Incognito, that was really lovely and moving to read - thank you. I have really found it helpful.

quote:

I actually wanted to talk to him, I trusted that he could help me. It hit me that I feel safe talking to him, safer than I ever have in my life. I can almost feel myself letting my guard down when I sit down and I don't even think I knew I had my guard up the rest of my life.

This is just how beautiful a good therapeutic relationship can be. How truly fortunate you are and I am so glad this is happening in your life, some people NEVER experience this and live their whole lives not knowing they have a guard up. so we are lucky when we begin to feel it. thank you for posting

Incognito, indeed its a good thing to sometimes post about he good stuff too. Writing about and reflect about the good things reagard to therapy, are also a great counter-force to the pain and frustration the theraputic relation also involves. Thanks for sharing. I am glad to hear you`re experiencing the feeling of being heard and safe with your T now, - that must be such a relief! And creds for managing to link the negative feelings, to whats been going on in therapy as well. Isnt it strange how those things always seem to be linked?(therapy and "real life") Hopefully this feeling will last and feel "fresh" until your next session, Monday!

Beautiful post, Incognito!

I really enjoyed reading it. Made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Thank you for sharing!

That feeling is gone. I sent him an email expressing it Friday and almost immediately regretted sending it because I didn't think he could get it over an email. He sent back a nice reply thanking me for sharing and telling me he looked forward to getting back into it on Monday (I think he meant the conversation).

Over the weekend I was really busy and avoiding all thoughts of therapy, this board, my blog, my personal journaling etc. I don't want to go see him in an hour. I don't want to talk about my email because I don't feel that way now. I don't want him to ignore because I think that will prove he didn't get how important it was to me. I hate being so inconsistent. I feel like I must have a fractured personality because I can't maintain a connection, idea, goal, etc. I seesaw wildly between feeling connected and wanting to quit, from wanting to improve my life and wanting to die, from trying to explore my feelings and beliefs and hiding and ignoring everything and calling it unimportant.

Hi Incognito,

Just wondering how your session went today. If you feel any better after it. I think I understand that seesaw feeling really well. I used to only feel the bad stuff. The wanting to die, the numbness, the nothingness. Now, I think it is a good thing that I actually seesaw to feeling, to wanting to try to work on my life. Feeling all these emotions that I'm used to pushing aside is hard work. I'm hoping it'll get easier with time and I won't feel as though I'm on a roller coaster anymore. When I feel that nothingness, I'm starting to push myself to forge ahead anyway. What I'm finding is that there are usually more feelings there that I'm pushing to the side again. Bad old nasty habit.

I'm sorry you are feeling so down. Please let me know how you are doing.

((((((HUGS)))))))

Liese

Liese,

Thanks for asking. My session today didn't go very well. I couldn't talk about it. I just cried and cried. My T tried to talk to me but I couldn't stay with what he said. Whenever I tried to think about what he was saying I lost it and couldn't express myself.

I'm not sure what to do now. I can't bear the feelings. I feel like a bottomless hole and there will never be something that can heal that. I've got to stop because it just gets worse and worse. Thank you for caring.

(((((INCOGNITO))))))

It will heal. It will. I know it will. What hurts so much? Can you figure it out? Sometimes its okay to accept the pain for what it is and not push it back down. It's okay to hurt because it does hurt. It will get better.

My H told me recently when he was mad at me, "you never smile". Well, you know what? Life is hard. And, we have a lot of stress right now. And, I can't walk around smiling all the time when we have all this stress and while you're walking around ignoring it all. The ironic thing is that now I can smile a little once I stopped pretending everything was okay.

I hope you get some rest tonight and feel better.

