Saying things out loud

As I said in my thread last week, during marriage counseling last week, my H brought up again an issue that I have, and discussed it in detail with the marriage counselor. Although I am willing to discuss this issue to the extent it affects my marriage, MC pushed pretty hard for me to tell him in detail about the issue. My H supplied a lot of the details and admitted that none of the things he was talking about were even an issue in our marriage anymore. Anyway, afterwards, I emailed my T a story that I had written, that details the issue because I hated that MC now knew more than T did.

Today, obviously, he wanted to discuss the story I emailed. I did not wish to talk about it and we just ended up discussing that it's normal, really fairly common in people who have been traumatized as children, blah blah blah. Well, he discussed that. I sat there and looked at the floor quite a bit. After two and half years of therapy, I am apparently okay with him KNOWING about this, but not okay with TALKING about it.

I tried playing the 60 seconds of courage theme in my head, but no go. Too big a part of my brain thinks that it is sufficient that he knows and there is no need to say it out loud.

I know I have asked this before, but for some reason, I cannot learn this lesson. How and WHY do you say these things out loud??? How is my big question, I guess. HOW do you get the words out of your mouth?

I find when I talk about things several things happen:
1. I learn and observe things I didn't learn when I just thought to myself.
2. It normalizes things. It's not longer something too horrible to speak about. But I have to be careful and not push myself beyond what I can handle having known about me.
3. If I can't talk about something, then I talk about not being able to talk about it. THat helps me.
4. Sometimes I can talk about the feelings, even if I can't talk about the facts that lead to the feelings.
5. Sometimes I can talk about a trigger (perhaps a movie, or TV episode, or character, or something someone said) without spilling the whole story. Sometimes this results in the story coming out through the back door - but that's okay.


I'm reminded of an L&O: SVU episode:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0629673/
Bckgrnd: Defendant killed her alcoholic and abusive mother. Det. Benson's mother was an alcoholic so Det. Benson was sympathetic to the defendant. Simon Brice is an attorney Olivia contacted to represent the defendant.

A.D.A. Casey Novak: You didn't kill your mother Olivia.

Detective Olivia Benson: But I know what it's like to want to.

A.D.A. Casey Novak: You didn't kill your mother, Olivia.

Detective Olivia Benson: I know what it's like to want to. That's how I know Simone Brice. I called her back then. She was a law student, and she helped me survive it.

A.D.A. Casey Novak: Why didn't Carrie say something?

Detective Olivia Benson: Because then the abuse becomes real. If you keep quiet, you can pretend that it's not.

How do I do it? I stare at the carpet and just blurt it out like a crazy person. I may slighly leave my head at the time.

Why do I do it? Apparently this is the way to get better. I want to get better. I don't understand how it works though. But what I am currently doing is not working so it is time for me to try something new.

Sometimes it takes me several sessions or several months to work up a way to get it out. Eventually I figure out a way to do it.

This is why I can't understand why people say they love therapy and don't ever want to leave. Therapy is hard work.

WHY is clear enough. Saying things out loud engages the subconscious and helps to "break the spell". That's why people are supposed to stand up and say, "I am an alcoholic".

HOW? Try writing it down and then reading out loud what you have written.

I have not yet found that saying things out loud helps. I can usually say things, but afterwords I just wonder what the point of it was. I do not feel unburdened or heard or relieved or understood. I just feel like it was not worth it to say it aloud.

THIS is what I'm afraid of, I guess. So I tell. How does that solve anything? It changes nothing. Things I have told him about in the past have not been solved. I tell him, he tells me it's normal given the circumstances, and I think, how does that help?

He says it will help me with the sense of shame that I carry. That I cannot keep hiding forever. Hiding reinforces the shame, which leads me back into the depression thing.

It's difficult to believe that it will help, but it always helped me.

The toughest part of therapy is getting started.
You have no reason to trust the process, yet that is what you must do if you want to get better.
Saying things out loud is often the first step.

