[southpole]

Ugh. I often feel embarrassed about things I've said in therapy, and sometimes it makes me feel like I want to run away and never go back! But I keep turning up and I keep dealing with the embarrassment, and I keep improving as a result, even though my cringe meter is set to 11. I am always telling myself that revealing the embarrassing stuff is going to help the therapy along, but I guess I don't 100% believe that, just as I don't 100% trust my T yet. I had a big freak out last week (I wrote about it on here) where I felt like I had invaded her privacy, and I completely overreacted, then felt super embarrassed for telling her. This is still making me worry that she is thinking "what a weirdo" ... but I guess I just have to let go of that fear of being judged, someway and somehow. Now I keep thinking of other things that I can potentially be embarrassed about (for instance, thinking about telling her at some point about the way I feel about her ) and trying to find a way to cover these things up. Like to pretend I am actually really normal and not crazy in the head at all, which of course is a complete fallacy considering I was in hospital for 6 weeks after suffering a major breakdown, and am now in therapy 2x a week to deal with that, plus a lifetime of crap.

Has anyone else felt the same way? How did you overcome the embarrassment and self-censorship if so??? This fear of being judged really is not useful, I can see that, but I don't know how to overcome it...

[~EnlightenMe~]

Yes, me too. I am trying to let him in, but it is really difficult. When I am disclosing information pertaining to who I am sometimes, I feel like I speak one word for every ten minutes, lol, just trying to get it out.

I have felt shame, and I mean FELT it, right in front of him. How uncomfortable, both the shame, and having an observer. But he is very accepting and kind, I truly feel like he sees the real me, not my surface behaviors. I feel like he understands me, and that gives me a greater feeling of safety. I don't have to convince him of how I want my therapy to go, we seem to have similar views.

I had difficulty telling him that I was angry the week before because I had to miss an appointment and he couldn't fit me in to see him. I felt HORRIBLE. I told him that I KNOW this is irrational, that I had to cancel, and that you not having an opening is normal, but my emotions are anything but normal. It is difficult to have ego dystonic emotions, and can potentially be shaming to tell a therapist if the therapist responds angrily or annoyed. He encouraged me to tell him, and he took it in stride as far as I could tell. It was really difficult, I had to push myself to do it.

So, tolerating it all is the thing that will get us through, imo. It is very difficult to let yourself be seen, especially if this has happened before and others have responded negatively (which is probably why you want to hide). I have to put on a facade everyday and act normal at work, it is so draining. I hate it.

It sounds like you are pushing yourself to tell your therapist things, and I think that continuing to just go and tolerate the anxiety/shame/pain, is a path to healing wounds. Best of luck to you.

Yes felt and feel the same way. But when it happens outside therapy it's much easier to deal with because of the intensity of it happening in therapy. If that makes sense.

There have been several times when I was absolutely convinced there was no way I could back and face him. I posted about it here, talked to people through private messaging and somehow, found the courage to go back and just gritted it out. Sometimes it was several appointments because I could get over the embarrassment and shame, but it has always eased up at some point and it seems like I am making progress and the agony has been productive at least.

[southpole]

Thanks guys.

I guess what I want is to be able to freely express myself and let everything hang out, and not be fearful or ashamed of that. There are times when I feel absolutely mortified and I say to myself, "That's the last time I tell T anything embarrassing or crazy". I really want to get over the cringe factor of telling her I felt like I invaded her privacy because my panicked, OTT reaction felt like I was about 12 years old and admitting to have shoplifted or something like that. Urgh...

Anyway I have my last session for the year today and I am going to practice saying crazy stuff and just dealing with it. I hope it will be liberating as well as mortifying.

[Lamplighter]

Good luck with your session (if you haven't already had it, I can't work out the time differences very easily). Hope it goes/went well and you feel up to sharing about it here. I'd be really interested to hear your feelings on it as I feel very similarly but am so defended I hardly ever manage to be open about stuff I should be.

