[CyclingPsych]

I always tell myself how I am going to open up in therapy before I go into every session. I come in with a list of things to talk about and I always shoot the **** and get side-tracked. I brought this up to my T today and he said whenever youre ready you can say what's on your mind". I feel like I will never get around to bringing anything up!! I have something serious to talk about next session and I feel like he won't believe me or that he would think I am weird. (past trauma) and I just don't know. I feel like therapy is just pointless now and that I won't get anywhere with it.
This happened with other therapists I saw in the past! I always leave session angry at myself because of this .

[Hobbit House]

I've never been able too either, although I think I'm getting closer.

[Argonautomobile]

I can relate. Any chance you can write some things down and give that to your T? I find that much easier (though still difficult) than trying to speak.

[mindwrench]

Sometimes there is things we just don't feel like we can ever talk about. For everything else I write it down. I wrote down everything that I thought I could ever talk about at some point and gave it to my T. He knows a lot of it is off limits for now. But at least he knows who he's dealing with. Your T doesn't know what they don't know, and I think it helps if they know what you're working up to.

[AllHeart]

That's a tough boat to be in as I know it all too well. Would it help if your t directly asked you to start by bringing up one thing on your list? Can you ask him to help keep you on track? After two years, I still need my t to take lead of my sessions otherwise I can't talk about anything important. We eventually figured out that in order to get me started it literally takes my t saying, "Okay, Allheart, let's cut the small talk. Would you please tell me one thing on your list you'd like to talk about today?" It's like I have a don't ask, don't tell policy. I need to be prodded. Also, I will sometimes email my t the night before a session and tell her I need to discuss "xyz" with her tomorrow and to please help me make it happen by bringing it up. Hope you can find something simple like this that helps you out!

[SoupDragon]

I had a few difficult things to talk about, but that I didn'the feel ready to talk about. So my T suggested giving each of them a one word label and putting them in an imaginary locked box in the room. That way we both knew they were there to talk about at some point, but that I had control of when to bring them out. It meant they were never forgotten.

[MBM17]

Oh my gosh I'm struggling with this SO MUCH!!! So much. My semi-assignment for this week is to write a letter to my therapist with the things that I'm so terrified to tell him. I'm terrified that he will see who I really am and tell me we can't meet anymore. The obvious solution is to continue to keep the things secret that I'm worried he won't like.

But I realized this last year that when I shared with him some of the biggest emotional issues, he actually helped with them. After all these years of silence and hiding them, finally I had some help and closure. So it makes me want to just tell him everything and get help and acceptance, but I'm so scared that he'll tell me to leave. I haven't been able to be 100% in therapy, and it makes me feel isolated and like there's a wall.

[annielovesbacon]

I feel this, too. I feel like I waste my time in therapy because I talk about "simple" mental health things when actually there are so many more things that are complex that I really need help with, but I just can't open up about it.

Originally Posted by CyclingPsych

I always tell myself how I am going to open up in therapy before I go into every session. I come in with a list of things to talk about and I always shoot the **** and get side-tracked. I brought this up to my T today and he said whenever youre ready you can say what's on your mind". I feel like I will never get around to bringing anything up!! I have something serious to talk about next session and I feel like he won't believe me or that he would think I am weird. (past trauma) and I just don't know. I feel like therapy is just pointless now and that I won't get anywhere with it.
This happened with other therapists I saw in the past! I always leave session angry at myself because of this .

Taking in a list isn't really how therapy or the unconscious works. To get what we need to talk about, we sometimes need to chat 'rubbish'. It's the path in to the unconscious. Find a T that knows there stuff.

[Sarmas]

I've been in the same boat. I've had a difficult time doing so and tried to find multiple ways around it. My T suggested at one point writing it out and bringing it to session or emailing her. The emailing went wrong and I refused to write things on a paper due to past issues. I felt stuck and she thought that she was then getting frustrated because I told her that I had information to share which she needed to know in order to truly help me. We were stuck in that cycle. I was working on throwing at her one or two little small things in my sessions to see if I could start opening up but it was ineffective as well.

[growlycat]

I like the idea of writing a list of things that are difficult to bring up. I may start my own taboo list.

[MobiusPsyche]

A few months ago I wrote a list of "top ten things I can't tell T." I worked through telling her one by one over the course of many sessions. She didn't want me to give her the list, she wanted me to work up the courage to tell her about the things on the list. It helped.

I also keep a "stoopid list" of things I'd like to talk to her about but that I think are to stupid or trivial, or things that I should know already, or whatever. These are low stakes things, the purpose of the list is just for me to have stuff to talk about other than just small talk. That type of list might be easier than the "top ten" list idea, at least to start with.

I hope you're able to work out a way to open up.

[mostlylurking]

Sometimes I find it helpful to think of different parts of myself like an internal cast of characters. For example, one part of you wants to open up and share the tough things with your T to get some help. Another part of you is scared to do that and manages to successfully sidetrack you with small talk every session (because I'm guessing that's a semi-conscious thing, a defense mechanism). Can you ask your scared "part" what it's afraid of? And then -- whatever it is that it's afraid of -- the other "parts" of you would try to reassure it that you've got it handled and you will be able to take care of the scared part.

They do this kind of thing in Internal Family Systems. It's weird at first to think of yourself almost as if you have multiple personalities, but I find it really useful whenever I'm conflicted or paralyzed.

[MBM17]

I spent several days working on a semi-assignment to write a letter to my therapist (to email) with all the things I'm so scared to tell him because I'm so scared he'll say, "Wow, this girl needs to chill out, she's way too intense, I'm done here." I spent literally hours every day this week thinking about it and editing it. I had like four drafts of the letter and three email drafts saying I CAN'T DO THIS. I spent so many hours going over what I'd written, deciding it was stupid, editing it, adding things, feeling like that was stupid...

This morning, I'd just written like four emails to other people, and finally I was like, I'M DOING THIS so I cut and pasted a section of my planned letter and sent it to him. I was terrified for a while afterwards, maybe half hour and then I was able to focus on my son's birthday party.

This thread helped me to actually send it. I don't know what he'll say on Monday at our session. I did send him a brief, panicked email right after I sent the full email. I asked him to not freak out and that I know I'm making a bit deal out of nothing and I'm doing everything wrong and I'm sorry. I guess now I'll just try to ignore the whole thing until Monday because otherwise I start to get hot and panicked and sweat and feel dread and shame. Not pleasant.