Talking in therapy

Rapunzel,

Yeah, I am more introverted though the students with me at clinicals tend to disagree, they say I am very good with communication and in asking questions. Even when I have done teaching presentations to a group, they tell me I am such a natural. They have no idea how stinking nervous I really am. I despise doing group presentations. It's totally different talking and asking questions in a small group as opposed to presenting to a large group.
I have also always been very sensitive to others and don't like for people to be angry with me. I can count on one hand how many people I have ticked off in my whole life. I am generally just easy going and can pretty much get along with most people.
I hate to argue or upset people. The problem is, I will do things I don't like so as not to upset people, that's an area I could certainly use work in.

I understand the email issue becoming a crutch. I usually email my T one email after each session, sort of just a processing of the session type email. So that's one email a week. She writes back very short replies. She never tells me she doesn't like me doing it. In the beginning she told me I could email her because I had said sometimes it easier for me to open up that way.
However, the last time it took her three days to get back to me which had never happened before. This time I emailed her thursday and have still not heard anything back. That gets to me some. I think of it this way, if you don't want me to do it, just tell me and I won't. I hate being left to feel like I did something wrong. My first thought is, is it bothering her that I email her. She's great in session, as far as being sensitive, maybe she just doesn't understand the email issue with me. I would suffice with a simple recognition that she got it. I don't know, thats sort of confusing for me.

Chaotic,
LOL chaotic, I don't like being singled out either. When I ask questions they are on my terms lol; I have time to prepare them in my head, it makes it much easier to ask it, than it does to answer a question when being put on the spot.
I love what your therapist said, and I think she is correct in saying they are two different things. I mean, what if we turned the topic onto our T's and started asking them personal question about how they feel, wonder how many would clam up lol...

Hangingon

So your needs took a back burner to the duties that you had to perform for the family. So now it is habit. You can break this habit with work and focus. I think that we learn how to take care of ourselves and our needs by our parents doing it for us first. If this was never done, we never learned. It is never too late to learn. You had to deny your needs every day while you were taking care of everyone else while growing up. That sort of message really gets imprinted in your brain.

What I found with myself, however, is that I had a thought in my head that prevented me from meeting my own needs and once I uncovered this thought I was able to identify and meet my needs without any problems.

Many people have mentioned how easy it is to function at work as compared to your personal life. Work gives you a very clear role to follow. It worked well for me too. With our personal lives things were never clear........

This would be a good thing to work on.

About your T and the email thing. You won't know what is going on with the delay in her answering you unless you ask her. Trying to figure out what is going on in someone else's head is really a losing game. I gave it up once I realized that I was always wrong in my assumptions on why people do what they do. You just have to ask them...........

Sannah,
Yeah, I did put my needs last. I actually feel selfish when it comes to talking about my needs or doing things for me.

This is something that I will try to work on in therapy, though I imagine it won't be easy because I have been that way my whole life.

About the emailing issue. I did finally hear back from her. I don't know what it is, but even to ask her about that would be very uncomfortable to me. As if I am being a brat or childish to ask her why she doesn't email me right away like she use to. Part is feeling uncomfortable myself, and part is that I don't want to make her feel uncomfortable. Should she really have to explain herself to me because of my insecurity?
Those are the things that run through my head.

Hangingon

Most of my therapy is like this.

Sometimes I have a hard time saying anything at all.
Sometimes I have a hard time saying anything other than stuff that has happened in my week. Trouble is that typically when therapists confront me on this then I go back to having a hard time saying anything at all.

I've realized that I'm afraid of how they are going to judge me. I know that some say that 'it doesn't matter what your therapist thinks of you' but it does matter immensely to me. If they were to judge me then that would harm me immensely. Judgement can be more subtle than the 'unethical' judgements, too, a quickly masked expression of disgust / disapproval / condemnation etc.

Fact is that it takes time to build up trust. A great deal of time.

I've had this conversation with my therapist... I said that I didn't see that it mattered so much what I talked about as any topic gave him (and me) the chance to see general patterns in my interactions with the world / other people. Sometimes he abstracts a little from the present topic to draw my attention to a general pattern. That is helpful. It has taken much much time of my just rambelling about what might be thought to be 'superficial' things in order for us to get to that point where the general patterns emerge, however. Also taken time for him to learn to be gentle with his interpretations and time for me to learn to trust his perspective / opinion / good intention with me.