Torn

[southpole]

Originally Posted by Torn Mind

Good luck with your session

Thanks Tom, it went well. She is so understanding and awesome *sigh* I am not used to anyone being so empathetic to my weird ramblings and such. We even laughed a lot this session and it's like that was the first time I could really laugh and feel normal, and put things into perspective, since I left hospital. I'm still cringing about stuff but she makes it easier to deal with. Love my T...

[southpole]

Just one more question ...

What I wondered is how many of you talk about your relationship to T in the therapy room? If you do, how essential to you think this is to therapy working, and you getting better? I ask because I am really wary of discussing anything like that with my T and when I have done it (eg above) I've felt like I've been very inappropriate. But in this case of feeling like I'm being judged/not trusting my T entirely I wonder how much talking about these issues might help.

PS. I've been posting a lot on here since I joined only about 2 weeks ago! I've realised that it's very important that I can talk to other people about the things I've been going through in therapy and my life generally, so thank you for listening and making me feel less alone

[~EnlightenMe~]

Originally Posted by southpole

Just one more question ...

What I wondered is how many of you talk about your relationship to T in the therapy room? If you do, how essential to you think this is to therapy working, and you getting better? I ask because I am really wary of discussing anything like that with my T and when I have done it (eg above) I've felt like I've been very inappropriate. But in this case of feeling like I'm being judged/not trusting my T entirely I wonder how much talking about these issues might help.

PS. I've been posting a lot on here since I joined only about 2 weeks ago! I've realised that it's very important that I can talk to other people about the things I've been going through in therapy and my life generally, so thank you for listening and making me feel less alone

I have talked about the therapeutical relationship with both my xT and my T. They both regularly include(d) the relationship in the therapy room. I talk with my T about how I intellectually disagree with how I feel, but when I cancelled my appt. and he couldn't fit me in, I felt angry. It was SO hard to tell him this, because it feels crazy, but he took it in stride and it helped me just to say it and have him help me with it. If your T hasn't brought this up, I would really recommend that you do. I'm glad you are here, keep posting. We are here for you.

I discuss my relationship with him and my feelings for him, and those are some of the most difficult conversations and the ones that make it hardest to go back and continue. You live through it, and hopefully, in the end it is worth it.

One thing I have discovered is that therapy is such agony for me, and I force myself to talk about things that are SO difficult, that now, talking about "regular" relationship issues with my friends is much easier.

[southpole]

Thanks all

Talking about the relationship has gotta be the next step I take because it kinda weirds me out to have this really once sided relationship ... I mean I've been in therapy before but not like this. This is FULL ON. So I need to feel safe, which means I also need to feel like I'm not being judged and that I can say ANYTHING, no matter how whacked out, to this person I'm putting all my trust in and who knows all my deepest darkest thoughts, and this is only after a few months worth of therapy!

[Lamplighter]

Unfortunately it does seem like talking about the relationship itself is necessary at times (in fact there's a general consensus that the relationship IS the therapy and so being able to talk about it is central.) I'm not that keen on it, not anymore, I'd rather be sorting the stuff that openly bothers me but if and when things about what's going on between T and I surface, then I know I just have to bring it up otherwise my defensiveness and resentment get in the way of the therapy.

Like you this time round in therapy for me feels different and deeper and potentially more helpful than with other Ts I've seen and so the stakes are a lot higher that I can trust T - as you say - to feel safe and be able to say ANYTHING and still be accepted.

Is your T encouraging of your talking about how you feel within the relationship itself? My T is very good like that and reminds me often that it's important to bring up how I'm feeling or thinking about her and how she works and whether I think she's done something wrong etc which is really helpful as it's so difficult sometimes to bring in negative things. I used to have to psych myself up to do that with previous Ts by being prepared to end the therapy if I wasn't heard or understood.

I think the general idea is that the more we can talk about the 'us' and have it worked through and accepted and made safe, the more it supposedly alters our paradigms and models of how relationships work.

Sorry I'm really rambling here, have been feeling weird for a while now so if anything I've said in this post sounds off or like I'm teaching you to suck eggs, please ignore it, I'm just finding it hard to say what I really mean

I hope you don't have too long to wait before you see T again

Torn