Here's an analogy that just came to me having to do with some of the feelings and beliefs that we've carried since childhood.

Imagine you've been half-buried in a pile of manure your whole life. It sure stinks, but you don't even notice it. You are so used to it, it actually seems normal to you. But one day, you get sick of all the flies buzzing around your head and you go to therapy to try to do something about those pesky flies.

So you go to therapy and then one day, you suddenly become aware you are sitting in a giant pile of manure!! You have no idea where all of this poo came from, but suddenly it smells bad and feels gross! Yet you have no idea where it came from. Your T tries to tell you how to wash it off, but since you're still sitting right in the middle of it, trying to wash it off just makes the whole pile soggier and more gross.

So you keep talking about it, all the while feeling how miserable and intolerable it is, then one day you realize that this pile of manure is not your natural habitat. At some point in your life, someone or several people starting dumping poo on you until you were half buried and you just resigned yourself to it. You suddenly get angry! You start throwing the stuff off of yourself until you are unburied enough that you can get up and actually walk out of the pile. You look around and realize there is so much space out there which isn't full of manure!

But then you look down and realize it's all over you still. But this time you can let your T help you wash it off because at least you're not sitting in the middle of it anymore.

My point in this is you are getting there with this process. The fact that you're becoming more aware of all this stuff and it's becoming less tolerable actually means you're that much closer to getting free of it.

BLT - I absolutely love that analogy!!!

The Kid

Incognito...I hear and understand about the hole. It's like, wait a minute?!! I've already climbed out of it!! Why do I have to do it again?? How come there's no layer of protection that keeps us from falling into the bloody thing? Aren't there road signs?

I'm learning how to read the invisible road signs (feelings in my body) and until you know what's what, it sneaks up on you and by the time you feel it, it's too late. You've fallen back in whether you want to or not.

Take gentle care of you,

The Kid

Thanks for the analogy BLT. It makes the pain I'm in feel a lot more hopeful than I am experiencing. I think the problem is that I don't think T can help me wash it off. It feels more like he is putting on a small hardening layer.

I think I can relate to the falling into the pit analogy, The Kid. I fall and I'm hurt and I'mm angry and I'm alone. T doesn't leave and he doesn't tell me it is my own fault and I caused this disaster by being so bad or stupid. Instead T sits down and listens to me cry and occasionally he asks me questions to help me figure things out like "can you move your hand?" and then he waits for me to figure out that means I haven't broken my arm and he waits for me to climb out of the pit. He doesn't come down and help me, he doesn't dry my tears and comfort me, and he doesn't help me figure out why the ground keeps disappearing under my feet so the cycle keeps happening.

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I think the problem is that I don't think T can help me wash it off.

That's because you're still in the middle of it. Give it some time...

((((COGS))))

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I can make everything about me.

We all can. Is there any emotion that isn't tinged with an aspect of self-interest?


I know how it feels when how we feel seems like it can be the only truth and others just don't see it the same way. I know how invalidating and painful that feels. I also know you struggled with what your T wrote to you in his email. I hate to even throw this out there because I don't want you to feel like I am telling you you are wrong. Just to offer another point of view, however, it came across to me as very compassionate, intelligent, knowledgeable and wise. He is there for you Cogs even if he doesn't always understand what you are going through.

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It is just painful because I feel like I should be able to and I can’t make myself so I am wrong and bad and a failure.

My T has asked me a million times, "Liese, why do you feel so bad about yourself?" And, aside from: because my FOO really sucked, I never really had an answer for him. Have you ever asked yourself that question? What is SO wrong about you? From my viewpoint, you work really hard at everything you do. Yes, you struggle but for good reason. But, damn, Cogs, you work really hard and even when you feel like giving up, you don't.

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I tried to tell him what I was feeling but he didn't understand and he tried talking to me about why what I wanted to talk about (eating/sex etc) was so difficult for me (shame). By the end I was crying so hard and feeling so wrong and bad ..... I left there and all I could think was he doesn’t understand. He is trying to rationally explain things and I’m in no place that can process logic.

Those shameful feelings have a way of manipulating us into thinking that other people are thinking the same thing we are about ourselves and the fact that he was trying to be logical only served to make it feel like he did NOT understand what you are feeling and thinking.

He understands how BAD you feel about it all and how difficult it is for you to TALK about it even if he doesn't feel the shame that you feel. (He might have his own shame about his own stuff but that's another story.) What he was trying to say by saying what he did (the parts I left out in the middle) was that he is NOT judging you the same way you judge yourself. He is going to be there for you COGS when you decide to talk about those things.

Your parents blamed you for everything that happened to you and they were not there to support you. It doesn't sound like they are any more supportive now that you are an adult so it's no wonder you don't feel the support and acceptance your T is giving you. You've never had that before.

Maybe there is a part of you that really doesn't want to deal with this stuff and who can blame you? It hurts and you may risk losing his approval if he doesn't react kindly when you talk about that stuff. That's a big risk. It would be a big risk for me. Try to help him understand. It sounds like he wants to.

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When I started writing I thought I would tell you what things bothered me today but it really doesn't matter what I heard or felt because it won't be what you said or meant anyway.