(((((((HUGS))))))

Liese

(((Incognito)))

I'm sorry it hurts so much. This may or may not help, but something my T always tells me is that each tear you cry now is one less to cry later. You can't cry forever even though it feels like you will. I know that place where it feels like it will never stop, but it will get better. I'm sorry you didn't have a good session, but even though you weren't able to verbalize, you went in there and let yourself be vulnerable and cried with your T. There is great value in just experiencing the emotion with someone else. It might not have been the session you were hoping for, but maybe it was useful in ways that you can't see yet. I hope so. (((hugs)))

Oh Incognito, i am sorry it feels so like a bottomless black hole and that it hurts so much. I wish i could offer you some comfort.
Pan

(((((((INCOGNITO))))))

Taking off to go skiing in the snowstorm. I know it sounds like a fun thing to be doing but when you are torn up inside, as we all are, doing things can be a chore. Trying to find the strength inside me to be cheerful for the kids. I'll be thinking of you over the next couple of days. Hope you find the bottom and can start floating upwards.

(((((((HOPE))))))))

Liese

Hi Incognito,
Sorry to be so late to the thread but I wanted to encourage you that very far from being a failure, what has happened is a very definite step forward, and one that can't be lost. You may not have been able to hang unto it, but you did experience

quote:

It hit me that I feel safe talking to him, safer than I ever have in my life. I can almost feel myself letting my guard down when I sit down and I don't even think I knew I had my guard up the rest of my life.

Though it may not be constant, having that feeling is something you HAVE experienced and is now a part of you that can't be taken away. And emotions come and go, you will feel that way again. It makes total sense that it's difficult to hang unto that sense of trust, Incognito, all of your experience tells you differently. But you can use the memory of this feeling to help you move closer again, to form another memory of safety, which in turn helps you move closer. My T told me over and over and over and over that it would take as long as I needed and as much reassurance as I needed to hear until I would feel safe with him. It's slow painstaking work BUT this is HUGE! You experienced feelings something different and in in the face of the kind of terror that moving closer to someone evokes, this is very much an accomplishment of which you should feel very proud. Now I know the tendency is to now beat yourself up for it slipping away; instead, have compassion for the little Incognito who learned such difficult lessons about how painful it could be to move closer. You are learning to do the healthy thing in reaching out for your T, but go gently with yourself, this is hard difficult work and can take time. But you'll get there. I include below one of my favorite passages from General Theory of Love which perfectly described what it was like for me. I hope it proves an encouragement to you.

quote:

People who need regulation often leave therapy sessions feeling calmer, stronger, safer, more able to handle the world. Often they don't know why. Nothing obviously helpful happened--telling a stranger about your pain sounds nothing like a certain recipe for relief. And the feeling inevitably dwindles, sometimes within minutes, taking the warmth and security with it. But the longer a patient depends, the more his stability swells, expanding infinitesimally with every session as length is added to a woven cloth with each pass of the shuttle, each contraction of the loom. And after he weaves enough of it, the day comes when the patient will unfurl his independence like a pair of spread wings. Free at last, he catches a wind and rides into other lands.

I know this is painful beyond belief to work through but I do believe one day you'll look back and think it was all worth it.

AG

Hi Incognito, I just wanted to offer you hugs and support for this difficult time you are going through. I think AG gave a wonderful (as usual) answer and I also am very partial to that passage in GTOL because it puts into very poetic and easy to understand words what actually happens in therapy and how we heal.

It's really okay that you just sat with your T and cried. My newT says there is healing in tears and they also tell us alot. Perhaps your tears were telling you that you were feeling safe enough to sit with T and let him see you cry. To allow him to witness your sadness and grief speaks of the safety and closeness to you feel to him. Sometimes we cannot find the words because our pain and injury was a pre-verbal kind of wound and there really are no words.

Think of the title of this (your) thread. You feel safe and heard... that was what you were feeling in the last session too... it was just shown in a different way. You will find your way back to the realization of being heard, just be easy on yourself and don't rush it. My newT says after 3 years we would just be getting to know each other. Real, deep psychotherapy takes time and can't be rushed. It's not linear we will go in stops and starts. And sometimes we are our own worst critics. I think it's STRM's T that says the slower you go the faster you get there.

Right now you are just starting to weave that cloth and one day soon you will spread your wings and be free.

Hang in there incognito... I know how hopeless and hard it seems at times. One step at a time and you will eventually see how far you have traveled. Please let us know how you are doing today.

