(((incognito)))

I can hear the turmoil and confusion and pain you are in. I wish I had some sort of wisdom to make it better. I hope your T calls you back and sorts this out with you a bit, at least so those last two calls dong kind of hang in the air for you. I know it might not help, but I identify with the roller coaster you are on and especially with how hard it is to share intimate stuff with a male T. I think it is good that your T is being patient with the process, but I also understand how it can sound like he doesn't want to hear it. I really need my T to ask specific questions when things are hard to share, so I know he wants to hear it, it's not taboo, etc. He isn't very good at doing that (or perhaps it's just not the right way to go)...

I'm sorry it is so painful right now.

thanks Yaku for your understanding.

I don't think my T will call me again because my appointment is tomorrow night and I'm sure he hopes I will come in and talk to him then.

Hye, incognito- I am so sorry to hear that things have gotten so bad today. You did the right thing to reach out to your T- I thinkthat you cannot tell it, because it hurts and is so confusing and painful right now- but what you are going through is normal considering what you went through before, whatever it was. It is of course going to feel like this, when you are trying to uncover such things, that never should have happened to you. I want to tell you some more stuff, but I am going to PM it because it is private.

Hugs,

BB

Hugs to you incognito.

I had written a big post - but had PAD and deleted it. Sorry. The short version is that this happens to me a LOT. I totally understand your pain and I hear you. I hope you feel secure enough soon to tell him the full story -until then you are going to feel frustrated with him and you and the process.

((((( Incognito )))))

I really sympathize with what you’re going through and can relate very much to your descriptions of feeling that the very core of you is bad and wrong and disgusting . Like you I can only ever reveal bits of me in dribs and drabs because I don’t want T (or anyone!) to see how bad I really am, and so whatever response I get I discount because I think ‘yes but you don’t really know me.’ (And I haven’t even touched on the huge well of shame and self disgust I harbour about all things sex and intimacy related.)

From the way you’ve described your T’s responses in that phone conversation, it sounds like he really is there for you and on your side and what I’m seeing is a really strongly negative reaction on your part that is colouring how you’re experiencing his acceptance of you.

I’m going to take a bit of a risk here and say what I think *might* be happening for you – to do with how angry you feel and how negatively you react to a lot of what your T says and does.

My guess, and it’s based entirely on my own internal set up, is that it’s all to do with the intensity of shame that you’re feeling. Shame is often strongly defended by anger and the way you are describing your angry responses to T reminds me very much of how I feel when I’ve talked about or exposed something that I experience as shameful (shame being a feeling that makes one experience their SELF as bad inferior worthless, an indictment of one’s whole self not just an aspect or a behaviour). My automatic feeling when someone responds to something shameful I’ve revealed about myself (which is effectively me revealing my whole ‘bad’ me) is to rear up in defensive and distancing anger – like whatever they say is just sticking the knife in and making me feel even worse, and the more sympathetic and understanding they are, perversely the more intense my lashing out anger is. Their sympathy and understanding just seems to make me experience my shameful self even more intensely and horribly and there’s no escape from that ghastly state of self loathing and self disgust – so my automatic reaction to that is to lash out in rage, anything to stop having to experience how bad and disgusting I am.

Hm it’s quite hard to describe here what I really mean. Maybe an analogy might be, having third degree burns but they aren’t visible and people come up and poke and prod and touch without realizing how much in agony you are, and you lash out because of it, but in their eyes the angry response is way out of proportion to what they’ve said or done and they end up judging you. And even with someone who does recognize that maybe you’ve got third degree burns and they are trying very gently to salve the burns (like a T), it still causes excruciating agony and so the defensive lash out response is still inevitable.

I hope this hasn’t just made you feel worse, and I’m sorry if this has come across like I’m quoting text book stuff at you when you’re in the middle of feeling like you’re disintegrating. Experiencing that inner ‘self as bad’ consciously is intolerable and the worst form of torture I can think of – and I have no useful suggestions as to how to deal with it except to take things really really slowly, shut yourself down, distract, get yourself into ‘normal’ mode, give yourself a break from the unbearable feelings threatening to overwhelm you. You don’t have to bring it all out in one go, I agree with your T there about working with it all slowly, as it comes up.

I also hope you do go to your session today and maybe tell T what you’ve written here?

Sending you lots of good wishes and hoping you are hanging in there.