Consider this: if saying things out loud doesn't matter, why is it so hard to do?

I have tried for two years to no avail. I tell stuff to that therapist that I do not tell anyone else. And I have no idea how it is supposed to help anything. At best it is neutral. When it is bad I feel like an idiot for having done it at all. It is not better than neutral ever.

))Stopdog((

I'm sorry you don't feel helped.

It sounds like none of your therapists have ever quite reached you.

yes

and continuing
and ending

but I maintain it can STILL be worth it, MKAC.

"We speak in psychotherapy in order to hear ourselves speaking the truth about our lives. In time we become so familiar with our pain that we become immune to its shame - " not that I am there yet, sigh -
but it brings things out of your head, out of the shadows, and they do lose power. this I know. ((((((((( MKAC ))))))))

I do it somewhat like Pbutton, I work myself up before session and make a promise to myself Im going to say it and then when I get there, before I have a chance to back down I just say it. Open mouth and let the words fall out...and Im usually on autopilot when it happens. I focus on my promise to myself to say that one thing, like its a terrible task that needs to be accomplished, so the sooner the better.

For me its easier to write about the terrible things, saying it makes it real. Saying it makes it mine and not that little girl inside me who wrote it down. I get this MKAC. I too find that the difficulty of saying it versus the relief I want to feel after saying, feels like the prize wasn't worth the fight. I am hoping over time , that the act of talking about such things repetitively will help me to own it and overcome it. Isn't that how therapy is supposed to work?

This is why I can't understand why people say they love therapy and don't ever want to leave. Therapy is hard work.

Amen to that. I found it damn hard right up until the end. True, it wasn't unrelentingly hard the way it was in the first couple of years; but it was never easy.

I did a lot of writing in the first year or so. T would usually want me to read what I'd written aloud, but I'd often dissolve in tears, or be unable to even begin. But I don't believe, at that point, that it was shame stopping me. It was pain, pure and simple. It took my breath away: wracking, physical pain.

Once we put our words out into the holding enviroment they get processed and given back to us in a more manageable way.

wow MKAC amazing for sending the e-mail and even if it was only the newspaper version you were able to talk about that is fine.saying thngs out loud is so so so hard it makes things so real and so more painful .stick with it you are doing great.

That part of pbutton's post really resonated for me as well. I find therapy such hard work, I cannot get my head around anyone loving or even liking it. I also cannot imagine being there longer than 50 minutes. I am exhausted after 50 minutes.

I truly appreciate you sharing the part I bolded. This pain happens for me as well, and I never mention it because I thought it was just me. The fear and the shame and the pain almost double me over in therapy sometimes. It is all I can do to sit in one place without flinching or curling into a fetal position. Talking is simply out of the question sometimes.

Therapy is hard work. I suspect that people who don't think it is aren't getting its full benefits.

When I have something to talk to T about and I can't seem to make the words come out, we talk about what it means to say the thing and why it's so hard. It's almost always shame for me. Some of it I've pushed through, but there's still a lot there.

Once, after I failed in a bunch of sessions to bring up something that I really needed to talk about, I called him and left a message telling him that there was something I needed to talk about and could he please push me a little on it. He did (in his oh, so gentle way) and I was able to talk.

This is a very small thing. I remember telling my T once that I learned something from saying things out loud and realizing that nobody ran screaming from the room. He asked, in a Captain Obvious moment, so what did you learn?

I said, that the experience and the words used to describe it are not so horrible, that they don't have the power to kill people or even to do anything bad to them. That I will not die if I speak the words, and they will actually not boomerang around the room, pelting everyone and everything in it, until there is devastation. That he would continue to sit there, just like I said any ordinary old thing. That the words become ordinary, the experienced becomes ordinary, it is just one of a "normal" kind of experiences that some people have.

