therapy tomorrow

i'm a little apprehensive after last time. i think i've done a fairly good job at showing him that i can take other peoples perspectives quite well. i understand why my father left. i understand why he needs to take time off. stuff like that. i think... he likes that. though he does keep pressing me 'do you feel angry about that? are you sure you don't have any anger about that?' it is hard (next to impossible) to feel angry if you are understanding something from someone elses perspective. if you just focus on that. if you focus on the frustrated needs then angry, sure, but impossible to feel angry if you just focus on the other persons point of view, their perspective and rationale behind their behaviour.

last time... i talked to him about some stuff i didn't know how to describe. i try and describe. i try and describe charitably, understanding things from the others point of view. but i'm also so %#@&#! angry at this particular person. sometimes i describe charitably and sometimes i describe uncharitably. i switch between the descriptions. i can't maintain one for long. people have a preference for single mindedness over completeness (in binocular rivalry people report rapidly switching percepts rather than an integrated percept) and i switch rapidly in my description of the situation.

and my anger is... unreasonable. unappealling. grotesque. vaguely frightening. and i don't think he liked it much. watching me go round and round and round in these head circles winding myself up. i wanted to show him. i wanted him to see. the time before we talked and i told him some hard stuff, but it was stuff i have a fairly clear view of. in a way this stuff is harder becuase i don't have a clear view of it yet. maybe i wanted to see how much he was willing / able to help me sort through this mess...

the session didn't feel very good. i think... he was longing for the previous one. me being cool and calm and collected and empathetic. me feeling the pain but in a manageable and collected way. feeling connected to each other. feeling nice and polite and vaguely loveable and empathetic.

or maybe i'm projecting.

i'm just... a little apprehensive about how things are going to go tomorrow. then... one more session then... his week off. to be with his kids. i don't know that he will tell me about his life anymore. thats kind of good. i didn't really know how to tell him that he shouldn't really tell me about his life. how come? because my psyche will try and stabotage things... the more i know his weaknesses the more my psyche will tap into those weaknesses and the more i'll feel like i need to censor myself otherwise burnout is immanent. he really shouldn't trust me too much... 'cause the anger might be directed at him one day...

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
alexandra_k said:
it is hard (next to impossible) to feel angry if you are understanding something from someone elses perspective. if you just focus on that. if you focus on the frustrated needs then angry, sure, but impossible to feel angry if you just focus on the other persons point of view, their perspective and rationale behind their behaviour.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">
That is so interesting! I never thought of it that way. It is classic behavior for me to always be able to view things from other people's perspective. And I don't get angry at them. Maybe that is why. Because I can view things from their perspective, their behavior just seems reasonable to me. Even my husband having affairs. I can see things from his perspective on that, so I haven't been angry. Maybe a bit sad. Alex, this is such an interesting insight. Thank you.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
the session didn't feel very good. i think... he was longing for the previous one. me being cool and calm and collected and empathetic. me feeling the pain but in a manageable and collected way. feeling connected to each other. feeling nice and polite and vaguely loveable and empathetic.

or maybe i'm projecting.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">
I think you could be right about that (the projecting). You really don't know he was feeling that way. I bet he wasn't.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
i'm also so %#@&#! angry at this particular person

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">
I think you are doing good to express that in session. And it sounds like your T accepted it well. You haven't given any evidence that he found you grotesque or unappealing. If nothing else, think of his training. This is what therapists are trained to do--receive and respond to their client's emotions, including anger.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
this stuff is harder becuase i don't have a clear view of it yet. maybe i wanted to see how much he was willing / able to help me sort through this mess...

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">
I hope he can help you sort it out. Will you talk about this same topic tomorrow?

Good luck tomorrow.

> It is classic behavior for me to always be able to view things from other people's perspective. And I don't get angry at them. Maybe that is why. Because I can view things from their perspective, their behavior just seems reasonable to me.

Yeah. I think that ideally we are meant to be able to consider things from their perspective, yes. But I also think that ideally we are meant to be able to consider things from our perspective. To hold those both together in our minds at the same time so that our anger and hurt can be acknowledged as real and as understandable, while it also being moderated by our knowledge of the perspective of the other. In an ideal world lol. I lose that... Can flip from one to the other to one to the other but holding them both together in my mind is so very very hard.

Yeah, I don't know how he was feeling... I suppose it is possible that I'm projecting my feelings onto him. I do do that. Sometimes if I want to know how I feel the fastest way for me to figure that out is to ask myself what I think he feels lol. But that being said, there might be some truth to that. I do think that he mirrors me sometimes so when I look at him I do see myself reflected back. Maybe the idea is that if I can feel empathy for him while he is mirroring me then maybe I can start to internalise that and feel empathy for myself. Maybe.

