trying to regain my motivation to return to therapy...help.

I guess I really want to be motivated to continue with therapy.

I have done some "random" things to try push me to be more motivated. Though I wonder, if I am pushing myself to be motivated and I already motivated?

About a year ago, my therapist and I went to the Riverside State Park in Spokane (into what is known as the “the Bowl and Pitcher” area) and did a “coat burning ceremony”. We burned an old "army" coat I had worn since before I was 16 and I'm 33 now. The coat was literally on me when a lot of the bad stuff was going on. The coat was a symbol of all the things I used to “shield” in, tools for protecting myself, that keep me from the world and isolated. Sure it protected me, but it was wearing thin and it was getting holes in it (symbolically and literally). So we ceremonially burned the coat about a year ago at this park. So today….I went down to the State Park to the spot we did the ceremony, to try to remember my previous motivation. I found it hard to stay there very long though....maybe 20 minutes. I literally told myself, trying to hold back tears: “if this is an attempt to get me back to therapy, it won’t work. I can't do it. It won’t work.” Though part of me thinks I was just trying to deny I want to go back, given the tears I was holding back.

And yesterday, I wrote a letter to the first person in my life who made me feel like I had any worth. That was back in 1989, when I was 16. She was a high school teacher. I guess she assumed I was worth something, because she reached out to me when I was in pain. So for the first time in my life I considered maybe I wasn't as bad as I thought. And, for the first time in my life I began to look for my worth. Before her I just assumed I had no worth. Of course, I never really got a clean look at my worth because my "neediness" at 16 was misunderstood by myself and by everyone around me. So things sort of blew up in my face with the teacher, when I tried to understand my neediness of her and talked to her about it. And she got scared and had to protect herself and took me out of her class. (But I can never blame her...she wasn't prepared for me and my past and was trained for it). But the fact remains, she did reach out to me at one point and, for the first time in my life, made me feel that perhaps I was worth something and it was worth finding out myself.

so i had that teacher in my life and i "have" my therapist in my life (though I'm still on break from her right now so not sure I can say she is still in my life - i've been on break for about 2 months now). Their attempting to help me carried an assumption that I am worth being helped....and that intrigued a part of me…at least once...that perhaps I could find my worth myself.

In that letter I wrote to my former teacher yesterday, I told her I wasn’t sure why I was writing her again (I’ve written her before), but on assumption I made in the letter was saying perhaps she was a “touchstone”.

So here I am looking at these two examples of people independently showing me unbiased care (even after they knew how “terrible” I am) and their assumption of my worth, and trying to find a reason to look for it on my own.

Why is this taking so long to get through therapy? It has been 3 years. What am I doing wrong? I have a great relationship with my therapist, better than the many others therapist I’ve been to. I think a large part of why I am having such low motivation is because it seems to be taking so long and some parties, specifically the managed health care insurance provider, suggests I am not getting better quick enough. And they are sort of in a “parental role”, that insurance provider, being so “powerful” in controlling what I can afford and, in a way, they are that parent saying “no child, you are not behaving, by not getting better quicker. So I’m taking away your privileges.”

I don't want to return without proper motivation, because I wouldn't be very effective in the team effort needed in a therapeutic relationship.

Anyone have any other suggestions about how I can get my motivation back or thoughts on my recent attempts? I want my motivation back.

First off, I think it might be a good idea to disregard your insurance company's 'thinking' process....it's your negative self-talk, isn't it? I mean, did someone from the insurance company actually tell you that you are not behaving and therefore your privileges are being removed? What privileges are you talking about anyway?

Second, as I was attentively reading your post I had this question in my mind, and I'll ask it here: why do you want to return to therapy? what are you looking for in a therapeutic relationship? (funny how I'm asking myself the same questions...oooo...that'll help me get unstuck with my current t....)

yeah, i can logically see the "insurance company's" thinking shouldn't factor into my process and there is negative self-talk there. that difficulty is part of why i went into therapy. it is hard to not hear them though, when it will be harder to go to therapy without them helping to pay.

the questions of: why do you want to return to therapy? and what are you looking for in a therapeutic relationship? these are usually the first things the therapist herself asks when I sit down for the first meeting. so these are "day one" questions.

...but I should ask myself it again. over the past 2 months during this break I've been sort of working on those questions...among other things....in my mind. but i have yet to put them out consciously yet. i am planning on starting that soon...sometime in the next week.

