Long term therapy

I've been in and out of therapy for over twenty years. I've been with current T for five years.

It's starting to get into a rut. I show up and ramble on about my anxiety. He encourages me to explore the feelings, but part of me locks up and shuts down.

Then we end up BSing about stuff that happened during the week.

I really need to layout how I'm going to stand up to the anxiety and get through it.

This reminds me of my counselor. I'm really goal oriented and always seem to need homework or an assignment to work on for each week after my appointment. He will give one sometimes. Sometimes he will tell me to go with what comes to me.

He's also told me, many times, "The slower you go, the more progress you make." Because I am so goal oriented, it's hard for me to take that in and believe it.

I have found though, the times that I have pushed and let that analytical part of me take over, it causes much distress and there has to be recovery time before I can go further.

I like his approach because it is laid back and he lets me go where I'm lead. I'm thankful for that!

I have been in therapy for 3.5 years and although I know it will take me many more I'm pretty certain now that I will be able to finish one day.

So far, my therapy is all about building a connection with T. As I've been extremely avoidant and emotionally cold and distant for my whole life then it has been very difficult. It doesn't mean that we have talked about it constantly but it has been the underlying theme. I think in the beginning it was very vague because neither me nor the T knew what we are looking for. Now, 3 years later some things have crystallised. But it has taken long time and lots of patience. I'm still not there but at least I have some conceptual understanding now what we are working on at all.

My T is all about healing happening in the relationship, especially in the case of early relational traumas that I have. It takes time to form a relationship and I just have to take this time. There have been many sessions where I have questioned what is the purpose of this therapy at all and what is it that we are doing and my T has told that the important thing is that we are together in this room and are looking for ways to be together emotionally. You cannot set something like this as a goal and then just talk yourself to that goal. It's more about how can I find what I'm feeling at those moments or how can I find my feelings at all.

I strongly avoid any intellectual discussion about whatever issues because I'm very intellectual person in my regular life and highly functional as well. My thoughts and feelings are almost completely separated and when I go to my intellect mode then any access to my feelings is cut off and then I feel my session is wasted. Thus, I basically never tell my T what is happening in my everyday life.

So, yeah, I find create value in long-term therapy. I know I can trust my T that he knows what he/we are doing. I know that realistically it will take me still many more years and I'm fine with that. I'm also pretty confident that when I finally find that I'm done then I won't hesitate to terminate.