Dear T: I Really Need to Tell You Something, but I Don't Know How...Part XXX

I am terrified that my letter is going to ruin our therapy. I wasn't sure that I wanted you to email me, but I do. I want you to magically reassure me that I am not broken or a bad person without diving too deeply into what I wrote you. It's been over 2 years and I'm still nervous that what I told you was too much. That there is something fundamentally wrong with me that can't be fixed.

Dear T, I know you told me to push through these side effects but they are unbearable and I’m stuck. Why didn’t you listen to me in the first place when I suggested celexa oh that’s right you ignored me and prescribed me something else. I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place right now 1. I can’t quit the medication that would be silly 2. I would ask you switch it it was a struggle trying to get you to switch me from Paxil so obviously that isn’t going to work either. I almost feel like saying skip it I’ll get my medication from my doctor and never see you again and wait for my new T. I really wish you would listen to me but you won’t.

I've been stuck on active countdown for three weeks, with three to go until the gauntlet of trigger dates. External pressure is mounting on everyday matters, and I have so little patience for it all in my current state. I'd like to rest, and wake up when all of this trigger date crap is over.

I don't think I am coping very well.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "talk about things." You know I'm not very good at talking. I wish you would tell me specifically what to talk about. But you probably want me to decide for myself.

You made your first appearance in my dreams last night. I think this means my brain likes you or something. I know that I missed having therapy this week. See you on Friday.

PS, seriously your socks are gross and I may anonymously send you some new ones.

Dear T,

all

the

feelings

Work is better. H is being really emotional/vulnerable (drunk) and it's like I have to just push him away. It's as if I am too overwhelmed. How hypocritical of me, me being the needy one. I am really in need of being stable and not having to modulate my emotions for at least a few weeks or more. I'm emotionally on empty. I would like to know what it is like being normal.

Hey t. I'm glad too that we were able to laugh about it. But I'm also worried that I've overstayed my welcome with that email I sent you last week. You were not too thrilled with my 'litigator' part. I'm still not sure I buy this parts work stuff anymore. Especially with regards to the "litigator" - it feels like avoiding responsibility, like I told you.

Anyway. I plan to ask you next time if I'm still welcome there. I want you to be honest with me, okay? I'm almost at the point of deciding that continuing to come there even when I don't think I 'need' to anymore but just because I 'want' to for continued self-exploration and learning is ok, heck I'm even on that street, just haven't pulled into the driveway yet haha, but I think I blew it by sending that email last week. I didn't mean to come across the way I obviously did. I think I may have finally succeeded in alienating you. Even though we had a really really GOOD session the other day, and we ended up laughing about that stuff, I still felt a major shift in the energy between us. Remember near the beginning of the session when you were saying that weird stuff and I asked if you would like me to just go? I forgot what you said in response to that. That was me feeling no longer welcome. I really am sorry, you know. Thank you for the suggestions for 'getting stuff away' from me without emailing you. I'm surprised that I took it as well as I did. Later I was thinking, y'know not so long ago, I would have "heard" you saying 'Bad Art!! Never email me again! I hate you!" but I didn't experience it that way. Well, I still felt the maybe I'm no longer welcome there part, but I felt that right away before we even started taking and I didn't take your suggestions about not emailing as being scolded or anything like that. I took it as, you heard me say that I was annoyed at myself for sending it, and you gave me suggestions on how not to send something in the future so I wouldn't be annoyed at myself. Anyway. I don't know what the point of any of this is. Except I think I missed having PC as a place to PUT stuff so I wouldn't email you. Hmmm.
p.s. I still think you're awesome and yesistillloveyou. There. I said it.

(PC folks I am not looking for any comments please.)

Dear T,

For some reason I'm thinking about ex T tonight. I am remembering how much I shared with him and how vulnerable I was with him. I told him things no one else knew, yet he betrayed me. He left me. I know why he did, but it still hurts.

I'm finding myself not wanting to open up to you. I don't want you to hurt me like he did. I don't want to share my secrets only for you to kick me out. Please don't do that to me. I can't handle another man leaving me.

Dear T,

Thank you for worrying about me. You have no idea how much that means to me that you actually care. I'll be ok and promise not to spiral while you are away. I have a plan in place and will have SO MUCH when you come back. 13 days to go. <3

oh and t, i wish i could briefly come weekly again. but i daren't ask because i feel like you don't even want me there at all anymore. especially since you didn't even look at your calendar thingy before i left the other day. i hope we're still scheduled for 3/29. but i won't email to find out. i'll just show up and if you're there and open the door at 5pm great, if you don't, well i guess i'll just go home, drink a glass of wine, and assume it's time to rip off the band aid and let you go. maybe i really have succeeded in pushing you away finally. that doesn't really totally make sense since we had such a good session the other day, but. the feeling is still there. stupid feelings. i know i know, they're not stupid they just are. And I'm not stupid, I just have these complexes and everybody has them. And it goes back to what I said 6+ years ago, that maybe I just need to get over myself. Easier said than done, I guess, huh.

p.s. yes, i realize i am creating drama where there probably isn't any. realizing when i'm doing it is the first step to stop doing it, right?

p.p.s. i wish i could talk to you tonight.

p.p.p.s. i still wish i could talk to you tonight.

