Being open

Do any of you have suggestions to give about being open with T. I have a hard time with this and I have been working with her for almost 3 years. I trust her and all, I just have shut things down so much and shoved it all that it is hard to get to. Any suggestions?

Start with small things and work up to larger ones depending on how she responds to the small ones.

Take a chance with something you know you can recover from if, for some reason, your T doesn't understand or gets it wrong, etc.

Write down 8-10 individual things you feel you would like to tell her and then rank order them according to how hard they feel they would be to tell her and start with the easiest and think of an incident that illustrates it, etc. Then tell it as a little story and simply tell her at the beginning or end of the story that you find/found it difficult to tell her the story because it seem(ed) so hard/scary or whatever.

I also have a hard time opening up in therapy. I become this uptight person who can't even put a sentence together, that's how bad it is sometimes. I don't know how to relax...he is very reassuring but I still can't do it. Help!

Jennifer,
I've been in therapy now for like 9 months and spent most of the first 5 months looking at the floor and saying "i don't know." Then next 2 months expressing myself in written form. It has only been in the last 2 months that I've actually started to force my mouth to speak. Just keep plugging away. I can't say at this point it gets any easier. But I can say, if you have a good T, the crap inside will eventually make it out in one form or another.

Yeah I guess you are right, I mean I have made alot of progress, I think I am just trying to force myself to get better faster. I don't think that is really good for me, I shouldn't be so forceful on myself. I think it's because there are alot of people who have always placed high expectations on me. Well being second in my class and now that it's been 4 years since graduation, I really have nothing to show for it. I have been having major issues the last 3 and well I am not even really going to college right now, I work 8 hours a week and am on SSI, sometimes I wonder, what kind of life is that for someone who is actually fairly intelligent. It deffinitely gets in my way quite often. I actually think my intelligence itself gets in my way of getting better, I am an expert avoider and I find ways to weave in and out of situations, that is how I learned to dissociate I believe. I am also very creative and artistic so the combination of the two can be a blessing but a curse as welll.