Hi there,

Honestly, yes, I do feel this urge sometimes. It used to be a lot worse.

For me there were lots of reasons for it. Partly it was because I felt like I needed my T's approval. Being a 'good' client was a good way to achieve this. I think this had a lot to do with having to be a 'good child' at home too.

It was also fear-related. Often I would be afraid that if I wasn't seen to be responding to my T's suggestions then they wouldn't think I was working hard enough - and I'd end up getting let go.

There's a third reason too... something to do with not feeling as if I was allowed to complain, or have sad/angry feelings. In my family, putting a brave face on things was always considered to be politer than actually being honest about how you were doing. After a while, it became so ingrained that I didn't know how to behave otherwise.

Does any of that feel similar for you? I think it is definitely something worth bringing up with your T if you can.

Smilingpenquin, I love your description:

quote:

the stuff marked "loony tunes" internally.

When I was pretty ill, I kind of figured it didn't matter. I felt like I was a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic anyway, so fessing up to some of the more extreme thoughts was less of an issue.

Now I am a bit more functional I find it intensely annoying how I can find myself filtering, even to a person who is 1. bound by confidentiality so cannot spread word of my 'looney tunes' status to the world and 2. trained to hold to a non-judgemental stance.

Mostly I think it's a lot to do about how I actually view myself. Often I judge myself for not being 'fixed enough' and I suspect I project that on to my T. Over the years, the occasions when I've revealed something I feel worried and ashamed of, my various Ts have not batted an eyelid. Most have helped me normalise my feelings and it has actually ended up being a healing experience.

It's hard to really get that our Ts don't actually want to see the sanitised version that we carefully show them. It's far more helpful to both us and them to be honest, even if that honesty feels scary and ugly and wrong at times.