(((Cogs)))
I have an analogy for therapy that it's like slogging through valleys filled with really dense jungle, having to hack your way through with a machete, exhausted and dirty and fighting for every inch of ground. Sometimes you get lost and go over the same ground a number of time. But every once in a while you come to a peak which allows you to climb above the tree line and breathe in cool, fresh air and when you look back, you can see how much progress you've made and sometimes even catch a glimpse of the way forward. But when you are slogging through the valleys, it often feels like you are going nowhere.

I used the quote above, because I think you are totally unaware of a major milestone of progress. There was a time where you would NOT have been able to distinguish between what your T said and what you heard. The first step in sorting and filtering out the lies we were taught is to get some space between you and your feelings, and entertain the possibility that our feelings do not necessarily reflect the reality. You have started to find that space.

And I know it is horrible and painful and can even feel like abuse all over again to have them sit there while you struggle. But there are just things we need to face and feel in order to feel. It's again, only in looking back, that I can see 1)that my T did help me when I needed help, while not helping me for things I needed to do for myself 2) his witnessing and understanding while I expressed and felt things I thought were impossible to go anywhere near, including my deep sense of shame and utter worthlessness, were what healed me. It doesn't make any sense, which is why it can be so hard to stick with. I truly think its a mystery at the heart of being human, how important connection is to us.

But you are NOT beyond healing and being cleaned off (as BLT described in her wonderful analogy), I refuse to believe that. There is a far side to this pain and you are moving towards it.

xx AG

Thank you BLT, Hollow, Liese and AG for you encouragement. I have my session in an hour and I am so anxious I am shaking and nauseous. I think I feel stronger or safer when I am angry at my T and blaming him for his actions or inaction. Going there and trying to talk and explain to him how I feel is so scary. I'll write more later.

(((cogs)))

Hope it went/is going okay.

My session went well. My T started by telling me that the way he understood my story was that I didn't feel abandoned by him when I was overwhelmed but I did feel like he wasn't meeting my needs. I agreed and by the time I got there I had decided that therapy wasn't going to meet those needs and I would just have to accept what my T could do.

Then he gave me his version of story. He and I are walking in a completely dark place and at first he doesn't know I've fallen into a ditch and then when he hears me cry out he doesn't know where the ditch is so we have to communicate in order for him to find out. I didn't like it much and was upset because there was still no mention of him helping me. I was surprised I was angry because I thought I was resigned to not getting helped more than he already was helping me. I found myself telling him that this is why therapy wasn't working between us and he carefully told me he thought it was working. I said yes but I thought it could be less painful for me and I wasn't sure I could keep doing it.

Then my T surprised me by asking if I thought touch could have reached me in a way his questions did not (we shake hands at the end of sessions and occasionally discussed other types of touch but only briefly). I said I didn't know for sure but I thought it might. I didn't tell him that I thought it might help just to hear him say he wished he could comfort me but that seemed to embarrassing. Them he told me the difficulty he had imagining me feeling so wrong and bad and ashamed of needing him and feeling bad about sexuality and desire and then him reaching out and touching me because he thought it would be difficult to know what it would mean to me at that moment. I agreed he couldn't just jump up and touch me. It would have to be discussed and tried when I wasn't so overwhelmed and then maybe he could offer or I would feel able to ask him knowing that he was okay with it because I certainly wasn't going to be able to say in a middle of an emotional melt down "come sit beside me and see if it helps".

I also told him how I think that he doesn't want to talk about how we interact because almost immediately after a difficult session where I feel disconnected and alone we will start talking about some difficult subject like sex. I think that is what he wants me to talk about so I do it because I want to fix what was wrong in the bad session. But we don't explore those topics very much because I haven't talked enough about the disruption.

It was a very good start to the discussion of what goes wrong between us when I am overwhelmed with "badness". I know why he thinks therapy is working because it does just slowly. Unfortunately what usually happens is T triggers some incredible reaction but doesn't help me deal with it or explore it (IMO). I then often work through it by talking to people irl and on the internet. I feel better but I don't feel like my T and I worked through it together so I rarely get the sense of accomplishment during a session that I got triggered, overwhelmed, and contained by T. I think that makes it hard for me to trust T with more difficult things because I have a lot of experience with T not getting angry or running away from me (after five years) but a lot less at us working through upsetting moments like tonight with each other.

This went very long but I wanted to share what happened.

((Cogs))

It is so nice to hear that your session went well. You have been struggling so hard. I hope your T really understands now how you are feeling.

Jillann

((((COGS))))

So glad you feel good about your session. Wow. This was incredibly powerful and insightful:

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I then often work through it by talking to people irl and on the internet. I feel better but I don't feel like my T and I worked through it together so I rarely get the sense of accomplishment during a session that I got triggered, overwhelmed, and contained by T.

It's sounds like you were working parallel to each other but not with each other. Is that how it feels for you?

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I think that makes it hard for me to trust T with more difficult things because I have a lot of experience with T not getting angry or running away from me (after five years) but a lot less at us working through upsetting moments like tonight with each other.

Maybe you needed to know he would abandon you first before you started to work on working through moments like you did last night?

(((Cogs))) Brava! You keep very courageously going back to work through this despite all the difficult feelings. I am glad that you had a good session. It's a frustrating process, healing, but you're very determined.

AG