In Session Today: Part VI

T cancelled again. She rescheduled for the same time tomorrow. I wasn’t even surprised. Every time I have had a rough previous week she cancels.

I'm glad she rescheduled, but that sucks. I'm sorry.

We started with me telling him that it was three years yesterday that we first met and talking about the progress that I had made. I told him that I hadn't self harmed for around 615 days now which he said was fantastic. In talking I mentioned that I didn't think I would live beyond 26 if I hadn't met him.

I still cried a lot.

We talked about his break. That I could picture him with his M&S turkey.

We talked about crisis sessions.

My mood swings even during the session--> Crying to really happy.

I didn't think I could tell him this but I did at the end, which was hard because I do feel a lot of shame about this: being jealous of his family.

That I had seen his new photos with his daughter and that I did feel hurt seeing them especially the one with her arm around his neck. That he was leaving me to spend even more time with them when he already did spend a lot of time with them already.

One of the comments that he made was that my father didn't deserve me.

I said I'd confirm our next session.

Then I said that I hoped he had a nice holiday.

I didn’t have the best session today. I got suddenly sick to my stomach and couldn’t focus. Then I guess my therapist mentioned something about Pdoc wanting me to try visteral for my anxiety. I had called him the other day asking him to increase my geodon And the first thing that came out of my mouth when she said that was “does that mean I’m not getting my Xanax?” I felt like I sounded like a total addict. I have no idea what it means but I told
her I am not taking visteral because I had a bad reaction to it. So I’m just not going to return Pdocs call and I just won’t have him do anything with my meds. She said not to worry about it. But yeah I think once I felt really sick to my stomach I kind of dissociated for the rest of the session and I act loopy when I dissociate.

A snippet...
T: It's good to see you.
Me: I'd say it's good to be here, but that would be a lie. I don't want to be here. I didn't want to come today. That's usually when I most need to come.
T: (nods) Yeah.


Another snippet...
T: You're right. (Keeps talking a little.)
Me: Wait, will you go back and say that again?
T: (laughs) You're right. Now you can hear my voice in your head, saying you're right. Whenever you need it.
Me: Yes! (laughing) Wait, I'm not so sure that is a great idea. I'll just be right all over the place.

The end...
T: You didn't want to come, now you don't want to leave.
Me: I don't....Can I just curl up under this blanket and take a nap? I am so tired.

When I got to my car I was so completely overwhelmed by the idea of taking a nap that I started crying. When that cleared out, I realized...I am so lonely. It's exhausting.

I hate it when the work STARTS after a session. Bleah.

Last session and today, has been rough sitting in silence for 50 min. Why cant saying i dont know what to say be a que for you to say something!!! What the hell do you want from me!! Why cant "I DON'T KNOW. " be just that, Even though i say it all the time. I feel when i truly dont know its still is not enough! Jan 2 might be my last.

Today’s last session of the year was a doozy. R arrived and apologised again for not being able to make yesterday.
‘How are you doing? Big open question, just what you want.’
‘Swallow tea, and then laugh…I have been feeling wobbly since Sunday, which was the 15th, which means there is a month to go until the first January trigger date.’
I explained that a change in arrangements with the care company had been communicated to me at the last minute via text.
‘This meant that somebody would be shadowing the shift with a support worker whom I get on rather well with. There are three people in the team who know…well, not everything..’
‘They have an understanding?’
‘Yes.’

‘When you said that they’d told you rather than asked you, I immediately felt that. What was your emotional response?’

‘Frustration. She turned up unaccompanied on Wednesday morning, which turned out to be a very good thing.’ I started to talk about the Christmas party at work, and then redirected myself back to my original story.
‘We had an honest conversation about the festive period – we’re both on the same page about that. Then she finished her shift, we were chatting by the door. I could barely speak, so nodded my way through the conversation, and then found myself crying.’

R asked whether there was any warning, to which I replied that I could feel myself slipping.
‘The first thing I said to her that morning was “Please don’t let me get stuck in my head today.” There are only a few people on my team I can say that to. I asked her for the phrase ‘You are safe’ once, and she inserted it into our conversation twice more.’
‘She met that need without you having to express it. It sounds like there’s an understanding there, and then a goodbye?’

‘Yes.’ I then mentioned the meeting before the work Christmas party, and the fact that I respond to every mention of the move like a new loss.
‘Is it fear?’
‘Fear of being unsafe.’
I told R that I was surprised by my response to information I already knew.
‘This has come up before at the last board meeting. Work helps you feel safe.’
‘But I know it can’t be everything.’
‘Yes, that is very realistic.’
‘One of the traditions at our work Christmas party is ghost stories. It’s good, I like them. But there was one on Monday night where a death in a bathroom played a significant part.’
‘Oh, no!’
‘Judging by your reaction to that, I think you know how I felt.’
‘How did you deal with that?’
‘I had to stay.’
‘You say that, but you have talked about situations in the past…pottery class, where you were not able to stay.’
‘It was an entirely internal experience.’