He does a couple of things that I really don't like. One is little comments about 'sucks to feel powerless' and I'm like 'I'm not powerless, I'm not'. Except I don't say that, I just ignore him and hope the part of him that says / thinks that will just go away. Another is that sometimes he sits back in his chair with his legs apart and kind of thrust out. One of my friends says that it might be that he is stretching his legs because he is tall and he isn't aware of how it comes across. I think he is too deliberative in his posture for that, however. I don't much like that. I think he does that when I'm expressing anger / annoyance (not at him). I guess the idea is that my anger / annoyance comes from feelings of powerlessness so I defend against the powerlessness by coming across as dominant and assertive and maybe even a bit domineering and narcissistic (I don't need him!) I guess that is when he does that, to kind of mirror me. Well... I really don't like that.

Though of course I'll never say that in one million years. Sigh. Cringe.

> Will you talk about this same topic tomorrow?

I'm not sure. I guess... I'm typically very passive when I arrive and I need him to say some things to kind of get me started on something. He can be kind of directive sometimes. Sometimes I resist a little and go on a tangent. That is kind of what happened last time, I think. I was trying to avoid having to talk about my abusive relationships (which I told him about the week before) and... My Mother... Trying to avoid having to talk about the pain too much. Just because... I really opened up about all that the week before and I need to be a little careful with myself. So last week I guess I got to this stuff instead... Maybe I'll return to that... Or maybe I'll return to stuff from the time before... Or maybe I'll think up something new.

Thank you.

so after my all nighter i was keen to talk about my work. i told him about my work habits (typically embarrassing, but since i had a productive evening not so embarrassing). he asked whether the pain might be less of an issue if i was more productive. i said i wasn't sure...

he asked whether i was avoiding the pain, or whether i thought it didn't need talking about. i said i don't see what the point is in talking about it sometimes. don't know what to say about it. feel it involountarily often enough for me to want to run with the good feelings when they are upon me. he said something about how the point is meant to be that talking about them helps them not come upon me involountarily at other times. he put that very gently... i said that i knew he was right but i forgot that at times.

sigh.

i told him how having less sleep (when i'm in the middle of a work buzz) makes me feel alive, kind of. motivated and buzzing. that i probably tend to oversleep and that results in my feeling lethargic. he said that often less sleep is prescribed for people with depression and told me four ways of going about that (where three have been studied empirically). i might try giving that a go. i'm going to try working with my natural work schedule (to start work at 11pm and work through to 3am) too... see whether that helps the productivity...

i said i didn't think the pain would ever go away properly. but that in a way... i didn't want that to happen anyway, because it would be kind of like a betrayal of myself. he said he found that interesting. he said that we didn't need to talk about the pain every session, but that he didn't think that i should avoid it either...

and that is about it. takes so long sometimes... so long for just a few meaningful things to come out. i guess i'm gonna have to talk about the pain. i kinda understand that one. i was thinking 'thats ok i can handle that so long as i don't have to feel the powerlessness'. i mean... i'm not consciously aware of feeling powerless the way i'm consciously aware of feeling pain at any rate. but then... that just means that its influence on my behaviour is outside my awareness :-(

things can be hard sometimes.

and now... back to work.

Interesting studies on sleep deprivation:

http://www.psycom.net/depression.central.sleepdep.html

I had read the (inevitable?) relapse makes it not worth it.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
he said that often less sleep is prescribed for people with depression

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">
That's really interesting, because my depression was the opposite. I had such a hard time sleeping, usually about 3 hours a night for several years. Every day was a study in exhaustion. One of the first things I worked on with my CBT counselor to combat my depression was getting more sleep. It was really helpful and one of the most important achievements of our therapy together. I now routinely get 5 or sometimes 6 hours a night. (Last night I was 5.) So I am very curious if getting less sleep will help you alex. How many hours a night do you usually get?

the relapse means you need to keep up with it. try missing a night or having a half night or whatever about once a week.

he said he didn't think they had tested getting an hour less every night but he said it might be worth trying that.

hard to say how much i sleep... but i expect it is about 9 hours.

i've heard that people who sleep under or approaching 7 tend to be prone to hypomania / mania and people who sleep 7 or well over tend to be prone to depression. of course there are exceptions and some people have sleeplessness as part of their depression.

i might try the one hour less... trouble is that my sleep schedule is fairly erratic. and there will be a temptation for me to just crash for about 12 or 13 hours like i do sometimes to kinda make up for it. like... i did last night. hmm...

sigh.

i just sent him an email about how he needs to trust me to be motivated rather than assuming that i'm avoiding whenever i'm not talking about the childhood pain.

i said about how the session where i was trying to talk about the boards... there are a lot of important (and painful) issues in there...

i said about how last session where i was trying to talk about productivity... there are a lot of important (and painful) issues in there...

that i think it is arbitrary whether i talk about the past or the present. so long as i'm emotionally connecting (which i'm %#@&#! well trying to do) then i don't see what it matters what the precise topic is.

that sure the present pain is related to the past pain
but that the past pain is only problematic cause it is experienced in the present

that i think it is arbitrary whether we start from past pain and work forward to how it manifests in the present
or whether we start from present pain and work backward to how it originates in the past.

i guess the trouble is that i'm not very good at conveying the PAIN that manifests in the present around the absense of productivity or in the context of online conflict.

i guess the trouble is heightened by his assuming that i'm avoiding because i'm not talking about when i was little.

am i rationalising my avoidance?

perhaps...

perhaps not...