Incognito,

I am sorry to hear that you are feeling this way. What do you think about taking some time off from therapy for a few weeks? Then, when you find yourself with things you want to talk about, go back. Sometimes we get stuck in a rut in therapy. It's good to take a break to reassess why we are there in the first place and figure out what it is we want out of therapy.

Incognito,
I am sorry for how you're feeling; it sounds like a personal hell and it's understandable that you are close to despair. And I have definitely been in that place where I have literally said to my T "what's the point, we've talked about everything I'm feeling at least 10 times?" But there is an important distinction you are missing.

quote:

I don't think therapy can work when you aren't willing to speak about your experience. I think I've always been lonely and worthless and therapy is just the place where I have to face that. I don't want to go back.

Who would want to go back if they had to face up to and accept their own loneliness and worthlessness? But here's the thing, you are equating your FEELINGS of worthlessnss as indicating a truth about you. I don't think what you have to face is that you are lonely and worthless and always will be. I think that you need to express how it has felt to be lonely and to feel so worthless, as many times as you need to, to face how you've been FEELING, so that you can understand that in reality, the truth is that you are worthwhile and do NOT need to be alone for the rest of your life. I know it can feel so useless to keep speaking about these feelings Incognito, but they took a long time to lay down and you need to experience a whole lot of difference in relationship to change them. This isn't about conveying knowledge as much as it you being heard on a feeling level, and experiencing being heard, accepted and validated in those feelings. There are times where you just need to trust the process even when it doesn't make sense. Please don't give up; I know it's horrible to keep going sometimes, but you are capable of healing and you will heal.

Think of it this way, if you're right what do you have to lose from speaking?

((((((incognito)))))))))

AG

Hey Incognito,

Is that frustration and anger you have in wanting to connect but not exactly knowing how to connect? If so, I know how you feel and how frustrating it can be. It's as if there is something innately wrong with you (me) because of your (mine) inability to open up. Sometimes, I feel like this is as good as it's going to get. But I keep pushing myself. Pushing the limits. Pushing myself to open up. Little by little. Is there something on your mind that you want to ask your T but feel embarrassed about? Actually, I have many things I want to talk to my T about and have been tackling them one by one. It is really helping me to be more open. Do you trust your T? Maybe there is something there in the back of your mind that's nagging at you?

Don't give up!!!

(((((HUGS)))))

Liese

Thanks for the tea yesterday.

quote:

I think I've always been lonely and worthless and therapy is just the place where I have to face that. I don't want to go back

This sums it up for me, my two words are unwanted and unlovable, i have occasional hopeless and worthless but the biggies for me are the other two. And of course therapy is a hell hole if you feel unwanted and unlovable so i know what you mean about not wanting to go to the place that brings it right up, into your face.

It hurts like hell incognito, to keep showing up when you have nothing of value to add and can see no point to it anyway. What slowly started to happen for me, and it is a liflong task and still has a long way to go, but therapy helped me redefine those terms i was using. You see, therapy is one place where sitting in silence in not necessarily a negative thing, your worth is not classified according to how entertaining your speech is.

Just being there and feeling useless and seeing it and meeting it head on and welcoming it in and getting to know the discomfort of it is what therapy is all about. Just being able to clearly define exaclty what it means like you did in your post is already a huge thing. But now in therapy you have the opportunity to change how you relate to it. Therapy is mimicking your life but it is the one place where you can take the time to welcome these abhorrent feelings in and get to know them and hopefully start to heal them.

Even asking your T not to read an email you sent is important. I did that once and as well and when we talked about it, it was the first glimmering of a sense of myself developing. So what i would say, is that you don't have to speak about your experiences if you don't want to, just talk about what is happening with your T right now this confusion and ambivilance and get his help in how to understand what is happening. Examine how you define worthless, how useless you feel in therapy and open it up to discussion. In life we close down, we move away but here you have the chance to climb right in to where you already are. You already feel like this so jump in and stop resisting and see where it takes you when you welcome it instead of slamming the door in its face.
Pan

Incognito,
I'm sorry that you are going through this. I feel very similarly to you right now. In fact just last Tues. during my session I sat there in silence and maybe said like 20 words (and none of them really made any sense). I go in to therapy feeling like a failure...like we've discussed all this before so what is the point.

While you're words are worthless and loneliness, mine are pathetic and weak. The fact that I seem to not be able to verbalize anything when I go in some weeks just reinforces that I am these things.

And despite all this we still go, so there must be some kind of hope deep down (at least that's what my T would probably say)I think (for me) the point of therapy is just having someone acknowledge my suffering...even if it's not getting an better for the time being at least I know that someone in this world knows that I am struggling. So maybe sitting in silence sometimes isn't such a bad thing. Maybe just having another human being witness your silence is enough for now (until you are ready to speak again.) I hope that you find some sort of comfort in this, at the very least know that you are not alone in your struggle.