I wrote the following on my blog last night and I wanted to share it here so I am going to cut and paste it.

I’ve had three sessions with M since the holiday break. The first one I talked about Christmas and some of the funny moments as well as touching on the difficult ones. During the second I managed to talk honestly about my marriage. I’ve touched on the problems I am having in my relationship with my husband but briefly and in little detail. In the past when I’ve talked about it with M I felt that he supported my husband and thought that the problems we had were caused by me. So sessions about my marriage usually started with me talking about a disagreement or an issue I had with my husband and then no matter what M said; if he asked a question or reflected back my feelings, or looked concerned, I would think he blames me and start to shut down. M would ask me more questions and I feel like he was trying to corner me so I would stop answering. Then sometime after the session I would email him and say I felt like you were blaming me when you said …. and he would reply and explain what he meant or expand on what he was thinking. This happened over and over.

Last week I spoke for the entire session telling M stories from the last three months. I told him about fights we had and things I had said. I talked about my frustration and my fear that my marriage was only getting worse the more I tried to express my feelings and share myself with my husband. He didn’t have very much time to respond because I talked so much which is very unusual. After the session I started to worry that I hadn’t given a very balanced description of things to M. I had blamed my husband too much and not acknowledged the fact that I can be a bitch sometimes. Interestingly I didn’t worry that M thought things were my fault. I couldn’t recall one word or look or pause that suggested that M blamed me. I was surprised.

When I went to my session on Monday we started by discussing the suggestion M had made a few months ago that my husband and I meet with M to do some couple therapy. M told me that after hearing me talk more about the issues and hearing me discuss the strategies I had used in my discussions with my husband and things hadn’t improved he wasn’t sure that meeting with him would be helpful. He thought that perhaps it might be better for my husband and I to see a different therapist who could help us work through things. He asked me questions about whether there was a time in our relationship when we had been able to communicate more effectively? when he wasn’t so reactive? what marriage therapy in the past was like? was my husband able to talk about his feelings with the marriage therapist? at home after sessions? etc. I can’t say that I didn’t have thoughts cross my mind like he doesn’t want to work with us because he thinks we are irreparable or he is asking if my husband talked about his feelings differently with a therapist than when alone with me because he thinks I”m uncaring or self-absorbed and didn’t ask but I didn’t get caught up in those thoughts. I didn’t leave his office replaying the session in my mind until it seemed to prove that M was blaming me. I had no urgent need to email M to clarify what he meant when he said …

I know it probably doesn’t seem like a very big deal to have three sessions with your therapist that don’t result in a minor crisis of feeling like your therapist blames you for your problems, or doesn’t like you, or thinking of quitting therapy but I think this might be the longest I have gone in 4.5 years of therapy without a minor crisis. I am not anxious about my session tomorrow. I am not worried that it will be my last session or something unexpected will explode and ruin my relationship with him. It feels different. It has changed. I guess it is probably too much to hope that it will last but I had to write it down now while I felt it. I think M is trying to help me and he isn’t trying to get away from me, no I don’t just think it I BELIEVE it.