Progress!

I really liked our session today and felt like I made a lot of progress, and I got my usual warm buzz from being with T. It's nice being the first appointment of the new week. We can help each other launch into a new week.

We ended up talking a lot about communication between me and my H. (This is the first appt with my T since our couples session a couple of weeks ago.) I told T that H and I had gotten into this typical pattern of communication when we were with him. T said he knew and that's why he intervened. It had felt so good to have him halt the pattern. I had felt relieved and today got to tell T "THANK YOU." The communication pattern is that my H doesn't like to let me talk about anything meaningful without interrupting. Especially if I am expressing any feeling, my H gets angry. I have always been bewildered by that so learned not to express emotion around him so as to keep him from getting angry. But at T's office, I was sad, and grieving (because I have learned that T's office is a safe place to do that), and H began to interrupt by starting to get defensive and angry (I don't know why he is like this, he just is), and T told him to hold off, to let sunny be sad and grieve. That was just so wonderful to have T do that for me, and I had suddenly realized on a really deep level how much I had missed that in my marriage--being allowed to express my feelings without being criticized or shut down or the target of anger. That always bewildered me and so I withdrew to avoid his anger. So we would get in this cycle that went round and round. T thought it was very positive that I was recognizing these patterns. He explained that for some reason, my being sad or expressing feeling was a trigger for my H and so he would react in anger. Unfortunately, someone being angry at me is a complete trigger for me. I can't stand it and withdraw to avoid their anger. T says this is left over from my childhood when the only choice I had was to withdraw from parental anger, since I wasn't allowed to talk back or complain or cry or whatever. So here are me and my H--our behaviors are complete triggers for each other. It's like we're a horrible, "perfect" fit. Somehow I chose the worst possible person to marry--one who aroused all my dysfunctionality about anger, among other things. (T has said before that is probably the reason I chose my H--it was an unconscious effort to work out enduring problems from childhood.) T says this horrible, perfect fit is something he sees all the time with couples who come to his office (each couple has a different way of being locked--they don't have my particular problem). They are completely stuck, locked together, and he works with them to release that and learn new patterns and understand better what is triggering the other person and how not to be triggered by it. He said with a couple like me and my H, he would work with my H to quit shutting me down when I was expressing myself and to let me keep talking and feeling until it was all out. And he would work with me on how not to be triggered by my H's anger and to not take it personally, but to stay present and ask my H questions about it in a curious way, and to not get hurt and scared and withdraw. (And he would also work with my H to help him understand why he gets angry in those situations--it is probably something from his childhood or from his own parents' interactions.)

Anyway, it's too late now for me and my H to fix things (and neither of us wants to), but I am learning more about myself through recognizing my communication and behavior patterns, and I hope to learn how to not be so dysfunctional in the future, and if confronted with dysfunctionality from the other person, how to handle it. (Sometimes the only way to handle it is to leave the relationship, but sometimes, you can successfully work through it if you're savvy enough. I think T will try to teach me how to be more savvy.)

One of the best parts of the session was that at the end, T asked if I wanted to come in next week at the same time! This will be the first time we have met 2 weeks in a row this year. Maybe he is feeling like we are making good progress too.

We left together to go exchange parking spots, and T was in a hurry to do this before the next client came, so I walked briskly, as we continued to talk. But then by the men's restroom, he said, stop. Look at me. So I stopped and turned to face him and we had this rather long conversation. I was wondering, why aren't we continuing on to the cars? I thought he was in a hurry. I kept thinking that he must want to go into the restroom before we went outside, so I was having a hard time focusing on whatever it was he was saying. I didn't want to make him late. Finally we continued on our way. Out-of-the-room interactions can be challenging sometimes! I got to ride in his car again. As he drove, we kept talking, and for some reason being outside the office made it easier for me to tell him something quite painful. He looked kind of dismayed at what I told him. And I said, "I know, OUCH!" In his office, I think I would have cried. I don't know why but there just seemed something really functional about this--I could tell him something painful and just say ouch instead of feeling re-traumatized by the whole thing. Interestingly, as T stopped to let me out to go to my parked car, this woman was in an oncoming car and it turned out we were stopped near where she wanted to pull her car in. She looked super annoyed. I said to T, as he backed up a few feet, "she looks so pissed off at us." He said, "I know. What is her problem?!" I actually loved this little exchange, LOL.

Just posting this for ya! >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Thanks for responding, pegasus! Even if no one responds, it's useful for me to type it out! It can help me figure things out.

