[pamelasu]

For the past few times that I've went to therapy I have felt like I'm not accomplishing anything that I need to get accomplished. I feel that therapy is just draging me down all the time. I'm not getting much out of it any more and I end up feeling worse when I leave than I do when I first go there. I'm just thinking that maybe I should stop therapy for a while and pick up later. I knew from the beginning that I wasn't ready for therapy and I even told my therapist that before I started. She talked me into doing it and now I still feel not ready to talk about my problems. I have been in therapy for about 8 months now and I still can't talk with my therapist. She started to change things in July this year and now I feel like I'm not getting anything accomplished with it. Everything is still the same as it was in July. Where before I was at least making progress with my depression. Now I just feel that it's not doing me any good to go to therapy any more. Should I continue or should I stop going for a while and maybe pick it up later? I'm confused and really not sure what I want to do yet. I really don't want to stop therapy, but then again I do. It's confusing.

[JustAPixie]

Do you thimk the problem is with you or your therapist? Would you feel different with another therapist?

[pamelasu]

I feel that my problem is within myself. I get my self esteam up and get my self confidence up all week long. That is my main goal for the whole week. Then I go to therapy and I loose every last bit of it. I have been hurt too many times before from sharing my past with others and I don't want it to happen again. I feel that she will be just like everyone else, believing me up to a certain point and then all of a suddend it gets to be too much to believe. I have had a ton of things in my life that weren't very plesant and I do understand that it may get overwhelming for someone to believe all of it. That's why I have learned to not tell everything. I keep parts of it back. But I need to talk about them because they too are just as important as everything else that has happened to me. Every last peice of it makes up for who I am today. I don't think that a different therapist is going to make a difference. I have to have time to condition myself and prepare myself to do therapy at a later time in my life. I just feel that I'm not ready to share with her about me. I really want to but I'm not ready to.

[JustAPixie]

If you are at a point where you want to share, then you are ready. You will never feel ready in that sense. The first therapist I went to did not believe me because I too have a rather strange story, and that set me back. For years I tried to hide it and tell myself that I can't trust people. It got to much and I decided to go to therapy again, the person I went to I did not like, he just didn't have that "tell me all your secrets" feel to him. And then I found someone who was sincere and honest, and if he didn't believe me, he never let it show. He did ask me once how I can be so emotionally detached from the things I tell him, and I thought he was implying that I'm lying. He said that it is a strange story indeed, but the point for him is not to believe or not believe me, but to help me, and therefor he will believe me, even if it's not true.

I never felt like I was ready, and after telling him everything I felt like manure for a while, but it blows over in time. I'm glad that I did tell him, even if I regretted it at the time. If you don't think your T will believe you, tell her this, tell her that's the reason you are holding back. Therapy should not be about "convincing" your T. If you don't feel you can do that, find another T... there are people that will make you feel more comfortable than others.

On the other hand, therapists hear weird stories everyday, so maybe you won't even shock her...