Do you feel like you are accomplishing things

I am just so frustrated with everything right now. I was just wondering if you ever feel like you aren't accomplishing anything in therapy. I just feel like I am not getting it. I should feel better, I don't. I go in week after after week and we talk about my week. I don't know. I just don't know.

Oh purplemoon, I go about 6-8 sessions that are really blahhhh and I wonder, what the heck are we doing here? Why am I going? I feel worse actually.....

Then I will have ONE incredible and amazing session as if my mind knows I'm ready to terminate. Then I feel as though I can't leave but go back into my rut again.....hard to know how much we do this to ourselves and how much is actual progress. I always ask for feedback and reassurnace from my t. Sometimes I'm happy with her responses to my questions about if we are moving forward and then sometimes I'm left thinking she's unable to help me.

I wished I could offer some insight that could help. I'm stuck in thie cycle I just described so I'm not the best judge of this i guess. How long have you been going??

Purplemoon, I spent the first yr in therapy keeping T at a distance by talking about everything outside the room. Like how I keep arguing with this person or that person etc etc, but by doing this I was allowing my inner child to get to know T, trust her. It does make more sense as time goes by!

Thanks Talulah. I have been going for about a year. My T says I am making a lot of progress, and I have friends that say I have made a lot of progress too. But I am just so overwhelmed and my life is such a mess, everyday it seems to get messier. I guess it is the fallout from the changes that I am making - I will say I have made a huge amount of change in my life and others have not taken it very well. So I guess alot of it is backlash and resistance but it just makes this road so much harder. Sometimes I sit and wonder how did I end up here????? My T has been tremendously helpful. He was the one that had me make the changes and as terrified as I was in the beginning and as awful as it has been - it is the best thing I could have ever done for myself. I had a family member call last night and she said that she was truly amazed because she didn't think the I would or could do this. I am a little angry with this family member and I would really like to thumb my nose at her, but I am really glad that I proved her wrong - I didn't do this to prove her wrong I did this because I truly want a different life but I don't want what is currently going on, but T assures me that this won't be forever - it is because I have upset the system. This is probably way more than you wanted to know. Sorry it is so long.

Thank you Mouse. It gives me hope. Did your T ever get impatient with you?

Never! There were times I imagined she must be bored silly LOL, but that was just the voices in my head!

Hi purple. I spent the first year and a half with my T thinking we were just "wasting time" I know now that every minute spent with T is a valuable one.

Just like you said, Mouse-- unconsciously you were gaining trust for T during the year you spent just talking about other stuff.

Even though I *know* every moment counts I still don't feel that way a lot of the time. Often I wonder, what I am doing here or another favorite one is, I'm so messed up, what is even the point of this, it's not going to help. It's totally normal what you are thinking.

Do you keep a journal? I started keeping one at the beginning of T when I thought I was wasting time. Now, a year and half later, when I'm still "wasting time" I take a look back at what I wrote during the first couple months of T. I had written a lot of stuff that I wished I could tell him, but had firmly decided that I'd *never* be able to. A year or so later, I have told him almost all of those things. Journaling is a great way to keep track of even the most sublte of progress in T.

Thanks Pinksoil. I have tried journaling - I can't seem to do that either. I do it occasionally but it is the same as therapy - this is what happened this week..... I don't know - I think I am defective. I just can't seem to get anything right. I feel so like a fish out of water.

I'd say that is journaling, looks like just one of my entries! Don't worry about the content so much, just know that the turning up for T and the action of writing is enough!

You are not defective!!! I just went through a 6-week depression where I got nothing done-- no journals, no schoolwork, no nothing. All I did in therapy for six weeks was sit there and talk about my depressive symptoms. There was a lot of silence, too. You are just going through something really hard. We all do. But what's important is that you obviously care enough to come here and attempt to sort out your thoughts by writing, and seek out what others think. A "defective" person wouldn't even do that much!!! There is no such thing as getting therapy "right." All you have to do is go. You can talk, cry, get angry, just sit there.... It's okay.

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purplemoon said:
Thanks Talulah. I have been going for about a year. My T says I am making a lot of progress, and I have friends that say I have made a lot of progress too. But I am just so overwhelmed and my life is such a mess, everyday it seems to get messier. I guess it is the fallout from the changes that I am making - I will say I have made a huge amount of change in my life and others have not taken it very well. So I guess alot of it is backlash and resistance but it just makes this road so much harder. Sometimes I sit and wonder how did I end up here????? My T has been tremendously helpful. He was the one that had me make the changes and as terrified as I was in the beginning and as awful as it has been - it is the best thing I could have ever done for myself. I had a family member call last night and she said that she was truly amazed because she didn't think the I would or could do this. I am a little angry with this family member and I would really like to thumb my nose at her, but I am really glad that I proved her wrong - I didn't do this to prove her wrong I did this because I truly want a different life but I don't want what is currently going on, but T assures me that this won't be forever - it is because I have upset the system. This is probably way more than you wanted to know. Sorry it is so long.