LL

Thanks BB. I keep thinking I'm past feeling the pain of my childhood and then it sucks me back into the vortex. I feel like it is a bottomless pit that I can't fill.

SD, I wish I had read the long post. I'm not sure I could ever tell the full story because I don't know it and it keeps changing or the most painful part changes over time.

LL, I think your description very good and my shame is colouring so much of what I think is happening with my T. The anger explodes and then the guilt about the anger and the sadness because I'm afraid I've ruined something with my anger. I understand the pattern but I can't stop getting caught up in it. Slowly things down just seems like it is going to drag things out and I"ll feel like this until I self-destruct.

Thanks for the hug Ninn.

I did speak to my T for a few minutes at lunch today and he said I could come tonight to my session which relieved me. My session is in a couple of hours and I'm anxious but I'm going to try and talk about something.

Hi Incognito,
I have been where you are and it was very recently. My T also told me that I did not have to disclose everything or anything. However, I knew I had to FOR ME. It took us five sessions for me to disclose everything. At first, like you I could not get the words out, so I wrote it down and read it. Since that time some new memories have surfaced and they have been much easier to disclose. And, some present issues related to CSA have also been much easier to disclose. My level of trust is better because he knows how hard I am working and how much I want to be whole. Your T knows that too. I wish I could sit and talk to you and let you cry on my shoulder. I know you pain. It's terrible. You never should have had to endure what you did and you deserve to have everything you need. I'll be thinking about you. ND

quote:

Slowly things down just seems like it is going to drag things out and I"ll feel like this until I self-destruct.

Hi incognito... I know that feeling that you describe... that you are disintegrating. I felt it the day my oldT shut the door in my face after he told me to find a new T. I could feel/see myself breaking into pieces and it felt like annihilation of my existence. I remember in my head telling myself to try to get to my car without collapsing to the floor (especially since I just had stomach surgery and probably would NOT have been able to get back up).

What I quoted above makes me think that your T is slowing you down because he knows how important it is to calibrate the exposure to reliving the traumas so as not to overwhelm you with what you can handle at any one time. I am like you in that I tend to want to rush through things too quickly but then the payback is that I become overwhelmed with the feelings that are produced and then I cannot regulate the emotions and then I have to contact T. And THEN if my T is not providing what I think I need I get angry with him (mainly this happened with oldT) and things just went downhill from there... usually a disruption.

So there is a reason that your T is slowing you down even though it feels like torture and that it's taking forever to get to the stuff you need to address. I think it was STRM's T that would say..."the slower you go the faster you get there". I think that makes a lot of sense.

Hope you are feeling better after your session. Let us know how you are doing.

Hugs
TN

Thank you ND for the support. I wish I could sit and talk to you too. I'm glad that it has gotten easier to talk to your T about your memories. I have told T my memories (and I have very few). What I struggle with now is the things I do today that I'm ashamed of and how those things relate to CSA. I think I would rather blame myself than admit that it is still effecting me.

xoxo, thanks for the link I have read quickly the disintegration article and will read it more slowly again as well as the rest of the site. I found the parts on toxic shame and abuse and fragmentation difficult because they sound so very painful and familiar. To clarify my T and I aren't processing trauma so much as I'm trying to talk about some of the things behaviours and feelings I struggle with presently and they relate to my CSA.

((TN)) Thanks for taking the time to reach out when I know how difficult your week has been. I think my T is trying to slow things down in a way too. During my session last night I thought I was ready to go back to talking about the difficult stuff and then when I sat down I actually started giving him reasons that I couldn't.

My first reason was that it was an unending cycle... first I approach something to shameful or difficult to talk about so I hint at it, then I"m angry at myself for doing that, I don't think T understands and I get angry at him, I feel like a failure who is wasting T's time because I won't talk to him even though he has shown me over and over that he wants to help, won't be judgemental, and is a good T, then the pressure builds up and I start feeling out of control anxiety, stress responses, thoughts of SI or SU, I get very angry and plan to quit therapy, I get very sad that I've wrecked therapy and apologetic, then I go back and can talk about the difficult thing. I told him I recognize the pattern but I can't alter it and the intensity and length of the stress phase varies considerably. So I said if I talk about this thing that will just lead to a few sessions of talking until we hit the next thing so no progress just another painful cycle.