I think that maybe for me, speaking the words out loud makes them and the experience they represent more than just about me. It may be that the words link me to many people all over the globe who have this "ordinary" experience. Survivors have been speaking out (and writing) about this experience for centuries. It is nothing new. It is ordinary. It is, as the kids used to say, "no big thing."

I know that the way that I speak things out loud has changed in the pat year or so. I couldn't really tell you how that has happened, it is a process that eludes me. But I know that I can look back, and I can see that the shifts in my thinking about the experience as something extraordinary to something ordinary has had something to do with that.

I jumped out of an airplane once (technically was pushed) but one thing they drill into you is that once you land, "run around your parachute" ie run to the top of it so it doesn't refill with air and drag you away. You need to control where it goes now. That's how I feel about my story. It's MY story now, I control where it goes. Other people don't define it or me. They have it wrong. Ie they got it wrong, their definition of me is wrong.

I get this! THIS is the part that I could not explain in my last thread, I think, hankster, and that therefore you were missing. FT talking to MC about my stuff without talking to me first made me feel like my parachute was dragging me away and I had no control over it. I couldn't control where my story was going, even though there are rules and laws that are in place to give me that control.

Yabbut do you still think it SHOULD be a certain way, or have you given it up? You keep trying to get along in the real world - not saying that's a bad thing! I can't even talk to my family but I'm not doing so great ok on my own either. Can you send over an Xmas apple pie without expecting a thankyou from your mother? That's to make YOU feel better, not her. What would it take, what would that mean? What is the truth you're not facing?

I have given up as far as MC and FT are concerned. I am going to tell MC tonight that I didn't like it, but I have let go of the pain related to it. I was thinking that I could use FT as a back-up, sort of, in case my feelings for my current T got too painful, or in case I really couldn't finally tell him the stuff I know I need to at some point. I have let go of that possibility, and I think that may actually be good for my current therapy. No point holding back because there is not another possibility AND it was important to me that T know at least as much about me as MC. So we finally talked about an important topic. Or, I emailed him and then at the session, he talked about it and I looked at the floor.

In reference to my mother, I think I am facing the truth. I am still waiting to feel less pissed off about it.

The pain for me seemed to come from being present in the felt moment, whether that moment was a memory or a current interaction. When I would dissociate, there was no pain--why it is such a seductive defense! And I know my T was very torn about the process: knowing the dissociation was an impediment to therapy and wanting to minimize it, yet witnessing the pain that being present would incite. I know the process was hard for me, but it was often hard for him, too. I do regret that a bit.

Maybe you haven't processed it enough? Have your feelings about it come out in session? Have you taken the issue out of your head in session and truly examined it enough (turned it around and around and looked at it from all angles?). Nothing can be worked on crammed in your head. It has to be removed from your head and thoroughly examined. Making the subconscious conscious (because anything subconscious can wreck havoc and its power is removed once it is fully in the conscious mind).

(((((((MKAC))))))))

I always, always write the hard things before I say them. ALWAYS. I can't do it otherwise.

T just gently told me recently that it would be important for me to speak the words at some point. Because there are some things I can ONLY write about. They make me mute.

When I picture myself talking about them, I imagine it being kind of like what Anne described...I say the words, and it's hard, and it hurts, and it's OKAY. The world doesn't end, my family doesn't die, I walk out of the office and I'm still me....but I'm not holding this shameful thing anymore. I think the things that bounce around in my head that I can't speak are the things that suffocate me with shame. But even with that image..."things will be okay if I say this"...I still can't do it.

There ARE things that I've spoken aloud in T that were such crushing sources of pain and shame for me and are now, literally, like "this thing happened, it sucked, I'm okay". It's so hard for me to believe that this other stuff could get to that point, but it's happened before.

For me, it's a huge leap of faith to open my mouth and say the words. Usually, we start by talking about talking about it...and I think just the fact that my voice is already coming out of my mouth sometimes helps me start to tiptoe into the hard stuff.

Just writing it was a Big Deal. So, good for you