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It's great that you're seeking feedback from others.....this will help give you a perspective you may not see yourself. Change is difficult and takes a long time to adjust to. I didn't feel much change until a year and a half later with my t, so good for you!

Life and all of our responsibilities are overwhelming, especially when one priority is trying to improve ourselves. Remember, you are trying the best you can to make your life a healthier one, it always seems to fall to pieces before it actually gets better.....it may even stay in pieces for a long time. This may be so we can see the importance of each individual element and how they must all work together in harmony to make us a whole and happy being. Dunno, but that is often my interpretation. The pieces all stay on the floor until they are each examined and repaired, then slowly they are mended enough to join back together, but since they are still so fragile, their adhesive is a little sensitive so once in a while a piece falls back out and has to be glued back in.....every piece is essential and they cannot function without one another. I think your pieces may just be on the floor.....right where they need to be for you to see them.

Hang in there, your t will help you with the puzzle.....and you never have to apologize for sharing yourself with me......

Purplemoon, I did reach a phase with my first counselor where we were not making any progress. It wasn't that we weren't getting along or that I was falling apart, but that I was just not making progress. I asked her if she thought it was useful for me to still keep seeing her, and her response was rather lukewarm: "you can keep seeing me as long as you want." I think if she had said instead something like "I know I can help you make more progress if you keep coming to see me", I would have been more encouraged. I felt like she wasn't offering me any hope that I would make progress with her. So I quit going to see her rather suddenly.

A couple of months later I started with a new T, and we have made rapid, rapid progress. I feel like he was an icebreaker that broke up the polar ice for me and allowed me to begin my passage again. With my current T, we definitely have many sessions that are like "team building" rather than working on my problems. But these end up being valuable in and of themselves, even though it may not seem so on the surface. They help me build trust in my T, strengthen the therapeutic relationship, and lay the groundwork for even more difficult sharing in the future. I look upon none of it as wasted even though I may not seem to be making progress on the presenting problem.

purplemoon, you said you wrote a lot of e-mails to your T. The stuff in your e-mails is the sort of stuff that could go in your journal. Maybe just imagine your journal is your T, and begin each journal entry with "Dear T."

I sometimes have long conversations with my T in my journal. My journal is probably the most important document on my computer.

Sunrise, you have much insight.......purple pay heed to what is said, I think sunrise has a valuable therapeutic relationship going on we can learn from.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Talulah. I feel what is great about my therapeutic relationship is my T, and I actually have very little to do with it. I had a so so relationship with a prior counselor. The difference in the current one is my T, not me. And his eclectic approach, which really clicks with me!

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purplemoon said:
I am just so frustrated with everything right now. I was just wondering if you ever feel like you aren't accomplishing anything in therapy. I just feel like I am not getting it. I should feel better, I don't. I go in week after after week and we talk about my week. I don't know. I just don't know.

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I guess another thing I want to add is that I pay for my therapy sessions 100% out of pocket and they are really expensive! This makes me very motivated to accomplish a lot at each session and to move forward quickly if I can. With my previous counselor, insurance paid 90% of the fee, and I didn't progress as quickly. I wonder if my having to pay for therapy myself makes a difference? I could not see myself sitting in session saying nothing, arms crossed, not being communicative, etc., because all the time I would be thinking, "this is costing so much effing money!"

Of course, I'm happy for all those who get insurance to pay for their therapy, and I wish I were in that situation too, but maybe having to pay helps move me along.

Interesting.........probably factors in I bet.

I guess that sometimes there can be progress that doesn't feel like progress at times. Assertiveness can be one such thing. Sometimes we can make progress with being more assertive and yet there can be a backlash from that (where others are frustrated with us because we no longer submit to their needs) and that can result in our feeling unhappy about that even though we have made progress. I think there can be a lot of things like that. Change can be uncomfortable to others and (hence?) to ourself. I quite often think that some of those concrete changes can be like that.

Sometimes progress can feel like it isn't progress for other reasons. I guess I'm regressing somewhat right now and so that feels like a step backwards rather than a step forwards. But I guess the step backwards is a step forwards in the sense that it is a necessary step towards real progress.

Sounds like you do think that you are making progress... But that you are struggling a little with some of the ramifications of that. Hang in there. Sounds like genuine progress to me ;-)