Hi All,

I saw my T this morning and as you all predicted, it helped. A lot. Can I just say how very much I love him and how very grateful I am to have him in my life?

For anyone who doesn’t know, I found a book of (really beautiful, very powerful) poetry that included an essay on faith and poetry by a very celebrated author (whose cover picture was, of course, stunning) who talked about my T in the acknowledgements section. And there was a poem in the book dedicated to him. This proved to be the mother of all triggers for me. I wrote him an email explaining that I had read the book and seen the acknowledgement and talked about all the feelings it had triggered and asked if I could get an appointment. He replied that he appreciated my candor and was confident that talking about it would help and gave me an appointment, which was today at 10:30.

It was a REALLY good session and I am feeling a lot better but so much of it was just about being with him and connecting that it’s hard to describe. I was also extremely activated in the beginning so this may be a little jumbled.

The level of shame and embarrassment surrounding this was almost indescribable and I found it extremely difficult to actually GO to the appointment. I basically managed it by refusing to think about it this morning. Everytime I started to think about what it would be like or imagine what I would say or my T would reply, I would just shut it down. And I kept focusing on my breathing and slowing it down.

I got to his office and realized that having a 32 oz glass of ice tea with your breakfast before a therapy session whch you’re nervous about is not really a good idea. So I ran into the ladies’ room as soon as I got there and then headed upstairs. He has a very small waiting area he shares with two other Ts (the building is an older home converted to offices which is filled with a lot of Ts with their own practices). I didn’t expect him to open the door for at least five minutes but before I could sit, he opened his door and called my name (the house is pretty old and the stairs are REALLY creaky, so it’s pretty easy to know someone is coming up them). So I kind of looked around the doorway and said “me?” and he nodded yes, and I headed in to sit down and told himI didn’t expect him to call me so soon.

I sat down in my usual seat and learned the true meaning of awkward. I actually made a gesture indicating I needed some time and sat looking anywhere at him. After a minute or so of just trying to breath, I finally said, “I don’t think I can start today.” To which my T gave one of his classic replies “but that is a way of starting isn’t it?” I wanted to throw a pillow at his head. I told him that the thought of being seen, in any way, was almost physically painful. I kept starting and stopping and my T was encouraging me and he finally said that I had laid a lot of it out in my email and why didn’t I walk through finding the book and talk about the feelings. (He’s used this method before. When I go back and present it as a narrative, it also allows the feelings to come back. Just assume a lot of stops and starts and tears for the rest of the session.

I told him about getting the book at the library and recognizing that I had seen the book on his desk. Then I told him that I’m the kind of person who reads a book cover to cover so I read throught the acknowledgements and found his name, that there was no mistaking that it was him (I told him I had always wondered if _______ was his middle name.) Then I started reading the poetry and it was incredibly powerful, with great imagery, and then I hit a poem that was dedicated to him. And then the essay talked about how her poetry was a conduit to her faith until she actually found it.

I told my T that if someone set out to create the person who could make me feel the most threatened with him, this woman was it. That I had lost track of how many times he had talked about how some truths are so difficult to express so we turn to art and poetry to express them. That my father was standing in front of me once again telling me I wasn’t enough, I wasn’t good enough.
Somewhere in the middle of that I just covered my face and told him I was going to keep my eyes closed, because it was easier to talk that way. And yes, I knew he could still see me.

He talked about how courageous I was to come and talk about this knowing the level of shame and embarrassment I was experiencing, that I was doing the right thing to come and express the shame, as it was the only way through it. (Actually, he told me a number of times how courageous I had been. At one point I told him it was more about desparation. )

He really wasn’t saying too much in the beginning just giving me space to talk about my feelings. What is so weird is that even though he’s not really saying too much, I feel safe enough to just keep talking about how I actually feel and as I do that I’m able to acutally figure out what is going on.

I kept talking about how it was feeling and how difficult it was to express. I told him that the ironic part was that when I was this much at a loss for words, I would usually turn towards writing poetry, but there was no f---ing way I was doing that now. I talked about how stupid I felt that I was feeling this way again.

When I finally drilled through to the center of the feelings, I ended up telling my T that the pain was really about was feeling like our relationship was such a unique, powerful one for me. That I had never trusted anyone so much (case in point, I was sitting in his office talking about this), that it ran so deep and that it was so close to the center of who I am. That it was special and unique for me. But for him, he had other relationships that ran as deep and meant as much and they weren't nearly as important to him. That I felt like a child on a beach who finds a beautiful object on the sand, and is so excited and it turns out to just be a piece of broken glass. That I was just a piece of broken glass and how could I have believed any different?

