i keep havin bad dreams.
some other insider guy is botherin me, tormeting me.
i wish sometimes there not so many of us.

samy

Aw, Samy. I'm sorry you're having bad dreams.

I hope there's something today around you that reminds you of the good days you all have had.

Hi Samy! I am so sorry about the bad dreams. And having so many insiders must be tough to deal with, I can only imagine.(sometimes i can't take living with myself )

Do you have a safe place or calm image that you can try to focus on? I know sometimes I forget to do that when I am feeling upset or bothered by other people.

ShrinkLady has a nice page with soothing techniques you might like if you hav't already seen it:
strategies for self-soothing

Hopefully at least speaking about it here helps you.

JM

Scott phoned our T and we waiting for her call back. I thinking to make a something for her but first we gota study! blech to studying!

Samy
p.s. yesterday we goed to Quiznos, you have that in the states? them had a smaller sandwich called a Sami! HAHA! I got a big laugh outa of that one!

Yes we do have Quiznos. I will have to try the Sami next time I go... I could use a smaller portion myself.

Hope you hear from your T speedily.

I AM SOOOO SICK!!!OF TRYING!!!CAN'T SEEM TO GET ANYTHING RIGHT!!!
HAD A SESSION AFTER ALL TODAY. KIND OF WISH I HADN'T GONE, BUT THEN, I WOULD BE IMAGINING I MISSED OUT ON SOMETHING GOOD IF I HADN'T GONE. BUT IT WASN'T GOOD AT ALL!!!I FEEL LIKE EVERYTHING I SAID HE TURNED AGAINST ME!!!I FEEL SO ANGRY FOR SOME REASON!!!
HE JUST GOES ON AND ON ABOUT POSITIVE THINKING AND HOW OUR THOUGHTS TRIGGER FEELINGS, ETC.
I AM SO CONFUSED AND I JUST FEEL LIKE HE DOESN'T GET IT. OR MAYBE HE DOES AND I AM JUST IMMATURE AND NEED TO GROW UP!!MAYBE I DO THRIVE ON NEGATIVITY AND MAYBE I JUST NEED TO SUCK IT UP AND MOVE ON!!BUT I JUST CAN'T!!!!HE JUST SAYS, YES YOU CAN!!!(HE WASN'T THE ONE WHO TOLD ME I THRIVE ON NEGATIVITY, BTW)
ISAID "I DON'T KNOW" AT LEAST A MILLION TIMES. I WAS SO BLAH TODAY THAT HE ASKED ME WHY I ACTUALLY CAME IN TODAY.( I DON'T KNOW)

I CONFRONTED HIM ABOUT THE NO CALL BACK THING. NO HEADWAY THERE.HE SAID THAT MY FEELINGS ARE IMPORTANT, BUT WHAT HE SAYS AND WHAT HE DOES ARE 2 DIFFERENT THINGS.

I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT IN 2 WEEKS, BUT I'M ASHAMED TO GO NOW. WHY? IDK!!!!!!!CAUSE I LET HIM SEE SOME OF THE BAD STUFF TODAY. THE STUFF I'M AFRAID WILL LEAK OUT. THE FLAT STUFF. THE DEPRESSION. THE I DON'T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING...

I THINK I'VE NEVER BEEN SO OUT OF CONTROL. WHY? IDK!!!! HE WILL ASK ME WHY I FEEL THAT WAY AND I WON'T BE ABLE TO ANSWER AS USUAL.

I FEEL LIKE CRYING BUT TEARS WON'T COME. I ALSO FEEL SO ANGRY. OTHER FEELINGS TOO. BUT WHAT ARE THEY? IDK!!!!!!!!!!!FEEL LIKE I AM GOING CRAZY!!!

oh yeah. also notice he wasn't very calm today himself. had some foot shaking going on, kind of nervous like

AJB,

I wanted you to know I heard you and I'm sorry you're had such a hard time in your session. I also had a frustrating session. I don't know much of your story so I don't have any advice. I think though that its impossible "TO SUCK IT UP AND MOVE ON". If we could do that we would have already. I guess all we can do is keep talking here, in real life, in therapy...(it looks like I do have advice but ignore it if it is unhelpful).

I'm thinking of you and hope things improve.

AJB and Incognito... I am so sorry that both of you had awful sessions this week. I find that the first 24 hours after one of those kind of sessions is absolute torture. Where you beat yourself up because you didn't say enough and you said too much... or you said all the wrong things. I completely get it.