...i think if I do go back, the first session will be a sort of an "exploratory session" -- to see if it is worthwhile to return...

i can't fully answer the questions you posted, other than saying:

i have no real relationships, do not make any efforts to find them, and do not know what a relationship "looks like" because of intense self-loathing, anxiety, depression, paranoia and a sensibility about human interactions that has atrophied -- and since my "logical" mind says this isn't normal and an gnawing emotional pain suggests i need more -- i am attempting to find some way to change it.

in all honestly, if it was acceptable and had not been so adamantly anathemized over the centuries to brainwash us into thinking it is wrong -- i would like to choose to die. basically i'm still alive because i believe i have to be, not because i want to be.

....but that kind of thinking may be another reason why i need to return to therapy.

I was in therapy the last time from February 1996 through June 2005. Like Life, not all periods of therapy are full of motivation and clarity?

I was in therapy, basically 35 years of my life (started at college, 1970), because I was stuck inside my head and kept trying to make the area smaller and "safer" and eventually ended up in a too small, cramped area and realized smaller and safer wasn't going to work. I had to reverse that and man was that hard!

You are alive now and that, sometimes, is one's only motivation to work at and keep doing it? Since you're looking for motivation, that "search" is sometimes all you'll have as motivation. There's a dissatisfaction somewhere making you search.

For me, that was often enough. I didn't miss any therapy sessions (nor did my T) and I kept going whether bored or motivated or we said nothing (the first time I was in therapy with this T, from 1978-1987, I didn't "get" anywhere until the last year or two!). Sometimes I would just keep plugging away because there was nothing else I could do and because I'm tenacious that way.

I hate to "exercise." I spent several years trying to think up alternative/"natural" ways to exercise. I had a mailbox and post office 1/2 mile from my home so I started mailing postcards to myself daily, walking to the post office to mail them :-) I'd find/write a quotation on each that I liked. On another walk I fould 9 pennies halfway through my "route" and so I created a fantasy about "The 10th Penny" :-) For weeks I walked the exact same route looking for that penny and finally thought of "crazy"/creative things to do like ask the next person I encountered if they had a penny they'd give me. I wrote stories like "Imagining John" about an invisible/imaginary personal trainer and the girl who imagined him and talked to him, etc. and others saw :-) She couldn't afford to join a gym and I thought of all sorts of exercises one could do outside without "real" equipment (pull a head-high, two-inch thick, tree branch down to one's shoulder) She even mentioned John in her sleep so her boyfriend misunderstood and got jealous and all sorts of other adventures ensued. I wrote a story about a school where you had to write "action" stories and then go out and live the story during the next week (so be careful what you write :-)

I love your real story about the coat. Can you start from scratch and make a story for therapy? I use to use "workbooks" like The Castle of the Pearl by Christopher Biffle, and Following Your Path by Alexandra Collins Dickerman. I lived near an "antique mall" with hundreds and hundreds of booths and use to take $10 only and go walk and look for "the" thing that spoke to me :-) I love stories and symbolism (and Jung). Find some little thing that gives you a story forward or hope. . . For a long time I had to use my therapist for hope, went to therapy in case she said something "important" that would sustain me while I searched and struggled. That worked well.

i have been thinking throughout the day about your words, Perna. i think your use of stories in your life spoke to me, because I love to create fiction, poetry and other creative things (if i could do anything, i'd become a full time writer of fiction and poetry)...so your words spoke to me.

the main hesitation in using "stories" in therapy is i have been doing it all along and i fear that it keeps me out of the real world. i have been disconnected from the "real" world so much over the past 20+ years.

So, write a story you have to "enact"? Surely you've read books and wished you could enter the book world? :-) Start each day with a "task" like you're on a quest?

I know what you mean about being disconnected from the real world; I caught myself once complaining in my journal because the plants and things I'd bought for my little garden right out my front door, 20 feet from me were dying because I wouldn't get out of my chair and walk 20 feet and "do". So, I was complaining about my complaining about my not doing, LOL. At one point though I "got it" briefly and realized I could "do" anything at all I wanted, didn't have to just complain I wasn't doing.

(if i could do anything, i'd become a full time writer of fiction and poetry) -- so, start?

Restless and bored
An unused sword
She champed at the bit
A one-person horde