlier in session when we talked about how I take what people say and interpret it...instead of just believing their words because no one in my FOO ever said what they meant...He said "I will always say what I mean just sometimes I have to say it in a way you can hear it...."

I talked about some "reactions" I have today and there is not much of my childhood I remember or allow myself to remember that could be causing them and so whenever we go in this direction it just feels like falling in a black hole...there are no answers only darkness... and it makes me feel sad and lost...

In a year of therapy.... I have never called him...although he has told me I can but its not an emergency I can survive..... He's told me I can email at anytime but he may not read it for a day or two and he doesn't respond unless I ask him to... and then we always talk about it later...
In past, I just suffer through it and the feelings either get "pushed down" (which I'm great at) or pass... Thanks for all you suggestions... I will read my other post and try to remember the good...

I have such a headache....

[pbutton]

Originally Posted by ECHOES

Then I began to understand a bit about how it was the fear of intimacy at work. The feeling good set off warning signs, so my mind 'turned' the memory into something that matched the warning signs, that justified the warning signs. Eventually, it works the other way - the feeling good dissipates the warning signs, and we can take in the feeling good.

I would like to quadruple-thank you for writing this.

[lostmyway21]

I do this all the time! I leave the session feeling great but like two hours later I begin to forget the specifics of what he says, and I twist it up and turn everything he says bad.

One time in particular one sentence he said was driving me crazy. I decided to email him about what he said and asked him what his real intent was because I was going all over with it. He quickly cleared up the confusion, and I felt a LOT better right away. Maybe you should just send him a quick email?

Great thread...I never recognized that this is what I was doing, now I can bring it up to T.