Liese, HIC, and Lucy,
Thank you for the support and encouragement!It is good to know that you guys understand how hard this is. Makes me feel less alone with it, you know?
*WARNING—POSSIBLE GRIEF TRIGGER RELATED TO DEATH*
I am still reeling a bit from my session, and it’s been several hours. It helps when I can lie down for awhile afterwards and just think and write and process what happened in my mind, but that usually does not happen. There are too many people who have the right to make demands on my time for that to be the case very often.
Anyway, I’ll try to write about the session. You can read, if you want, or stop here; I won’t know the difference.
The vanilla scent in the waiting room always brings up an internal response of—trepidation? Excitement? That scent makes me feel like I am where I belong. I had barely sat down when my T came; for a moment I wished I had come earlier so that I could ease into this, like wading into the ocean slowly instead of diving into a wave. But, ready or not, there I went.
I could barely look at her when I walked in. Curiously, I found myself feeling embarrassed about my phrasing from weeks ago when I wished her well on her vacation. I could not, however, verbalize that. The compliment I offered was similar to words she’s spoken to me before, so I don’t know why I felt worried about it. And why would a compliment be perceived negatively, anyway? She probably was not thinking back to that at all, at any rate.
Weird.
We chatted. She always checks with me about how the important people in my life are doing. She knows talking about my baby niece always makes me smile, so she never fails to mention and inquire after her. After three weeks, there was a lot to tell about her progress: new words, new levels of physical prowess. She is, by the way, and excessively cute child—not that I am biased.
Come to think of it, even though she came and got me right away, she does tend to walk me into the water slowly. After a bit, she said, “It seems like there is something going on.”
“I’m okay,” I said.
“I was reading recently about words that should be banned from conversation between people who—people like husbands and wives. Words like “okay” and “fine.””
I wondered what that meant—was she reminding me that we have a close relationship?
“I feel dizzy,” I said.
“Do you need water? Did you eat this morning?”
“Yes…I feel sad.”
“Why?”
That feeling that is specific to therapy—nowhere to dodge—had come over me. I did not want to talk about how I felt about her, so I avoided that.
“I miss my mom.” This was true.
“Did you think this would be easy?” she asked. She meant her death.
“I didn’t know what it would be,” I answered. Tears leaked out, one or two. It can be rare for me to cry in therapy—there was one loss that, for some reason, I could cry freely about, but most of my grief stays locked inside.
I wanted this grief to stay there, too. I remembered reading recently, however, that complex PTSD can begin to be overcome in therapy if the client is able to access painful feelings in a safe way with the therapist, so I did not try to stop feeling—that was hard!
“Your reactions are normal,” she reassured me. She tends to “normalize” things for me pretty regularly, and sometimes I appreciate it, but this time I felt annoyed.
“It doesn’t matter in your life,” I answered, very quietly.
T looked at me. Sometimes her eyes are so gentle I can barely tolerate it. Even more softly, she answered, “Yes, it does.”
Involuntarily I smiled at that. To matter. The smile fled quickly, but for a moment I felt loved.
My feelings about my T and my feelings about my mom sloshed around together, and I could not make sense of them. “I don’t know what happened,” I told her.
“With your mom?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve no doubt you and your mom loved each other. We’ve talked about some of the reasons why things were difficult between the two of you and we can come up with theories about why she reacted to you the way she did.” She shrugged a little bit, watching me to see if we should take this further.
“I should have visited her more.”
“You did what you could. Sometimes you needed distance to be able to sustain the relationship.”
That was true. Still, I felt guilty. “It’s coming up on a year since she got really sick,” I commented.
“Yes, it is.” I knew she remembered when I got “the news.” I had had a therapy appointment scheduled, and I emailed her that I did not know if I would make it in and why. My husband thought I should go, so I went—my friend drove me. When I got to the office, her eyes were red, a little—she’d been crying.
“What day of the week will it be?” she asked.
I was embarrassed to let her see that I knew that off the top of my head, so I pretended I had to think about it a moment before answering. “It was on a Friday last year, so it’ll be on a Saturday this year.”
“We need to prepare for that,” she said.
Her comment made me think of laying in supplies to prepare for a hurricane, so I said, “I’ll stock up on canned goods.”
She laughed. “I was thinking chocolate,” she said lightly.
She asked me to consider taking medication. I told her I did not want to. “No one wants to,” she said. “But consider it. I don’t like seeing you this way.”
I told her I would start exercising daily and if that doesn’t help, I’ll make an appointment with my doctor.
It was time to leave. I gathered my things. As I walked toward the door, she patted my arm a little, as she usually does. Sometimes I just smile and tell her goodbye and see you later, but this time I put an arm around her for a one-armed hug. For a moment I put my head lightly on her shoulder, and I remember the feel of the fabric of her shirt. It was nice.
So exhausted now.
Now that I have written this all out—I am thinking that maybe my intense grief reaction to my T’s absence probably was related to my mom’s death.
I will ask her in a future session to not do that to me like that again, if it can be helped, because of the intensity of my response. I know she did not mean any harm to me.
I feel better. A bit.
I love her.
Thank you for reading my lengthy missive.
