Therapy consuming your life?

Does anyone else become so consumed in what is happening in your therapy that it has negative impact on the rest of your life eg you are less focused on family, friends, study etc. I'm afraid I'm alienating my family as the therapy issues are always not far from my thoughts. Or maybe its my depression playing up too.

Anyway does anyone else do this?

Yeah I often feel the same way.

Yes - definitely happened to me more than once. I just let it drive everyone around me crazy the first time it happened. But when it happened again I told t about it and we scheduled a 2nd mini-session later in the week just so I would feel that connection and know she was "containing my process". That's T-speak of course, but it worked.

I think about it all the time -- and I'm in automatic pilot being a mom to an 8 year old and working. I hope this changes soon it's kinda disrupting my life.

Yes, but it seems important to let it take over right now

Yes..and I am struggling. I'm a single mum to an almost 7 yr old, working in a similar therapeutic environment, and I am losing it! My therapy is almost overwhelming me. My T and I plan to review the process next week. Today he told me to take a break form work, again! This time I listened...10 days off for me now. I'm a mess.

So yep...it gets in the way........

Yup me too jane! Seems like my work/life has turned in to a mirror of my therapy. And the only reprieve from work/life is therapy. Feel like a dog chasing their tail.

Absolutely. Sometimes it seems like therapy is all I think about, and I feel so self-absorbed, then my T comments - without me mentioning this focus - that we are making good progress because I am really engaged and working on things. So there are positives to it.

Thanks for all the answers I knew I wasn't alone in the "therapeutic journey" I was just worried that maybe it was some kind of negative effect. It must mean something is working deep inside, yes?

I find myself thinking about therapy all the time too. I am frequently thinking about the next session and what I need to talk about. Being new to therapy, I thought there was something wrong with me for this but now reading that other people go through the same thing I see it is not unusual.

I also often feel like therapy has taken over my life. It doesn't prevent me from doing other things all the time but I certainly feel spacy a lot. In my head, I'm often either replaying bits of my last session or imagining myself describing what I'm doing/experiencing in my next one.

Artemis, can you tell a bit more about the mini session? How does she help you to "contain you process?" When you say it worked, what changed?

(I know this is a slightly different question from the one bipolartist began with but I think it's still really relevant to the original issue!)

Thanks Favourite jeans I would be interested in the answer too, please Art.

I wasn't fully engaged with friends/family before therapy. My issues and unconscious kept me distant. Therapy is hard work. But in the end it will enable us to be more authentic with others. A price worth paying I think.

Yes and then it ended abruptly and I'm starting to actually live my life again. It's been very difficult, but I'm beginning to believe it's for the best. I'm not sure I had a healthy therapy relationship.

Yes, it makes me think a lot. I live in my head a lot. I don't think that's a bad thing really.

I thought I was the only one! But yes I obsess over it and all I can think about is my past session or the next one and what I will talk about and I wonder what my T is doing and if she's okay.

Yes, therapy has consumed my life for many years, and my marriage has suffered because of it. I think about therapy most of the time, and have made my Ts more important than anyone else. I also go over my sessions and reread old emails between my T and me.

I'm slowly changing my focus. I have to, as I'm quitting therapy in March. I'm also reaching out more to my H and to friends so I have people to turn to in RL rather than depending on my T to meet my needs. There comes a time to take off the training wheels, and for me that time has come.

Yes. This is one of the most annoying things about therapy. I am tired of thinking about it so often.

The mini-sessions were like 15 minutes, and for the past year we were doing phone sessions anyway, so that's how short ones could work. It was kinda weird like after our Wednesday session I'd be thinking a lot and sort of feel stuff building back up if that's the right way to explain it, flooding over into 'real' life, and then on friday afternoon I would call and just the fact of her answering the phone was almost enough to feel the weight of the thoughts come off my shoulders, before I even spoke. We'd go over briefly whatever one thing was biggest on my mind and that would be the 15 minutes. But it helped a lot, what changed is my thinking became manageable again, to get me to the next full appt. That little checkin was a solid reminder that I was not in the work alone. Like I handed her a chunk of it back during that checkin. I don't know if that makes sense.

The whole "containing your process" thing I thought I was beginning to understand actually until our 2nd to last session when she made the comment that she hoped my notebooks would be enough to contain it. That was when I decided I really didn't understnad it after all. But then I realized SHE wasn't really "containing" it fully either if you look at it one way, if I needed to fill up all these notebooks! She said writing is obviously very much therapy for you. I believe I said something brilliant like "Duh" in response to that. I told her don't worry, just because we won't be doing this work together anymore doesn't mean I won't be doing it anymore. It's become so much a part of me now. She said she fully expects that she will hear from me again. She is probably right on that.

Well I guess one thing hasn't changed for me. I still type out long, rambling answers.

This is true in my case mouse. Before therapy I was a really closed-off person, I had very few friends, the world was a small place, etc.

Yes therapy IS hard work and well worth it all. The more you put into it, the more you get out of it, and all that. What it has done for me now that I'm on the "in the end" side of it:

I am an open, authentic person now in every way I can imagine being and have made a bunch of new friends who think the same way I do about important stuff in life, reconnected with friends from the past, and the world is no longer small - it is BIG and inviting and I'm so happy to be in it!

Yes, I feel it gets all-consuming and I hate that fact. I wish I could parcel it away neatly and just take it out during the sessions. But I can't seem to do that, and I get desperate and want to quit to get some respite. However I can't/ refuse to pretend anymore, so I know that won't work...and then I go to my next appointment and the cycle begins again. Hoping I learn how to balance it out better soon.

Glad to read this thread... I've been feeling like therapy is taking up all my emotional "space" lately, and not much room for anything else. And when I'm doing such vulnerable stuff with T, sometimes it's really hard to find my capable self and function in the world again. And sometimes therapy is so intense, it's hard for other relationships to feel like anything. Yet I feel like we are doing some really important foundational stuff, and I hope that it will help me in my life and relationships.

I just feel like I want to sleep through life until I gentoo therapy day. Some of it is my depression and not being interested in other things but therapy Is definitely the highlight of my week that I focus in getting to all the other days.

I think this is a stage many of us go through. I know I did. But boy is it nice to have finally gotten past this stage and check back into active life again. In the throws of my instability and treatment over the years, I allowed myself to check out of life. I stopped activities that really had been to my benefit and lived in a bit of a fog (and not a drug induced one either) because I was always in my head.

About two years ago I started getting myself back again, and in the last year I finally feel completely ME again. Yes, I still go to therapy, but not quite as often (don't really need to anymore). But I've checked back into my life: I've returned to church, church choir, volunteering with my sons' activities, joined the chorus. I don't feel in that fog anymore.

This stage will eventually pass and you will be able to move forward again.

Right now it seems to be