Safe hugs,
TN

Thank you all for supporting me. It is true you can't cry forever and I've started to feel if not better at least not so bad. I'm trying to consider Monday as a blip in the process and am going to try to express myself again tomorrow. I usually see my T on Monday and Wednesday. My T has tried to get me to see that I can communicate even when I can't speak any words and he is there with me but I seem to be obsessed with things going how I plan.

Monday I was really upset at myself for sending him the email on Friday instead of waiting until I saw him. So I asked myself what was wrong with emailing him. I think it is because I'm afraid he hates getting emails from me and I think he deserves a day where he doesn't have to think of me, hear from me and write me. He tried to tell me that reaching out and connecting with him on Friday was a healthy impulse but it doesn't feel that way so I will try and discuss that with him tomorrow. How do we manage my desire to connect with him and prevent it from burning him out.

I also realized that I felt like I didn't do it right (therapy) by not talking to him about my feelings in person. I asked myself what kind of fantasy or expectation I had about that in person conversation that I felt was ruined by sending him an email. I couldn't come up with any specific idea of what I thought would happen when I told him but I think it is part of my perfection obsession. I think I am hoping that I can have some perfect attuned moment with my T that can make up for all the other things missing in my life and then it will be over and everything will be like rainbows and unicorns and happiness all the time. I guess that is the fantasy. Thank you all for sharing all your experiences with filling the holes inside of you AG and Pan with the board. I've been reading a lot of threads today and it has helped me realize some things. I'm not quite sure how you grieve the losses though.

Liese I hope you enjoy skiing and thank you for thinking of me.

STRM, Draggers, TN, and Deepfried. Thanks supporting me. I know we are all struggling with different things but all the comments have really helped me.

Hi Incognito
You latest post made me smile for a moment because it was like getting a glimpse of the real Incognito who is beginning to not quite live up to her name so well anymore.

What i wanted to say about the grieving is that i think this is how you do it, it is not just in the tears and the sadness, but it is in the conversations with your T and more importantly, the internal ones with yourself. My personal experience was that the questioning became less of a 'slanging match kind of attack' on myself and more of a genuine engagement about what i was needing and wanting and how to balance my needs with others. Which is exactly what you are busy doing.

There seems to be a balance that grows between intellectual reasoning and emotional needs and as that ability to balance my needs, wants desires, shame, self-hatred etc. grew i was better able to accept myself, ask for what i need and gradually with the help of my T clear up the terrible confusion that lived inside me and was the root of my particular black hole.

So this is the grieving Incognito, realising what is fantasy and what is reasonable and being able to feel sad when it is not how you want it to be and happy when it it. It sounds so simple but for years i never quite knew how i was meant to feel and then would second guess and doubt what i did do and it was an endlessly painful mess.

So these conversations with yourself, your T and all of us is really what it is all about.

Pan

Hi Incognito,

All I can say is that your last post was so emotionally vulnerable and beautiful and real to me that tears were streaming down my cheeks as I was reading it. I particularly related to your desire to connect with him and prevent it from burning him out. I too have been feeling that same way with my T. I have been seeing him twice a week lately. But often times I just wish I could touch base with him every day in some kind of small way. I'm overwhelmed by my need to be so near to him and I get that this is bothering you as well???

Pan, your post was just beautiful as well. I loved the following, in particular,

quote:

My personal experience is that the questioning became less of a 'slanging match kind of attack' on myself and more of a genuine engagement about what I was wanting and needing and how to balance my needs with others.

quote:

So well said and really, what a beautiful thing when that happens, when everyone's needs are balanced and met!!!

As the others have said so beautifully that this is all part of the growth process, why see it as a blip? Sometimes I find that I am able to express myself in the session following the session when I couldn't express myself and beat myself up for not being able to express myself and tell myself that I'm going to quit therapy and what am I doing here anyway if I don't have anything to say! I know, run-on sentence. I don't know why it works that way for me but it does. Maybe it has to do with the expectations I put on myself and wanting to please T.

Sounds like you are feeling better.

(((((HUGS)))))

Liese