I told R about the songwriting workshop at work on Saturday. ‘I was not leading. The songwriter who was leading encouraged us to bring instruments, so I did. He asked about my writing, and I thought I would play one.’
‘In front of the whole group?’

‘This was before the workshop started. If I had been leading, I probably would have taken time to play one of mine.’

‘It’s good to hear you visualising what it would be like if you led.’

‘The song I chose was safe. I played a couple of verses, and then Amanda came in and said ‘Lost! I didn’t know that was you.’ That was amazing.’

‘I have never heard you describe something you have done as amazing. What was it that was amazing? Was it the sense of being recognised?’

‘I got lost in it for a couple of minutes.’

‘Was it because it was work?’

‘Yes. After Amanda came in, I stopped. I didn’t finish the song.’
I went on to explain the February Album Writing Month challenge – 14 songs in 28 days.

‘After January 2011, I don’t think I participated much. ‘Electrocute’ is the one I remember. There are challenges where you are given a title and an hour to write and record a song.’

‘All these challenges!’

‘Then there’s the challenge in July – 50 songs in 90 days. I think I have only done that once. The title and an hour challenges are called ‘skirmishes.’ After January 2011, I thought…I said to the Universe, ‘I don’t care if I ever write a song again!’
‘Some anger there?’
‘And then there was a skirmish with ‘Night Light’ as the title. I was learning a new guitar technique at the time, and mastered it well enough to play some chords. My friend had a birthday party and invited me to bring a guitar. I played that and a cover, and by the second chorus, people were singing along.’
‘I don’t know what you do to me, but I am picturing you with your guitar, and you are open. Then, maybe as a result of what you have been through, you closed.’ R asked me whether my songwriting was as much a part of my life as my writing.
‘Yes.’
‘If you write songs half as well as you write, I can imagine they’re quite emotional.’

‘There’s a George Harrison interview, released around the same time as his last album. ‘With the addition of music, and the value of sound, it touches places other things don’t touch.’
‘When I was training, we were warned that writing is a fast track to emotions, so be kind to yourself. They weren’t lying.’
‘I haven’t been able to touch my journal all week.’
‘It sounds like you’ve had a pretty busy week, even without the triggers. How do you feel now you’ve come to the end of it?’

‘Drained.’
‘And I can’t control my emotions any more, so I stopped. I just want to show up to my own life.’
‘That’s a goal, right there.’

‘Maybe it is time we moved in that direction. I did some thinking yesterday, because I had time…’

‘You had loads of time to think, sorry about that.’

‘We have had that goal of expressing emotions for a while, I want to get more specific.’ I handed R the paper I had written on.

• Express the anger rather than ‘sparing’ people
• Continue to work towards expressing needs comfortably in session
• Understand limits and develop strategies to reduce overwhelm and outbursts.

I said to R that I was still trying to work out what +SAFETY meant…’and I wrote it!’ She said she thought it had been added as an afterthought, although it is the foundation. Fear coming out – ‘Got to be safe!’
We talked about expressing needs in session, R feels that I have got better at this over time, specifically since last November.
‘Even though that [crying in session] was so uncomfortable for you, I feel like you peeled off a layer. After that, you took control of the sessions.’
‘I feel..’
‘Go on, Lost. Filter down.’
‘I feel guilty over the weekly bloody emails. As we are heading in a deeper direction, I am finding the aftermath difficult.’
R said that the ‘deeper direction’ made sense.
‘Your guilt is your guilt, but I don’t mind. And you don’t email every week. If you think back to the very beginning…I don’t think that was in the contract. I think that was something I offered, and not something you asked for.’
‘You offered, and you can handle it.’ She reaffirmed her boundaries around email. She will respond if she has the chance.

‘The Critic gets vocal: ‘Save it for session!’
‘Is that related to safety? Some of the content is quite vulnerable.’
‘Yes, I think so. I have been meaning to ask for a while, this is a stupid question.’
‘Question, go.’
‘You are the only person who has access to your emails?’
R confirmed that this is the case. She accesses them on her phone and laptop, both of which are secured. We then moved into a conversation about our work over the year. R said that she experiences me as somebody whose ability to give to others and ability to give to myself are unequal. She wondered whether I could bring that more into balance. I added self-compassion to my list of goals, and asked R whether cultivating self-compassion might help me tolerate the anger.
‘Perhaps. Do you feel that you are deserving of compassion, kindness and love?’
‘Huge question there.’
‘I can leave it with you. I want to apologise.’
‘Yes, I feel I am deserving of all those things, but when somebody looks at me a little too kindly, I might break.’
I said to R that it had taken me a long time to realise that she is not P.
‘That’s understandable. That experience was deeply hurtful to you. It must have been…’Is this what therapists do?’
R then mentioned that she had shared the poem I wrote with her supervisor, and that her supervisor cried.