I think that therapists often feel pressured to 'move things along' and that things often move along a little too fast for the clients benefit. I similarly think that clients often feel pressured (by themselves and sometimes also by their therapist) to 'move things along' and that things often move along a little too fast for the clients benefit.

It IS important to know that your therapist is okay with you talking about some deep / hard issues as well as the day to day stuff. It is also important to know that your therapist is accepting of whatever it is that you want to talk about and respectful of whatever it is that you might want to say, however.

It sounds like the 'pushing' is leading to your dissociating. The dissociating indicates that you simply might not be ready yet to get into whatever your therapist (or you) considers the 'hard stuff'. There is plenty of 'hard stuff' (that is more manageable) that can come up in abstracting a little from the daily stuff, however. You will get stronger as you get to know her better. You will also get stronger for learning some skills for keeping in touch with your body and grounding yourself (trusting your ability to regulate your emotions etc).

Hang in there.

This is your therapy. Talking about this will be beneficial. If you are feeling insecure this is an excellent way to delve into this. You are in a relationship with her and in open relationships things that bother you need to be talked about so that they are not in the way.

My therapist allows me to write in between sessions as often as I would like to or need to. (I also have an art journal that I bring to my sessions to share with her.) I tend to process quite a bit of what went on in the previous session outside of her office. So writing helps me to sort things out. I can call her also if I need to. She says she will read each and every letter I send to her. I worry that I am a bother and that I am taking up too much of her time. She always says it is not a bother and it's ok to write. She never makes me read them aloud to her. She will discuss what I wrote in a session if I want to. Often I am afraid to speak during a session. She always waits patiently for me to talk. I have been with this therapist for many years and she is very compassionate and caring. I am lucky to know her. She has helped me grow into the woman I am today. I trust her as much as I can trust someone. She also gives the best hugs.

Sanah
I understand what you are saying. The problem is that I have the hardest time trusting people and I don't totally trust her yet, and she's not a bad person. Every time something happens I draw back even more.

I sent her an email last week, 5 days ago and still have not heard back, she never does that. Mistake, maybe but I asked her a few specific things in the email, I needed to know those things, I needed reassurance. I hate it, I hate that I allowed myself to be vulernable with her, I never do that... is this is exactly why......I don't ask her for much. It was one email, just one little email.....thats all I send her, one a week after the session. I don't call her though she says I can, and this makes me not want to all the more. If she has a hard time responding via email....how can I trust a phone call?

She has children, maybe she just doesn't have time. I understand that but it really makes it harder for me to trust her, what If I really, really need her and she's not there?

I don't even want to go in and see her this week, I don't even know what I would say. People say talk about it. I don't want to talk about it. How can I talk about it with someone I don't even trust enough yet? Someone who I am feeling less and less trusting off. I really liked her in the first few meetings, I really thought she was someone I could learn to trust. I can't do this......call me stupid, a wimp, weak, whatever, thats what I have become since I started seeing a T. It's made me worse......I could handle things on my own before all this, sure I had my issues, but then I go and see a T, open up a can of worms and now I don't know what to do....

Cmac,
Thats wonderful that you found such a great T. You are blessed, I hear really good ones can be hard to come by...I am sure you are very thankful..

Dear hangingon....... you and I are close ....
if you cannot trust yr T, can you try to trust your gut instinct? you liked her in the beginning, when it was easy, and now you're getting into deeper waters and while trust was nice before, it's needed now.... I talk a big game, i have such trust issues myself; but darned if I'm not going to go in there next time and tell her about it, I just have to. If you could read her this post of yours, she will know the facts; if you just print out your post and hand it to her, and wait while she reads it, she will know; you have stated your feelings very well.
what was it someone said about being able to look fear in the eyes -

Wow, again I have been down this road too many times to count. If they are trying to get you trust them and talk with them....why do they leave you hanging when you finally take the bait...

I HAVE NO IDEA! it just seems so... counter to the overall process. You would think they would JUMP at the chance to reinforce our efforts to break our resistance to vulnerability... to show us that they ARE there and DO care. I have no idea why T's do what they do sometimes.

