The Couch 150: Ceci n'est pas un couch

I just hope she has learned her lesson and never asks "is the longing more interesting than the work?" again. Ugh. Bad question. Or good but too hard.

I'm surprised to hear this. All the Ts I've ever worked with wait in silence until I'm ready to go on.

((Artemis))

I wonder why this is so hard? Because the answer is "yes"?

Oh, another thought. I'm glad I'm not the only one who is struggling with the "I know why I'm attached to T and it's all BS but this relationship is so important!" And it is important, but I feel like I elevate it higher than I should.

(((Art)))

No. Because it touched the empty hole inside me where I crave maternal approval. If that makes any sense.

Weird double post. Sorry guys!

It is an art form, Daisy, at which you and I are apparently particularly adept!

Very emotional session, y'all, which I shall post about shortly. Short version: I did what I set out to do and asked for what I want.

Today I got a job!

Okay session today. Terrible after session meltdown. Told my t about an emotionally painful dream about my husband. Thought I would feel better after sharing. Nope. Emotional meltdown in the car. Couldn't even return to work.

Emailed t afterwards telling him how horrible I feel now. Wishing he would respond without me asking him to.

healed, congratulations!

And also, today is mine and my husband's 14th wedding anniversary and it's not such s joyful day when your marriage has slowly falling apart over the last 4 years and neither of us acknowledged it today.. bittersweet day today.

congratulations on the job healed! Sorry about the sadness around the anniversary though.

Out of step luna here again. A lot of my feelings change on a dime. Or a quarter. Or by the next day. Not too many i can really depend on. Thats why i get into so much trouble.

So i dont really have a problem with feelings being fleeting. Which is not to say they werent true for that moment. But then you get more information, and boom! that feeling gets blown away. Thats how my feelings work.

This is how my youngest impersonates me. Monsters inc clip

Congrats Healed.

I am still not sure why we have feelinggs and what they are used for. Mine are all safely caged, except for the occasional stampede when fences arent maintained.

Whew, what a session. Emotionally wiped that's for sure. But, in a good way. I cried a LOT today. No surprise there. I told her when I got there, that I had done a lot of thinking and working on stuff in the past 3 weeks and said that I want to read what I brought all the way through before she said anything and she agreed that she would try to keep quiet. (She managed, btw.) I read the entire thing all the way through, pretty much sobbing through all of it, and then when I stopped she asked if she could talk now (imagine that) and I said "your turn". She said that it sounded like I had done a lot of soul searching, which of course I had. We talked about all of it, she gave her spin on things, asked some questions, clarified some things, I brought up a couple of dreams that sort of related, we talked about those, we talked about my Mother a bit. I told her how when I was pregnant with my son she had come out to visit and told me "You're so lucky to be pregnant because you want to be. I got pregnant with you because I felt like I had to." T goes "Oh, that's a nice thing to say to your daughter, that she wasn't wanted!" I said well, it's not like I didn't already KNOW that practically from birth, come on...

Oh yeah I also told her that I wished she had used the word "longing" before regarding my feelings for her. Because I never really got that that's what they are!! So we talked about that a little bit too.

I told her what I want too - that I want to re-commit to coming every 2 weeks until November to work through this latest piece of 'stuff' we uncovered during the recent very rough patch, and re-visit terminating in November. Because that's when we'd originally been planning to end until 7/21 when I quit in that email. She said that was very uncharacteristic of me. At least she didn't say I was possessed or anything thank Goddess.

I'm probably forgetting a lot of stuff. Seemed like we covered a LOT of ground. I told her that we felt 'back to normal' today which was a good feeling. And, before I left, I looked right at her and asked for a hug. I wasn't going to walk out of there today without one.

Thanks so much everyone for putting up with me through all my drama over this. As you all suspected, it was all in my own dumb head.

Oh yeah one more thing. She stated she was removing another word from my vocabulary (3 weeks ago she said I should stop saying "deserve" as in "I don't deserve good things" that kind of use.) Today she said I need to remove "I'm sorry" from my vocabulary. My h and son would be tickled pink if I were to learn how to do THAT. I apologize for EVERYTHING - it's like who I am, I don't know what would happen if I tried to go through one 24 hour period without uttering those words. I would probably explode. I can't do it on a work day, since per quality I am REQUIRED to say I am sorry on EVERY call. We have to find something to apologize for. I am not even kidding. So it will have to be a weekend day. I might try it just for grins this weekend.

But suppose you have a persistent feeling. Most of us know which feelings are fleeting and how much to value them. But when I kept feeling through my latest marriage that something was wrong, off, abusive about my husband's treatment of me, DBT would have had me qualify that. When what I really needed to do was trust that gut instinct - which would have saved me a few years of pain.

I've already been taught this whole wise mind thing since childhood, just under different names. So for me DBT would just reenforce the habits that helped get me into the mess I am in now. It's really not for people whose problem is accessing and accepting and taking into account their emotions, seems to me.

Idk. It just seems like the potential for retraumatization by holding up a sacred model that has to be conformed to and that makes general, theoretical assumptions about the patterns of individual lives is relatively high. I am not saying there isn't anything to it, and I suspect much depends on the quality of the practitioner - Flower Pants, who openly scolded people during group, would not be what I consider high quality.

MOST of my feelings change on a dime. I think my feelings live in a pinball machine.

Just learnt a new word-obscurantism: Deliberate restriction of knowlege.

(((@@))) we must have taken very different DBT courses! I didnt see my course as telling me to give anybody a second chance. It was more like, you got this response from this person, this person is not going to change, so what are YOU going to do? Keep fishing or cut bait? If youre gonna keep fishing, sigh - please retake the course and give us more money, thank you! of course, they wanted you to keep retaking the course to make sure whatever lessons stuck with you, but still!

O. M. G. Thats like an anti-word.

Sorry you're feeling worse :-(

I hope your T responds. It sounds like you're in a lot of pain. Take care of yourself. What are you up to for the rest of the day?