T of course countered with the fact that the cycles are changing. I am successful at talking about things and that we need to keep talking about the difficult stuff over and over and regularly so I realize it can be talked about and dealt with by both of us together. I think part of my need to rush and tell it all is my (false) idea that the sooner I get it out the sooner I've dealt with it and so I explode and disclose a lot and then move on to another topic quickly and think I'm done with it. That is why I can say I've told T all my memories but I've done it quickly and then moved away from it.

I also was a lot more open about how I'm struggling right now. How I'm worried about my extremes of emotion, thinking about self-harm constantly, having trouble sleeping or eating, etc. So that was a new conversation for me and as T pointed out a difficult one that I managed to have. Right at the end I managed to ask T a question about touch. I wouldn't want to hug my T (at least not now) but I keep have this recurring wish that when I was crying he would sit beside me and put his arm on my shoulder or arm instead of watching me like a specimen. I have told him how I feel like a specimen and I feel alone when I am really upset. It was hard to ask and I asked him if he would consider changing where we sit in the room and then talked about how grounded and connected I felt when a friend recently just touched my back and let me cry. I told him he didn't have to answer immediately and we could talk about it next week and he replied he was open to trying something if we both agreed to it and it helped me to feel less like a specimen which wasn't really yes or no but I'm okay with it. I actually feel happy that I asked at all because I admitted I wanted that.

I've felt a little better since my session last night, a little less anxious, and so tired. I find therapy exhausting.

Incognito, sounds like it was well worth your going to your session after all, and I hope you feel a lot less like you're disintegrating at the moment. It certainly is a slow process though isn't it, and I guess you just have to find a LOT of patience from somewhere and the strength to just keep pushing and pushing through all this stuff coming up for you.

Hugs to you ((((((( Incognito ))))))))

LL

quote:

first I approach something to shameful or difficult to talk about so I hint at it, then I"m angry at myself for doing that, I don't think T understands and I get angry at him, I feel like a failure who is wasting T's time because I won't talk to him even though he has shown me over and over that he wants to help, won't be judgemental, and is a good T, then the pressure builds up and I start feeling out of control anxiety, stress responses, thoughts of SI or SU, I get very angry and plan to quit therapy, I get very sad that I've wrecked therapy and apologetic, then I go back and can talk about the difficult thing.

Oh wow incognito that is exactly what I do many times in therapy. In fact, I've done that this week and right now I'm trying to fight away the feelings that I have wrecked my therapy totally with a T that I value (even though I am angry with him LOL). Sometimes it's just so hard.

I have also rushed through telling T things... well mostly I did that with oldT and the stuff never really got processed doing it that way. It was like I just had to get it all out and move on to something else. I told him in my reporters (adult)voice like I was reading a report or something. That is not the way to do it and I realize that now. But sometimes you need to start that way and then go back to it and retell it in your emotional (or child's) voice for it to lose the power over you.

I do think your T is correct in that you are changing and you are getting stronger. You are able to bring out more of what is inside you and you don't quit. That takes courage. I'm glad you broached the subject of touch for comfort and that your T is willing to do what makes you feel comfortable and less like the specimen.

Thanks for sharing. I was totally exhausted too last night. Utterly drained from my therapy session. It is very hard work.

Hugs
TN

LL,

I do feel less like I'm disintegrating which is a relief. I'm not very good with slow things. I always want the shortest route and if things take too long I get distracted and forget where I'm going (which is a painfully apt metaphor for most of my life). Thank you for the hugs.

TN,

The good thing is I'm sure you haven't wrecked your therapy even though you are afraid you have because I haven't and I've felt absolutely unreasonable and T is still there. It is really hard to keep talking about things over and over in different voices and experiencing all the different ways it effects you.

I'm not sure that my T is willing to do what makes me feel comfortable because he was pretty careful to say he was willing to consider something if we both agreed it would be helpful. LOL. I think we will need to continue the touch conversation before I know if he is willing to engage in that kind of physical comfort. I'm just happy I managed to say it considering it has been running around in my head off and on for the last year approximately and I've refused to say it. I hope you are feeling better rested.

Hi Incognito *wave*

I was moved by your post. It is vivid and it is stark and honest.

You know, I think any T would be honored to have you bring all this to the table. Our feelings may be shameful and confusing to us, but-- I imagine-- they are a gold mine to them. Sorting out the mess is exactly why we're in therapy. I too very often get stuck in the trap of wanting to understand it, or waiting for it to be reasonable, before uttering it. I hope the disintegration thing goes away soon, I hate that one. It sounds like you might be doing a bit better and that you're in good hands. Hang in there *hugs*