All I know is... there have been many other times when my T has demonstrated that she IS interested in helping me learn to connect and trust other people and that she DOES in fact care. It think they are just human and sometimes miss things that are important to us or there was some other "confounding" factors that left us ... unattended. I will say that in the past few months I've started to be able to manage this better. I'm not saying that my T's silence doesn't still piss me off... because it does. I'm just saying it doesn't seem to create the same ripple effect it used to.

((((((((((((((((((((((hangingon)))))))))))))))))))))))))))) There are times I really, really need T and he is not there. He goes away for the weekend A LOT, he's busy with his family, etc. But I still trust him. I trust that he will be there for me at my appointments, and I trust that if I tell him I need him to get back to me, he will as soon as he can (even if it's not very "soon"). I trust that he loves me and that he wants to help me feel better. IT TOOK A LOT OF TIME for me to build up this trust. A lot of time, and a lot of hard work. So, I know it doesn't feel good right now...but don't give up. When it's hard for us to trust (trust is THE hardest thing for me), it isn't going to happen overnight, and we are going to dissect every little nuance of everything T says and does LOOKING for reasons to NOT trust. I have SO been there....

Can you ask her at your appointment what a good e-mail policy is? T and I worked something out that we are both comfortable with, and it makes life so much easier, because I KNOW what to expect. If I ask him to respond, I WILL, 100% for sure, get a response. It might be REALLY slow in coming, but it will come. I trust that. I wonder if you set something up with T - like after each appointment you can send one e-mail that she will respond to, or that she will respond when you explicitly ask for a response, or something else that makes sense - maybe you could save yourself from this yucky feeling in the future? Because I've been there too, and I know how bad it feels.

Lots of to you

This is all part of the process. You need to learn to trust again and you have to work through all this to get there...................

Just glad i am not alone in this

getting the email thing sorted would be a good help - the pdoc i saw before I got my new one used to say send emails but she would not reply as they could be misinterpreted - so its good to find out what your T's guidelines are i know its horrible when you reach out and get no response - there are many reasons why you have had no response - grrrr and none of them are good enough! - sorry mini rant!

I didnt know if i trusted my T when we got to the hard stuff - I trusted her before - why not then? maybe because if she had walked out on me on the easy stuff it would have been bad but I would have been ok - if she ran screaming from the room or been dismissive after I had shared somthing bad I would have been devestated - she didnt do either of them - she was stil the same T i liked when I first met her

sending you lots of

UPDATE....sorry I put this on the other thread I had..

I did go in to see my T; however, I feel like I let myself and you guys down.
When I went in the first thing she mentioned was the email I had sent about how I really felt waiting for her responses. She said do you want to talk about that with me face to face......and what do I do, I say nooooo.

How stupid, I just couldn't do it. It would have been way to awkward for me, and it would have been hard for me to hold back the emotions that I really felt. Yet, it would have been so good for me to be able to address....

The crazy thing is she did mention a few things from if, about it being normal to feel like a kid in situations like this. That its ok to need to trust her first.....things like that. I am kind of bumming that I couldn't really hear alot of what she was saying, I was just way to nervous and zoning out at that point.

Anyways.....
I did send her another email the day after that session regarding a relationship issue and she answered the email within 20 mintues, yeah, 20 mintues. I was so happy to see that she had done that. But I also had those thoughts like, why did she answer this so quickly. She hasn't been doing that lately and I didn't talk to her about the issue. Though she had read the one I sent about how I felt waiting for a response.

Maybe she just happened to be checking email at that time on a friday night, or maybe it was because I told her how I felt even though I didn't talk with her about it...emmmm.... who knows...

I do test her, not that I mean to, it's a safety thing I think. I just need to know that she is going to be there and not bail on me when I talk to her more about the abuse. I need to know I can really trust her, something I have a really hard time doing.

Thanks again for all your responses. What would I do without all of you

You don't know how many times I have come here and got some relief.

Sittingatwatersedge, I will surely go with you in spirit!!!!!

Hangingon, when you told your T that you didn't want to talk about it face to face she totally understood what that meant. You are moving forward.............