Do you bring notes into therapy?

I journal and bring it to T. For years I was mute in the therapy setting and all I could do was thrust my journal in his hands. I would write down any questions he had and include the answers in my journal for the next week. I can speak now but I still bring my journal for a more complete telling of whatever is concerning me.

I bring in notes all the time. Which usually are a list of things to talk about. And occasionally short annotations that give a specific example (person, place, thing) that goes with a specific issue/topic. These things are important for me to talk about that I have thought about, either as a result of the previous session(s) or new topics based on stuff that has occurred since my last session.

Many/most sessions I refer deliberately to my notes from the beginning. But this last session I just answered T's open-ended question and we spent the next 40 minutes discussing "stuff"; when I finally consulted my notes, to my mild surprise, we had covered everything in them, except one or two "lesser" issues and so that is what we talked about the last 10 minutes.

I thought it was neat that we had managed to cover what was in my notes without me having to refer to them, in that T's questions led me to cover the topics in a spontaneous and natural way. I guess that session followed closely from the previous one (which had prompted these latest notes). If that makes any sense. So, yes, I use notes, refer to them, and wouldn't do therapy without them.

I have never just handed my notes to T and let T read them. I prefer to broach the topics myself. Plus I am not sure T could read my handwriting or decipher my shorthand.

I ABSOLUTELY get needing a segue. I also feel really uncomfortable just talking about my childhood or whatever out of the blue. One thing that has been helpful for me has been to pick right up where I left off the previous week. The advantage is that there's a kind of depth and continuity that I wouldn't otherwise get. On the downside sometimes I also want to talk about what's going on right now. But on the whole, I find that continuing on a fruitful topic is more useful than talking about the frustrating thing that happened to me yesterday.

I have a little wooden box and I write slips of paper through the week about things I want to talk about with my T and put them in the box. Then I make a list, and put the easier things at the top, and harder ones at the bottom... so I can do a gradual process of "warming up" before getting to the hard stuff.

I haven't brought notes yet, but I did send an email to my T on friday night letting her know how I felt and the things I forgot to tell her about when I saw her last week. I don't know how that will go cause I've never done that before, but I needed to organize my thoughts. Every time I go there we kinda bounce around topics. I call it verbal diahhrea. Can't stop it once it starts. I'm going to see her tomorrow. Not to hijack this thread or any thing but what do you talk about with your T? What we've done for the past few sessions is just talk about my week and all the emotions I've felt. I don't know what else to do? I think she wants to teach me some techniques or something to help me with my depression and anxiety. She knows though that I have no energy so she felt like nothing would stick. I don't have a particular "reason" of why I feel depressed. And she says I don't need to have one but I guess it doesn't leave much to talk about you know?

Not generally. Sometimes I'll journal something that I want to share, but that isn't terribly too often. I have no problem bringing up what I need to bring up or remembering what I want to talk about.

Mostly I just let things flow in our sessions pretty organically. I'm not one to spend a lot of time thinking about my sessions ahead of time.