‘She said that you’ve summed up the relationship in words. And for me…I don’t ask for feedback, but if I was going to, that would be some of the best I have ever received.’
‘By next time I see you, I should know whether they are going to publish it.’

‘Whatever happens, know that I will cherish it. Is there anything you wanted to say about our relationship?’

‘Just…I really appreciate you working with me. Emphasis there. Thank you for working with me.’
‘I was glad I could make it today. It didn’t feel right…I need to see Lost before the break’
We exchanged Christmas cards, and R reiterated that if I need to email over the break, I can. ‘I’m offering.’
Her final words were wonderful. ‘May you be as present as possible over the Christmas period. Have a lovely Christmas.’
Next session is on the 9th of January.

Today went fine. I told her I think I pissed off Pdoc and she told me not to worry about it and if I did my appointment is more then a month away so maybe he’d have forgotten about it by then. I told her about calling into work on Saturday. She didn’t say anything and I got the sense she wasn’t judging me about it. She doesn’t tend to judge in general about anything. The session was just normal today. I did ask her if she was a Trump supporter and she told me they are not supposed to discuss politics but she knows how big trans rights are to me so she told that no she is not a Trump supporter. I didn’t even say that’s why I was asking. Therapists are smart. One funny thing that happened is I asked her why she was smiling and she said “it’s like from that movie Elf, I like smiling.”

My session went pretty good today. For some reason halfway through or a little bit more I get very suddenly sick to my stomach. I’ve mentioned it to her and she says it could be the lunch she eats. I think she eats odd stuff. She also said that a client that comes in before me is around people who smoke. But these past few weeks this sudden wave of nausea has hit me and I’m not sure if it’s real or not. It’s never happened in any other therapists office before and the feeling passes when I leave her office. She said I looked and was doing good though.

Hope it is okay to comment on your post @Mountaindewed, just wondering if the nausea could be anxiety? I've had that happen to me before in therapy. Just a thought. May not fit your situation. HUGS Kit

I was thinking that could be it today. She did ask me an anxiety provoking question right before I felt sick. The other times I’m not sure. I think it could be what she is eating or the client before her. But anxiety might be the cause sometimes.

I've felt like I could be sick in T's before as well. Or have started having a panic attack (like today) I've found that sometimes it's because I need to say/share something but am afraid. Or sometimes it's that I need to let emotion out, like to cry. So if I feel that way (assuming it wasn't something I ate), I think, "OK, what do I feel the need to share but am afraid to?" Which is something that happened today.

My session went fine today. I’m not sure she totally got that I was only moody because I’ve been physically sick since New Years Eve. I’m actually doing quite good besides that. But whatever.

Today’s session was gruelling. R came in and sat down.
“I was going to ask how you are, but that doesn’t feel appropriate, so I think I am going to say nothing, and let you start.”

I began by saying that I felt awkward bringing so much new stuff up by email. R reassured me that I don’t need to feel awkward, and that life stuff happens.

“If you expect to continue on the same trajectory in counselling for weeks or months without interruption, that can be unrealistic. Life stuff happens, and dealing with the things that are like that [hand in front of face] is often the best way.”
I replied that Alex’s death had been the biggest thing over the break. I explained that I felt there had been a delay between the message being posted and my finding out, because I was responding to the initial post when I found out that Alex had died.
I went on to explain about another friend’s death in 2015, due to epilepsy. ‘I didn’t know until Kyle died that epilepsy could be fatal…it makes sense when you think about it logically.’
‘Unless you have that knowledge or experience, or know people with it, you wouldn’t.’
I mentioned that I didn’t think the seizure was ‘What…’

‘You don’t feel the need to know?’

‘I don’t feel as though I could cope with that information.’ I explained that my initial reaction to my friend’s post had been to think: ‘You know me, you know what I can handle…but then it became ‘This isn’t about you.’
I talked about my usual method of seeking support being ‘knock and run’.

‘At least there’s a knock.’

‘While you were away, Alex was a great source of support to me. I spent a lot of time talking to my friend Kat in Denmark, and I remember one night she said to me – ‘It’s late here, and I have to work in the morning, but if you need someone to talk to, Alex is a good listener.’ A couple of weeks later, I took her up on it. Now a lot of the people I would lean on are also grieving, and I want to be a support, but I can’t…’

I trailed off, and then said ‘I feel like a terrible person for needing support.’
‘If somebody came to you needing support, would you think they were a terrible person?’
‘No. I am more comfortable giving support than needing it.’

