[Banjolin]

After ending my relationship with the therapist I worked great with for almost 5 years, I started working with a psychiatrist who does therapy and med management. I think I like him a lot and we could work well.
I'm not surprised by it, but I'm having a hard time adjusting to working with a new therapist. I get so anxious I can't talk about anything even remotely related to why I'm there. Today it was so bad, he decided to check my vitals and my heart rate was like three times normal.
So we worked on getting me to calm down, he gave me a weighted blanket to put on my lap, got a table out so we could work on a puzzle, offered to play music etc. I felt stupid for "needing so much" and not being able to just talk, but it all did help me calm down.
Anyone else had an experience like this? I feel annoyed with myself that I sat there for 50 minutes, paid a ton of money, and didn't say anything that related to why I'm doing therapy.

[starfishing]

Sounds normal to me. Getting comfortable enough with the therapist so that you're able to move towards addressing what brought you there is a huge part of the work of therapy. Trusting someone new sucks, and is difficult no matter what. Let alone the potential difficulty of trusting a therapist given that it's not a typical reciprocal relationship.

I've never spent a session doing a puzzle or using a weighted blanket, but then again those aren't really things that would calm me down. I think any time spent moving towards figuring out how to talk about why you're there is time well spent, and figuring out how to be physically calm enough with him sounds like a part of that. My equivalent is probably the number of sessions I've spent with therapists in the past just joking around, or venting, or talking about my hobbies--I can't even consider talking about anything genuinely hard until I have a clear idea that the therapist might be trustworthy, which isn't easy for me.

[PurpleBlur]

Originally Posted by Banjolin

After ending my relationship with the therapist I worked great with for almost 5 years, I started working with a psychiatrist who does therapy and med management. I think I like him a lot and we could work well.
I'm not surprised by it, but I'm having a hard time adjusting to working with a new therapist. I get so anxious I can't talk about anything even remotely related to why I'm there. Today it was so bad, he decided to check my vitals and my heart rate was like three times normal.
So we worked on getting me to calm down, he gave me a weighted blanket to put on my lap, got a table out so we could work on a puzzle, offered to play music etc. I felt stupid for "needing so much" and not being able to just talk, but it all did help me calm down.
Anyone else had an experience like this? I feel annoyed with myself that I sat there for 50 minutes, paid a ton of money, and didn't say anything that related to why I'm doing therapy.

Chalk it up to building a foundation of trust so you can later feel safe enough not to need this anymore. It’s okay. You’re doing good work

[Taylor27]

Yes it took me a very long time to warm up and feel safe to trust my therapist. What you are going through is normal it takes time. Everyone is different

[SlumberKitty]

I think it takes a long time to warm up to a new therapist. It's great that he worked on getting you calm. Being able to get calm will eventually probably help you open up to the T and it was a caring gesture on his part. I hope that things will go smoothly for you soon with this T. You are doing hard work even if it doesn't seem like it to you. (((hugs)))