Words that stick

I was thinking about this yesterday ... then granites thread about a mistake reminded me

sometimes ... T's say things that really hurt

it might be accidental
it might be we get the context wrong
it might be bad timing
it might be lots of things

somehow though, it hurts

stings, causes unimaginable pain

and it comes from our t ... the one we are trying so hard to trust

they can apologise, they can explain what they actually meant the times we get the meaning confused, it can be discussed over and over

in the end though often the words are still there

they come back and haunt us
we hang on to them and hear them over and over

time will pass but suddenly those words are back again, hurting again

all the good things they say, the positive things, they fade quickly but anything that can hurt has a tendency to stick around

how do we move past in a healthy way? instead of retreating or burying the words along with all the other hurts from the past

you just described my last session ...

i don't have an answer...

I feel this way with other people, not my therapist. When people hurt me, and they apologize, I am less likely to forgive and/or trust them, no matter how often they apologize. With my therapist when she has inadvertently hurt my feelings, which is very rare, I am much quicker to forgive. Maybe, because she is the first person that I have been most willing to trust. The only words that I hang onto from my therapist are words of compassion, caring, and love. I'm finally getting rid of all the negative voices that weighed me down for all these years.

Good question, Tiger. I don't know the answer. I think most times there are more good things said, but when people are so-called in the transference, or if what T said felt massively painful/a danger to our emotional state, that the words/images are recorded by the right brain. I think memories stored in the right brain aren't processed like regular memories and thus are more likely to come up. It is kind of like a mini flashback or something I think. In my experience, this can be caused by hypervigilance, if one is stressed, because this state is used to protect us, and positive words don't need to be recorded, so the negative is all that gets through. I dunno if that helps.

I'm with GTGT on this one, tiger.

I don't seem to be able to record or hold on to any of the good words or even hear them a lot of the time

I was that way, too, tiger, with xT after the termination and sometimes during our therapy. I am more objective with my new T. It takes time, but you will get there.

This is exactly what I've experienced with T this year. I have certain moments that are very much like the flashbacks from my childhood - moments where T said something SO hurtful - and they come like a slideshow, the way my traumatic childhood memories do. It honestly feels like PTSD.

I am learning from experience right now that if both the client and the T are willing to work hard to move forward, the painful stuff starts to fade. For me, I had to be really REALLY honest about the things T did/said that hurt me. That's hard for me...I'm much more likely to just "take it", and to try to ignore it. I don't want T to feel like I'm complaining or criticizing or whatever...but as long as I wasn't honest about what was hurting me, the more the hurt stuck around.

When the words come back, you can talk about it some more. It's okay to talk about it as long as you need to. When T says something that hurts that much, there is almost always something from our past that is coming up under the surface. It's worth it to work through it, as many times as you need to.

It's hard work, but it gets better.

I wish more people would audio tape their sessions so they can hear their therapist words over, and over, and over. Until they sink in and become a part of us. Until we trust, and hear the good, thousands of times, the negative just anchors us down, and we keep bobbing up for precious air and sink back to the bottom.

Tigergirl, the good words your therapist speaks you are worthy of them all. Take them in and hold onto them, till you meet again.

I agree!!!!!

i don't think ... i get those words the way some people on pc mention they do
exactly

i second that.

Oddly if I didn't have my journal from therapy, I may never remember the good things my xT has said to me...but I can remember every hurtful word he has said... and even when I finally got up the nerve to talk about it with him... he made excuses or said he didn't say that... but it didn't matter because it was so far after that I couldn't expect him to remember but I did... I know what I heard .... and all those hurtful things play over and over in my mind.....

Tigergirl I sent you a PM.

that's what I find also the playing over and over

I agree 100%. It's about a willingness to step in and trust. It's also about being willing to stretch yourself. I think we hold on to the bad things because we "know" them. Humans are hard wired to hold on tightly to things that are comfortable. Oddly enough, the bad stuff is comfortable.

The good stuff is easily dismissed because, sometimes, it is outside our realm of comfort.

I'm helping myself to move past my comfort by simply allowing myself to *entertain* the idea that the good stuff is true. I don't have to accept it lock, stock, and barrel yet. I'm just "trying it on".

*What if it's true?*

It can take a lot of courage to simply ask "what if".

There have been several just wonderful things my t has said to/about me and over time I have internalized those and I now hear them in my own voice... which is pretty cool if you ask me! She did say something unintentionally hurtful once kinda early on, but it was something that I needed to hear and after I told her how much it hurt/pissed me off that she had said it, and we talked about THAT, I moved into a whole other level of trust and closeness to her and that was when my work REALLY began.

I think many of us have a low perception of ourselves and have been hurt in the past, so maybe the negative words are easier to remember because its all we think we deserve or it's familiar so they are comforting or what we expected. I have trouble hearing positive things, its foreign to me. T's are also human and may make mistakes , sometimes we make mistakes in how we hear what they say. All good stuff for session discussions.

A thing that I do is I journal the nice things that says too and how they make me feel. I tend to overanalyze and dwell to much on things t says, so the bad things that t says stick with me. But in those times, I go over the nice things that I have written that t has said to me, and it helps me gain some perspective and not base all of my feelings on how I am feeling bad at the moment. If that makes sense.

Tiger , it hurts so much when they say something to hurt but I think they don't say it intentionally and it is the way we react to what they say, for instance they could unintentionally say something to trigger us. This cannot hurt us but the way we choose to react to it will hurt us. I don't know if that makes any sense?

Generally if the therapist will apologize, I am fine and will go on. I probably won't leave myself open the next time, but I don't keep on at her about it.

My T has never said anything that I misinterpret or feel hurt by. He's said stuff that makes me sink a little once in a while, but mainly it's because I'll see how far I have to go and it depresses me.