‘There is a difference – you just said you feel like a terrible person for needing support, but there is a difference between what we need and what we are comfortable with. You are more comfortable giving support, and you have the skills to do that.’
‘The Critic is piping up – “This isn’t about you!”’

‘This space is about you.’

‘The thing about this experience is that it has exposed…insufficiencies within my support system. How can I give support if I don’t know where mine is coming from?’

‘It’s a flow. I know what you are saying, and I can relate. I have always been more comfortable being a giver. Strong, capable R. That’s how people think of me, but there have been times where life has thrown stuff at me that I have had to say ‘I need some help.’
I talked about the challenge of watching Kat go through what I went through when Chris died, and wanting to help, but being told that she needs to be alone, and promises to let me know when she needs me.
R asked why I want to help, and I replied that it is likely more to do with wanting to help the version of myself that I couldn’t help when I was grieving.
Because of my detour about my other friend, we did not talk about everything on my list. I managed to flag up that I am bracing for the 15th.
‘I can feel it. Do you want a hand?’ I accepted.
‘At this time of year, I am just emotionally exhausted.’

R offered to guide me through some deep breathing together.

‘If you’re doing this again, or another time, remember you are doing the best you can. You are trying. Use the positive affirmations, or we can work on some more…’

As I continued to breathe, R continued to speak.

‘Nothing is permanent. Emotions, surges…they will pass.’

We talked about spending a session after the trigger dates on strategies to decompress.
‘I don’t want to use the word recover, because that sounds terrible.’

‘Recovery is a good word. As your therapist, it is my responsibility to ensure that I leave you in as safe a position as possible.’
R asked how I was feeling, and I could not answer.

‘Are you OK to leave it there?’

We set up for 10:00am next week.

Just wanted to say that I'm sorry for your loss, LostontheTrail. And that sounded like a very powerful session.

Tuesday's session so not exactly today.

I read to him from my diary about our last rupture- from when he went away for a week in october and also didn't respond to an email I sent him. Using his own words that he was sorry and would try to be less unpredictable.

That I didn't know where he was and I could not reach him.

That he did the same thing again, but this time the time he was away was longer. That he was a rule breaker. (10 days reply time during holidays. )

I told him that it felt like he always changed the rules, without telling me first. That he did previously reply whilst he was away.

He logged into his email account and read the email I sent. it was just "Hi with a smiley face and my name. He laughed and said that it didn't look like it needed a reply. If I don't want a reply I write it at the bottom.

He backtracked when I began to cry.

He apologized for not seeing what i needed.

I said i don't think he knew me if after three years he didn't know why email was important to me.

He brought up dependency. I said that was basic T 101.

He asked what was going on when I emailed.
Actually an fight between my parents- but I didn't tell him that I'd also been called a pig, a ***** and that i was no good.

We had the exact same rupture before in october and it actually took until the 27th of november to sort out. It just feels like he did the same thing again.

I don't trust the fact that he will be there for me and the fact that he did seem to get it before.

Hugs, Lemon...

A snippet:

Me- It's like a roof leak. It looks like the roof is blocking out the weather. I can say that I know I am smart, that my opinion matters, that I am good at figuring things out, but the water found its way in somewhere. It's insidious, and it rots away the beams. I keep finding places where the messages have gotten through the roof, but there's no time or energy to do the repair.


T- You can't repair a roof while it's still raining. It's been raining pretty hard.

I sort of got angry when I first got in there. But we talked things out. The rest of the session went fine. I told her about work. And about going off the visteral and being fine without it and how my anxiety was just situational because of social security. I didn’t tell her everything like how I had started dieting. In fact I told her I wasn’t dieting. She said to me “since your off the visteral how has your hunger been?” I told her it was back to normal. And she said “so your not restricting and going the other way?” I said no because I’m not restricting but I didn’t tell her I am intentionally losing weight. I don’t want to start an argument. I seriously don’t get why she thinks everything is an eating disorder. But she does. I’ve lost about 7 pounds since last week so I don’t know if she could tell I’ve lost weight and that’s why she was bringing it up or if it was just a random question. But I really don’t feel like getting into it with her.

My session went very well today. We talked mostly about my doctors appointment last week. We talked a bit about work. I’ll be moving a few hours away sooner then later and she was giving me names of therapists who specialize in what I need. She was saying she could set me up with them and talk to them. She asked me if I knew what a binder was which was kinda awkward but I do want to learn how to use one so she’s going to find a video on YouTube and show me next week. I’m glad everyone in my life is so supportive.