Dear R,

This feels just like a break up even though I wasn't ever officially in love with you, but I did love you. With those two boys M and H- I had a different song that I played on repeat.

Our break up song is by Taylor swift. xD

"This is the last time I'm asking you why,
You break my heart in the blink of an eye"

(P.s I don't have an exact date for pathology, but it was at the end of May last year. Which means including today until the 15th I only 59 days left.)

Thank you for supporting me through this big change in my life. But I think it's time to start doing real work again. I hope you're ready.

Snow again. Now I'm worried I won't be able to make it to see substitute T tomorrow. Or maybe I'm worried I will be able to make it. I don't know. I don't know I don't know I don't know. It's only week now til you're back. I'm scared that you're angry with me for needing you too much. I'm just so afraid...it's a whole body feeling and there is no escape from it and every time I think it's eased off it's back even stronger. I wish I could be curled up on your sofa under a blanket and just sleep for a bit in a safe place.

That perfect storm feeling is here again. The curse of this is that it is so hard to actually explain...which is why I keep talking about it in abstract terms. I need to be more concrete about it, but that feels really difficult.

Same issue really - when I am in it, you can't be there as well. There's no way you can see what I see, feel what I feel...and it's such a lonely place to be.

Continue to ponder the idea of how therapy helps me see myself and the world around me as they are, without polyanna pretense that everything is just fine or with catastrophizing predictions about how everything can deteriorate in a second. In reality things and my people are good and sometimes I feel so lucky to be at this stage of my life and able to make the choices that I can. It has been hard, hard work and sometimes I could slip back into the place before I woke up and dropped my defenses and looked at my life straight up. Intentionality doesn't always feel better than just going along with how things have come to be. Maybe one day I'll be all the grateful for that. But I did not realize that therapy would come to be a place where I could just look at things without the b.s. and deal with that.

You said "I will try my best", and I believed you. All the parts of me believed you. Can't stop thinking about it now.

Dear T,
You didn't appear in my dream last night, but in the dream, I was thinking about things you'd told me and planned to apply them to a situation. So I guess some of your messages to me have made it into my subconscious. (Though I doubt the situation in my dream is exactly what you had in mind when you told me those things...)
See you in a couple days,
LT

I keep going to send u an email cancelling, but my finger just can't hit that button. I dunno what to do...

Am I still welcome there, t?

One of my closest friends said I should trust you. That it sounds like you're doing the right things and getting me to think about the right things. Hopefully my dumb brain will believe her, and everyone else in my life, sooner rather than later.

I stood in the lobby and looked at your elevator. I never miss sessions, and I wanted to come upstairs. However, the knot in my stomach ? I am trying to listen to what it says too.

Trying to be vulnerable & seen brings up bleak harrowing memories and feelings for hours after sessions, which is why I have elaborate ways of avoiding that situation in real life.

I agree with your boundaries and your expertise to set them for reasons known to you ( though cutting the 50 minute hour to 45 just seems gross ethos-wise) , and overall they are a great , safe, novel experience for me. They still hurt some times though . I stub my toe on your boundaries, or trip over one and fall on my face.

Having just fallen on my face tripping over a boundary that hurt last session by being sent out in tears at minute 45 when to me a therapy session is 50 , I have to report failure in the the vulnerability mission I assigned myself. .

In many ways, you are perceptive, clever,on your game, seasoned, trained, and devoted inside the session. In other ways, you seem in even more conflict than me, and I am the patient . How do you want to see/present yourself? You are the life-changing mystic psychologist from Ordinary People, wise , soulful, and giving; You loved the book A Four Hour Work Week, and you want clean and tidy four day week/ three patients per day, in which the patients smile and time goes by quickly.

What IS psychotherapy? you say it is an artificial relationship, and like no other. You have stuck with me, revealed me to myself , and even let tears shine in your eyes. You have also been dismissive, arrogant, and full of yourself- not such huge faults. You are likable,and you are friendly until challenged when you say things I find outrageous like women want children more than men or people who have affairs cant trust others bc they themselves are untrustworthy. You have too neutral a screen for me to say you are conventional, but I feel judged by such broad generalization.

I dont love you, but I like you very much- is that as a person? That is up for debate since I dont know if I do or do not know you as a person.

One thing is for sure, a conversation with you goes on in my mind a whole lot of the time, nd it crowds out BF and others. Is this saving my life ? I have overall improved dramatically under your care. There improvement comes with such anguish on my side, and what on yours? Dunno.

You hurt my pride and my feelings so often, and you also help me grow. What a messy project, one which I b both do and do not want to quit in seemingly equal measure.

I am scared of you.