AJB...it's okay to let your T see all of you. Especially the parts of you that you feel are the not so good parts. They need to know how you feel in order to help you deal with the emotions that come along with it. I find that when I get mad at my T (and I have been very angry with him at times even though I adore him) upon reflection when I calm down enough to reflect, I find that I was not really angry with HIM at all. I was angry about something else that happened in my life and I just projected that anger onto him. Once I have a glimmer of what caused the anger I take that with me back to therapy and talk to him about it...asking him to help me figure it all out. We can usually find a reason for the anger and what triggered it. I think it's because I feel so safe with him that I CAN get angry. I'm safe enough with him to be angry and know that he won't take it personally. It took a long time to get to that point. I had to decide that I trusted him and I was safe. This was a bumpy road and I still have some sessions where I can't be really open and honest and I struggle.

The most important thing is to keep going back. And not to be afraid of what they will think of you. My T does not judge. I've tested him.. a lot. I've told him about transference. I've gotten mad at him. I told him about my abusive childhood. He always treats me the same... with warmth and empathy and caring. I have been terrified that he will leave me. I tell him this all the time and he tells me he will be there for me no matter what and that he won't leave me. I ask if he gets mad at me and he says that he cannot imagine I could do anything to make him mad at me. This is enormous comfort to me and it keeps me going back. But he wouldn't know what to say or how I felt (fear, shame, terror etc) if I didn't share those feelings with him.

So hang in there knowing that your T will be there next time for you. You get another chance to talk to him. And just tell him that you are having a hard time reaching down to your feelings and that's why you say IDK a lot. Tell him you are afraid. This will help him to help you begin to open up.

What you are feeling is very normal and T's have seen it lots of times. So please don't worry. Keep posting and sharing. It will help.

True North

TN:
i appreciate your support. BUT i don't feel like he will be there for me. i DO tell him i don't know what the feelings are, and he says he thinks i do. he tries to be patient and wait for me to articulate, but i usually can't. i am waiting for a letter to come soon saying he won't see me anymore. i'm so afraid he WILL leave me. i feel like he was disgusted with me today. he even finally asked why i had come in to see him today. i guess since i was being so "resistant", he wondered why i had come to waste his time as well as mine. when i try to explain some things that make me feel so negative, he comes back with something like do i really feel like other people really think about me THAT much or that i can't be the center of everyone's thoughts, only my own....
i don't even know why i bother...
it always comes back to these feelings of complete failure, hopelessness, what's the use....
sorry. just very disgusted today. with everything. i can't even get therapy right...

incognito
thanks for the response and the thoughts. i'm sorry you had a bad session this week. your advise WAS helpful. it is helpful just being heard on here without being judged, which is something i can't seem to get anywhere else, not even in therapy.....

hope you have a good week, despite your disappointment from your therapy. i know i need to take my own advise, but just try and hang on til next week. maybe it will be better.like you told me, just keep posting and talking....

AJB... I sent my T an email last week telling him that I felt like I could not even do therapy right. Of course this week when I went in he wanted to talk about that. He asked me if I really believed that I had not made any progress in therapy. He made me stop and think about how far I had come only that I could not see that...I was only focused on the negative things that I felt. I tend to do that. And he also reassured me that there is no right or wrong way to do therapy. It's different for everyone. I had to go at my own pace.

You say to me that you are afraid he WILL leave you. Well why don't you tell him that you feel that way? That would open up a huge therapeutic conversation that will probably lead to exploring other things as well. Why don't you tell him that you felt that you had wasted his time? These are real and valid feelings that you have and you should talk to him about them. A big part of therapy is the relationship itself. It's a microcosm of our life played out in the therapy setting. Learning to manage the therapeutic relationship will help us in our real life interactions.

If you find it hard to remember what you want to say or you find it hard to say it... you could write it down and read it to him. I have done that when something important has come up and I can't depend on my brain functioning in any organized way. I have also sent him emails prior to session giving him a heads up as to what I need to discuss. I would say..."please ask me about______" because I find it hard to bring it up in session. This way he introduces the topic and I can join in. (This is the only time he introduces a topic... I always direct the sessions.)

Please don't worry that you are wasting his time. Therapy sometimes goes like that. And please don't feel hopeless or helpless. You need to give yourself some credit for just GOING to therapy in the first place. Taking that step is never easy. Maybe when he asked why you had come in to see him, he was just trying to get a handle on what was on your mind so he could talk w/you about it.