He talked about it being part of an old pattern that we could recognize, that I would go towards my father, hoping each time it would turn out different, only to be hurt again, to not be enough. That he understood why these feelings had been triggered so strongly, but he wanted me to understand that I experienced a difference in my relationship with him. That when we are taught we are not enough, then we believe we have to earn it. But he wanted me to know that I was special all the time, in all places, that we are not loved for what we do, for our performance but because we are.

I was so relieved that he understood and was so clear that what I believed was lie that I really started sobbing. Where before I had been very rigid and silent, this felt like I was small and just letting go. An old grief. I must have cried for a solid five minutes. My T kept talking to me through it. At one point I got so loud and ended up practically screaming into a pillow and I heard him tell me that it was ok to be heard. Then I heard him say, very gentlyand with so much compassion “AG, I am sorry you had to experience this hurt, that you went through this.”

When I slowed down enough to talk again, I was trying to describe how it felt and was really struggling to put it into words. I finally came out with “it hurts so much to remember how it felt to feel so worthless.” And my T said “absolutely.”

Then he talked for a while and said a lot of good stuff. He made it very clear that this wasn’t a regression. That growth is both a progression outwards and a journey deeper inwards and that sometimes you can run into things that provoke a pocket of woundedness that hasn’t been dealt with yet, but that he felt like I was very close to have none of those left. That when these feelings got evoked, they would come with a sense of them having already been acknowledged and being able to move through them on my own. I told him how very close I had come to not coming, that I had really considered if I could bear just not ever contacting him again because if I didn’t see him, I would never have to talk about this. He talked about the shame being tied to recognizing my normal human dependency and attachment needs. That when you had experienced what I had, you could come to see those needs as the problem, that because things would go so badly with my dad and I would feel stupid for going back time and again trying to get my needs met, a lot of shame became associated with my needs. That a normal reaction was to try and live in detachment. But that human beings don’t do well outside of attachment. I started laughing and said “I’m not sure how well I do in an attachment relationship.” He said a lot of people can make the mistake of believing that, but because of our relationship, I could carry the experience of mattering, of being understood.

Then he talked about the fact that I had not pushed, nor had he offered, any information on his relationship with the author (I noticed he was careful never to say her name, only I did. He also said this in a way which told me he thought I was careful to respect the boundaries) but that we really didn’t need to. That this really wasn’t about our relationship, it was about the grief that it evoked. That in my original email I had laid out the fact that I couldn’t know about the relationship and I understood how my feelings were so intense they were blocking what I knew what was true. That I already had a good handle on the situation, I just needed to experience being understood. About this point I lost it again, because I realized that I had been SO scared to go see him because what if it was true, what if I really was worthless and even he couldn’t fix it?

He talked about how our worth is intrinsic, I had mentioned my kids earlier in the session and he went back to that, how our children want to know why we love them and there really isn’t an answer. We just love them. But he went back again to that sense of needing to earn it, then he told me he wanted to read me a poem. He said he had heard the poet on vacation and that he was really funny and he had bought a book, and as he picked it up, he broke out in a huge grin and said “I do not appear anywhere in this book” and we both burst out laughing. He was flipping through the table of contents looking for it and I quietly said, “thank you so much, T” and he said “you’re welcome AG” and just kept looking. It was all just incredibly sweet and intimate. He found the poem, and read it. It was short, and very funny so that when he finished reading it, I really just burst out laughing. The best thing was that it fit so well with what we were discussing and we both just GOT it.

There’s other stuff but for now it escapes me, but I am so very glad I went. Being open about the feelings allowed me to get to the source and allow the grief to move through me. And it was SO clear and obvious from being with my T that my fears about myself being worthless and failing in comparsion with someone else were just lies that I had been told a very long time ago. That my relationship with my T is just that MY relationship with him and therefore unique. That it is very real and he really does cherish it. I had actually mentioned to him years ago, long before we started doing individual work, seeing his name in the liner notes of a CD by a local band a friend of mine had lent me. I actually had asked if it was him. At one point in the session, he told me that he knew I read the acknowledgement section because I had read those liner notes and talked to him about it. I was kind of blown out of the water that he remembered that (or had gone back in his notes either way whoa!). I smiled and said that was before I really knew him and it was a man. There were so many things he said and did today that told me in an unmistakeable way that he KNOWS me and that he’s glad he does. That the sense of worth he conveyed to me was true, not because he said I was worthwhile, but because he was able to recognize and reflect something that has always been true.

I feel on solid ground again, and am filled with so much gratitude and love. We shook hands very warmly at the end of the session and he told me to hang in there. I was still feeling very emotional when I left, mainly overwhelmed with relief and it took a lot of the day just to let it sink it and process it because it had been so powerful. Which is why this took so long to post, sorry. I am now going to sleep as I am very tired, but very peaceful.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading.

And thank you all for your love, support and hugs, you gave me the courage to show up.
AG