I just feel kind of excited by this session. I feel like hey, if we do more work like this, I can figure out how not to mess up future relationships, or at least how to do my part and do all I can to make "a healthy relationship" happen. The other person has to play a part too, of course. There were also some of the things that T suggested that I felt I had tried in my marriage (maybe instinctively), and they had failed, and that also made me feel better. Like, hey, I tried that, I tried the right thing! It made me feel like less of a failure, somehow. But there were also things I had not done well, like withdrawing repeatedly from his anger, and this is something that maybe, just maybe, I can learn to overcome with T's help. (Seriously, though, if I come across another guy who acts like that, I am most likely not going to make any attempt at all to work on that. I am just going to run for the hills.)

Sometimes I wonder why they don't give a required course on communication and having relationships in school? They would teach you how to have a healthy relationship, how to talk to the other person, what not to do, what to do, etc. Because most of this stuff is not obvious to me at all, and certainly not obvious to my H either. Why doesn't anyone teach us this stuff in an organized way? It would be so valuable... We could all start relationships with the same expectations.

Sounds like another collaborative session. I like how you are taking some time to reflect on your marriage, the good, bad, and ugly. Your posting seemed very balanced both recognizing the things you attempted and the shoulda, coulda, woulda 's. It seems like you and your T are closing the loop on your marriage and preparing you to take full advantage of the joys to come in the future.

I hate when I realize that I willingly made choices that resulted in recreating childhood dynamics. The good thing for you Sunny is that you seem to be taking the steps to heal your wounds and insure that you are not likely to make these unconscious choices in the future.

Thanks for the positive posting... Just what I needed before heading off to my session. I'm going to try my best to have a positive, connected session too.

What is so amazing about your post about your session is the connection that you have in your relationship and all of the small (huge) ways that connection is communicated between you.

Thank you for sharing here Sunrise

Wow - Sunrise - good for you!
it sounds like you have a lot of great insights!
My T told me that part of the healing process is to unravel all the threads and make all the necessary connections - and I think that is exactly what you have described. I'm happy for you.

That is HUGE progress. I am so not there yet. It sounds like you and T really connected in a very intimate way. I also think that even though you and H have decided not to do the couples work, you are able to get the insight into your relationship through your work with T and H. That's great!

((((((((((((((((((((((sunny))))))))))))))))))))))) I always like hearing about your sessions - you have such a great relationship with T, and it leads you to so many insights.

Wow, I would feel so good leaving an appointment like that!! It's awesome how you have such a good connection with your T.

I think that's right. I was thinking before I would just have to "move on" without closing the loop but now I am seeing that there is indeed work we can do with just me and my T on this in therapy (I had been thinking before that it was work I really needed to do with my H).

I don't hate it. I see it as an expression of the indominitability of the human spirit. T has told me we replay out these childhood dramas again and again in unconscious attempts to surmount them and make the ending different. So every repetition of a pattern is an attempt to "do it right." So don't be down on yourself about that, chaotic. With luck and work, one day you can get it right and be free of the past. I'm working on that and I think it will be the huge triumph of my divorce--that at last I said "no" and had the power and strength to back that up.

chaotic, I hope your session went well.

As more time passes since that last couples sessions, it seems even more significant to me. I think having that "same old" communication pattern with H short-circuited by T was extremely powerful. I felt something lurch inside of me and come home to rest. "This feels so right," my body seemed to be saying. I can still feel that feeling from that moment when T made my H hold off and let me grieve. For 2 and a half years now, T has been giving me the experience with himself of listening to me, letting me grieve, letting me have my say, letting me be sad or happy or angry, and hearing me out fully. I did not have that in my marriage and it has been healing to have a man--my therapist--give me those things in therapy. But the experience of just one time having this granted to me in an interaction with my H was far more powerful then anything T could do on his own. Like a thousand times more powerful and healing. To have my H wait and hear me out and allow me my feelings was like cutting a thousand neural pathways in one fell swoop, and laying down a new track immediately. I can't think of anything that my T has ever done that was more therapeutic than when he raised his hand to my H and told him not to say anything and to wait for sunny to grieve. This is one of those moments from therapy that I will probably not forget.

I feel that because of this one moment in the couples session, I now have no further need to meet with H in additional couples sessions. I've got what I was looking for and what I needed. I think T and I can do the rest on our own.

I think I also understand now the power of psychodrama because it attempts to recreate interactions with the original people (through actors) rather than letting the T be the modern day proxy. I understand now why my T has said psychodrama is a quick healing technique (although now he uses EMDR preferentially, which he says is even faster).

I did have a really good session.

I do hate that I recreated certain dynamics from childhood. However, I'm starting to appreciate why and possibly realizing some benefits for enduring the discomfort necessary to rewrite, revise, and refine my these experiences.

I did have a good session yesterday. My T heard me...