Obviously, I don't know your T or know the way he works but if you feel in your gut that he is the right guy for you then please hang in there and little by little you will find yourself more comfortable with opening up to him. Something I try to remember to do is ask my T when he says something to me that I don't understand at the time is to ask him "what do you mean by that?" or "why do you say that?". Only because if I don't ask then I make myself crazy afterwards trying to figure out what he meant.

While you wait for your next session be good to yourself and take care of you. My T always tells me I'm too hard on myself and that I don't have to be perfect. I do have those perfectionistic tendencies LOL. Just tell yourself that next session will be better.

TN

True North,
I just want to tell you that reading your posts was like reading my own therapy experience. I think you express some wonderful suggestions that we (clients) forget to implement or don’t even know that we can.

I want to direct this next part to AJB and Incognito as well:
Asking the therapist questions such as "what do you mean by that?" or "why do you say that?" as TN suggested helps them to realize that sometimes they need to slow down. Just recently I had a session with my T who sometimes in the opposite manner tends to ramble because she does not know that I am getting something. So she told me that I need to say “Ok. I get that, next point please.” The point is that we need to learn how to communicate with our T and realize that they are not mind readers and that they don’t have ALL the answers. But they do have a lot of options and they keep trying to find what works for each individual client, but we are their best gaudge for that.

It is VERY frustrating to express ourselves sometimes. For me it is often because what I am feeling is very young, perhaps from an age where verbal articulation had not been learned yet. Not to mention that sometimes our emotions can be so overwhelming and all over the board it is hard to contain them let alone name them, describe them, notice where we are feeling them in our body. Sometimes I just want to throw something at my T when she keeps drilling me w/ questions that “I DON’T KNOW” the answers to. (Even though she is not really drilling me, it just feels that way) Often when I feel she is getting frustrated with me, I am the one who is frustrated with me. It’s that projection thing that TN also mentioned. Lovely, isn’t it?

It sounds like a lot of us fear our T leaving us. I know that I still fear that sometimes. That I have finally pushed her beyond her frustration level and she is going to _finally_ confess what I’ve feared all along; “_____, I just can’t stand you anymore. You are too much work and frustration for me and you’re just never going to get it, so I am terminating your case.Go home!”

And TN, I love your suggestion about emailing your T about what you want to talk about before session. That’s a great idea. I too have learned to call and leave my T a brief message (she doesn’t do email) and say “I know that by next session I will forget to bring this up because it wont seem as important then, but it really is so make sure I talk to you about it.” or “I really need to talk about _this_ but I am having a hard time bringing it up face to face.” This works fabulously. Great suggestion!

AJB, ASK your T if he thinks you are wasting his time. Even if you have to write it and mail it, whatever it takes, but ask him. Also ask him if he means to minimize what you are feeling as if you are not supposed to have feelings? We all have negative feelings and we can’t just wish or demand them away. They need to be expressed, HEARD, explored, AND THEN they can be gradually replaced by more positive emotions. If you’re not already doing so, journal. Because when he calls on you to answer one of his troubling questions you might be able to look back and find an answer that may have already come up in your journaling. I hope it is not boring that I keep referring to my own therapy, but just last week I was talking to my T about a certain subject and she asked me to attach some emotions to it, and I couldn’t. I just looked at her like “how do you expect me to do that??”-*sigh* (another question :/ ) So I sat there for a minute and remembered journaling a little on this so I looked through my journal and voila! There they were…my emotions were right there in black and white and my own hand writing to boot, and I never even knew that I had connected them already. I read them to her and sarcastically asked, “Is that what you meant?” To which she in kind replied, ‘Those sound like emotions to me.”

Anyway, I hope that you are able to find some peace for yourself for a while. Sometimes we just need to take a break from trying to figure it all out. I think that Shrinklady calls them “Right Brain Breaks.” Just giving ourselves permission to let it go temporarily (I know easier said than done) is a wonderful gift we can give ourselves. And it feels so good to do that.

I hope you find the ability to give yourself a little peace until you are able to talk your T again.
Take care,
JM

I just have to say AJB that True North and Just Me gave such good answers I have nothing to add. I am sorry though that you're having such a tough time, it can be so hard and painful sometimes. But you're in pain whether you do therapy or not, and wouldn't you rather be in pain and going somewhere, than in pain and just holding your ground? Hang in there, it will get better.

Awesome discussion. I learn so much here!

And JM?

quote:

I read them to her and sarcastically asked, “Is that what you meant?” To which she in kind replied, ‘Those sound like emotions to me.”

I'd <3 your T.