How do you deal with your inner critic or self-hatred in session? Do you say what you really think about yourself? Do you know what you want when you talk about your self-hate? Do you know what you think might heal it for you?

My stuff:

I find right now I'm going through a period of time where my sense of self is changing. Part of me can hang on to the new reality I've been building in therapy which is that I am not the vile toxic scum of the earth I have felt like my whole life and part of me can't.

It's hard for me to talk about in session without intellectualizing. To keep myself calm I can discuss the opposing feelings, I talk about it calmly and while there is a nuclear bomb of hate going off in my head.

I never get to just unleash about what I really think because I can't really go down that train of thought without it ending in self-harming behavior which would happen suddenly without warning in my Ts office (which is for obvious reasons very unacceptable - and has never happened) or I'd just save my punishment for when I leave. I have a high level of impulse control but when I tap in to that part of me that is holding all that contempt against myself I can't stop it - it's a take over. Sometimes even at home I will end up have an internal "explosion" of hate/horrible self-talk where I'm missing for a fair chunk of time and find myself exhausted and disoriented for hours after.

It's like to say it all out loud would be impossible but I feel a need to do so. I'm just not sure if that is effective or how I can work through this without ever fully letting out the pressure. I get frustrated with myself for not being able to think myself in to feeling differently. I feel bad saying and believing such awful things about myself but a part of me really feels that is the absolute undeniable truth and no amount of someone believing something different is going to sway that. This part doesn't want nurturing or rescue or positive reflection it is basically hell bent on self-destruction, listens to no-one and scares and hurts me for almost everything I do, or don't do. The guilt of showing someone how vehemently and deep my hatred is also difficult because I feel so bad knowing that they feel differently but I don't know how to move through this in my work.

My T's plan is to be there and accept it and help me move through it. I know this is all right brain work I need to do, a sort of implicit learning of my worth gradually over time (no amount of "affirmations" or CBT is really going to do much IMHO). This week when I saw my T we were talking about my feelings about myself and I told her I was getting angry and she asked angry at what. I just said "Not you" to which my clever T responded "Well, I'm not concerned about me, I'm worried about you being angry with you". She normalizes, validates, listens, pushes when needed, is gentle when needed, reassures, points out, reality checks, etc - she says it's important to talk about and she undertsands that I'm standing between two worlds right now (she tells me it's exciting to witness the shift).

I really believe a large part of the problem is this self-hating part of me doesn't feel heard or understood and instead I'm just destroying it and it's fighting back. Where is a middle ground? I was thinking I might try a writing exercise to write a letter to myself to show to my T what goes on in my head. I do explain and I do report to my T when my self-hate is triggered. This might help me titrate feelings in session so I can get them out there. My Ts are pretty much open to anything I think would be effective.

^_^ cat