((((incognito)))) I'm sorry you're feeling so bad. My teenage daughter is also extremely triggering me lately. I also relate to the eating and continuing to get more and more out of shape - yuck

I hope things start feeling better soon - hang in there!

(((((COGS))))))

I know that nothing I say will make you feel less hopeless. It seemed interesting that T asked you if you wanted to talk about the fire. Do you know what the fire is? Can you verbalize it? Did you verbalize it to him?

He probably already knows how much you depend on him. I don't think you will ruin anything by telling him how much you depend on him. Do you? He seems like such a nice guy and he always responds to your needs.

Your story kind of reminds me of a night I woke up and was in so much emotional pain. (one of many nights, unfortunately.) I was in my kitchen and I was moving. It's kind of hard to describe how I was moving but I realized that I was trying to move AWAY from myself, from my very own body, from all my pain. As if there was a hot stove and I was trying to move away from that but the pain was inside of me. And of course, I couldn't get away from it.

What I am wondering here is if something like that is going on for you. That the pain is inside you and you are trying to get T to take it away. A little like a disowning of it, in a way. Like, it's here. Help me with it. I'm throwing it to you. But what I've learned is that I can't heal until I own my pain. And it really hurts. A lot. All the stuff I've been stuffing over the years. It's like I've had to feel each one of them before I can move on.

I don't know if that resonates with you at all. You had such a bad week. I really hope things get better for you. You've been in pain for too long.

Do you feel any relief when you are actually sitting there with your T? Or right before your appointment?



Liese

Hi incognito... thanks for the update. I think it's good that you are now able to at least write about what's been happening in therapy and all the other life stuff that is upsetting to you. I think it's understandable that your teenage daughter is triggering you. Sometimes I'm grateful I only have a son or I would be feeling the same way you and Raven are.

I think Liese asked a good question. What is causing the house to be on fire? Did something happen recently in therapy to make you so angry at your T? Anger is really the cover for fear. I think you are strugging with a lot of fears and they feel intense to you and it's hard to get past them to work on anything else at this point. And any content you try to process is dysregulating all your emotions and you leave therapy uncontained and take it with you and then you have a miserable week.

Maybe you are not ready to process a lot of content/trauma yet. My T has been slowing me down on this lately. He feels we still need to work on the foundation (our relationship). He needs me to feel safe enough and trust it enough to safely go into the more heavy topics. I am one to push through them and then I get too upset and uncontained and they we have to spend lots of time on getting me back and contained again. I do know he was smart enough to slow me down when I was demanding a meeting with oldT. He kept me waiting for almost a year before he felt I was ready to face him and that trauma of the abandonment. He just told me one day that he felt I was healed enough and strong enough to handle seeing OldT again.

I think your T is trying to give you some coping skills that you can use once you can actually get into the meaty content of therapy. And you are still trying to learn to trust him. This is phase 1 of trauma therapy. Estabishing the relationship safety and trust. This is really important and you can't go on to the other stuff unless this phase 1 is successful. It also is the longest phase of the treatment.

I know the pain is always hovering around you and you would like to get it over with and get rid of the pain. I know you would like your T to just eradicate it and have it be gone. But unfortunately it does not work that way. My T recently reminded me of this and he said although it won't be pretty or easy... the outcome will be well worth it. And he also told me that I won't do this alone. He will be there with me.

I'm sorry you are struggling enough to have to miss work too. I wish I could do more to help you. I do think you have a good T and you will get there in time.

Hugs
TN

((incognito)) sorry things are so tough but commend you for remaining with your T and still goingback every week - sometimes that is the hardest part of it all. I hope you can tell him how much you depend on him - it will not ruin everything. I think it can be a good platform to work from. I spent a lot of time in denail my Ts meant anything to me and I've found (in hindsight) that was less effective... but I mean I couldn't change it it was to protect myself and i'm sure that is where your reflexes are coming from here, too

Sorry about the family, and eating issues and the not sleeping (ugh I HATE NOT SLEEPING) Thinking of you and sending love.

(((((incognito)))))

thank you for the update. I don't have many words myself this morning - but wanted to let you know I'm thinking of you and sending you good thoughts and hugs and prayers.

Thanks Raven for your support. I'm sorry that you know the difficulty of a teenage daughter. I've got two (13 and 11) and people keep telling me if you think this is difficult just wait which makes me want to give up now.

Liese, I think the fire is all the things that are going on in my life right now. T knows about most of them but I'm too ashamed to talk about them openly and in detail. For example I've talked about the struggle I'm having with my daughter and her behaviour (school, attitude, phone and internet overuse) but I haven't been able to tell him about her overly sexualized pictures or conversations (overly sexualized in my opinion). I was a quiet, blend into the background teenager and adult because I was trying to keep myself safe. My daughter isn't and she hasn't done anything sexual (as far as I know) but she talks about sex a lot with her friends and is pushing the boundaries with her clothes, makeup etc. Some of my friends who are parents and had a healthier childhood/family think it within the range of typical and normal behaviour but it triggers me badly.

TN, I've been thinking about the question about what regulates my emotions usually and how I deal with the upset. I realize that I only have two strategies I push it down and ignore it which doesn't work very well and means that things stay simmering below the surface for a long time and during that time I avoid contact or conflict with that person to keep the relationship safe. That doesn't work with T because I don't avoid him and he won't let me avoid my discomfort. The other thing that happens is that I erupt with my feelings and experience and frustrations and the other person responds. In my family the response was always you are making too much of this/overly sensitive/melodramatic/wrong for how upset you are and I would end up apologizing and nothing got resolved but I always felt like I should have not felt the way I felt. Other people like my husband, some of my friends, and T respond by understanding and explaining their thoughts and feelings without making me wrong for mine and there is some resolution and repair. I've started risking sharing my feelings 9with friends, husband) a lot more frequently since I started therapy and had some success (but not with my family).

The difficulty for me is that the "fire" isn't about issues I have with T. It is about things like my mistakes as a parent or my inability to take care of my body (eat properly/exercise/sleep). I feel ashamed and judged when I talk to T about them even though he might not be judging me. That leads to me being angry/upset and him and then talking about it and some repair occurs, repeat indefinitely. So the only thing I know how to do to regulate my feelings is to talk about them and that stirs up more feelings.

Cat, going back is hard as is telling him the truth about how I feel about myself or how I depend on him. I worry that T and I are working with a different framework. I' m trying to attach to him and trust him and being able to talk about and feel my pain and I'm worried that he is trying to teach me to detach from my feelings and observe them like clouds in a the sky or leaves floating down the river (kind of the Buddhist approach) so he doesn't want to get deeper into my feelings.

((JD)) thank you for reading. I know how much you have going on right now and I appreciate you thinking of me.

(((((COGS))))))

How are you doing? Any better? I hope so! Thinking of you!

xoxoxoxo

Liese