[Lucinda]

Arrgh

I dont know what to do in therpay, i have a real block with crying and aviod talking about thinkgs that make me upset

In our last session i thought i would try discussing somthing that does make me upsetonly really i didnt get anywhere

It feel like i am trying to hard rather than going with what i feel

His constant comment have been about the break ( that we have come back from ) because i wasnt upset about it, it wasnt that i didnt feel upset or angry i just didnt see the point of getting upset as i knew he would go no matter what

I had self harmed after or last session before the break and after the one he came back. He has suggested this is because i felt angry with him

I know when i went in last week i wanted an arguement he suggeted i did and i denied it. I do feel angry with him but i feel i have no right to because he has done nothing wrong

I do know i need to talk to him about this but i need some advice , have you been in this situation? how do you cope with being angry in therpay or crying. How do you handle breaks and there returns?

Love
Lucy

Maybe you are trying TOO hard. See therapy doesn't have to be "tear the heart out, I have to make sure I talk about something that will make me cry and be upset" kind of thing. Therapists just want to know how you are feeling and you can tell them that in so many different ways.

Do you draw? If so you are doing a type of therapy.
Do you keep a journal... Guess what thats therapy too.

Evem what you just posted is considered therapy.

My suggestion is print off your post. You did a terrific job of saying how you feel in writing.

as for how do I handle this type of situation - when I have trouble talking during therapy about something LL asks me I come home and write on that. For me sometimes I write better then I can talk. its like in my head the words are there but I think so fast and on so many different angles that sometimes its hard to get the words to come out in order or make sense to my therapist because she is not a mind reader. she doesn't have the benefit of being inside my head and hearing what I am hearing and thinking. But when I write I don't think about anything but putting the words down as I am thinking and hearing and somehow the words just go down the right way.

I know that I am a writer at heart, so thats what I use. After my therapy sessions I come home and write a short journal entry- well short for me that is - Then I take a break and do something else and then later on that night I take up my journalling again and challenge myself to put in more details and focus on one question that LL has asked me during that days session. Sometimes I take in what I have wrote and give it to LL to read. That way not only did I therapy by journalling but LL can also see and know what is going on with me.

your therapist wants to know how you feel about the fact that there was a break in your sessions. He already knows you were upset by it. If you weren't you would not have self harmed. People dont self harm when they are happy, happy happy.

If this situation and therapist was mine and was SKR and she was pointing out the break and asking me questions about it I would take that as being she wants to know more so the situation - my being so upset that I self injure when she goes away won't happen again during the next break. Therapist have to take vacation time for theirown self care and sanity. LL goes on vacation about every 3-4 months. So another vacation time IS going to happen, and if I don't tell my therapist how I feel when it does happen, no precautions can be set up and the situation repeats.

But taking a real situation from SKR and I - I would get so keyed up when SKR was gone worrying about what if the DHS caseworker does this while she gone or accuses me of that while shes gone or god forbid I screw up during visitation to the point where the dHS caseworker figures out I have DID.. the list goes on my brain went on over time.

SKR would come back from vacation or personal time due to a relatives death and I would be so relieved that talking was hard and one day she gave me some workbook pages she had photocopied and I looked at them and set them down and didn't think anything about them, and one day while she was on vacation I was cleaning my "junk trunk" one of the places which tends to be a chatch all in my house then. Anything went into it until I had time to put it away kind of thing. anyway I found those workbook pages and sat down and did them and throughout the twoo weeks she was gone I did them.

When she came back I showed them to her and told her how I had felt with her going away and how much different it was having the pages to do. from then on she would give me something to do when she had to go on vacation or I would look at my journals and create a art type activity from something in my journal.

LL and I have all kinds of breaks some from when she takes vacation time and sometimes due to scheduling,

98% of therapy is done by the client on their own anyway so thats how I handle the breaks. under nornal situations I know that therapy in part is applying what I am learning to situations that I deal with everyday.So I just continue doing that when LL is unavailable. Just because LL is on vacation doesn't mean I don't have to use my grounding techniques and so on when I am experiencing stress. LL can't be right here in my home 24/7 and therapy isn't forever. at somepoint I will not have to be in therapy. so I might as well be doing things for myself right from the beginning.

Just because LL goes on vacation doesn't mean I can't do therapy work. therapy work happens in many ways not just face to face talking. Therapy for me is my drawing, my journaling, my paying attention to what is going on around me, my stimulating all my senses and pay attention to what they are telling me and taking care of that instead of dissociating, and so on. I can still do th erapy even though LL needs a break. So thats what I do.

And coming back into face to face sessions after LL has had her break? I take in things that I have worked on while she was gone.

You might say right now I am having a scheduling break. At my last session (sept 25th) LL didn't have her schedule handy and asked me to give her a call to remind her to set up our next appointment. I called her this thrusday but knowing she has anywhere between 40-65 clients I don't expect to get in for a week or so longer. I trust her to put me in when and where she can in times like this where we don't set up our appointment right away, and she trusts me to tell her if I need to get in sooner. When I do get in to see her 3-4 weeks will have passed and when I do I will be taking my digital camera with me to show her what I have been working on, on the therapy project we have going.

You don't HAVE to tell your therapist how you feel about when he took a break but you MAY tell him if you think it will help you to better handle the next time he he takes a break. Right now he's giving oyu a chance to let him know how you feel and what you need during the times he is not available. Now he's leaving it in your hands waiting to see what you want to do about it. your options are - not say anything and leave things as is and in doing so you are choosing to either accept that he will be taking more breaks and that if you don't talk to him about it you are also choosing to be upset next time he takes a break.

and if you choose to talk to him you are choosing to fix things so that next time he goes for break you will have the tools you need that will help you so you will not need to self harm..

Hang in there. If you want to let him know but are unable to say the words maybe you can write the words to him since you were able to write the words here.

[Hopefull]

I tend to write the things down and read them to T. It helps me to make the thoughts coherent and expressable. As for missing T, I saw her late last month and will get to see her near the end of this month. I failed to schedule ahead. I tsometimes tell her that I missed her and she says that she missed me. This reply bugs me because my missing her is worse than her missing me if she even does miss me.
I am anxious to talk to her about the new psychiatrist that I met earlier this month. I have never ever taken a drug for a mental health reason and so it still creeps me out some. I tend to draw her pictures when I don't get to see her. The pictures tend to be about problems etc. My current one is about some of my hobbies and my negative thinking problem. I concur with the above posting . If you can find a way to work on therapy on your own, then it helps you to cope until T comes back.