Hi Jones,

quote:

I wobble between feeling like my T absolutely knows what she's doing and feeling unsure.

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I'm trusting her with so much and I don't want her to get things wrong!!

This is a hard place to be. I felt this way with my former T a lot. Your analogy of the bucking bronco is perfect, although I'm sorry for the effect it has on your life. It is very hard to keep living life when therapy stirs up so many strong feelings. There were times with my former T when I had trouble functioning in my "real" life because of how I felt after sessions. Interestingly, it was worst when I felt we had misunderstood each other, which is the concern you described with your T. Being distracted by going over the conversation in my head, and coming up with what I was going to say next time to straighten it out. There were four or five times when I was crying so much that I had to take the night off from work. My consumption of antacids went up quite a bit and I even took to eating saltine crackers on my way to sessions as a preventative measure against stomach problems. Those are just a few examples.

With the new T, I no longer feel like I'm in a rodeo. Right now she seems more attuned to me than my last T ever was. Maybe when we get down to the hard stuff, it'll start throwing me around again. But right now I'm enjoying the relative calm.

I like what you said in another thread about knowing when to trust our T's and when to trust ourselves. That's been going through my head a lot since I read it and I think you are right. I hope you can talk through and clarify your T's interpretation of what you said. It's so important to feel like we're being heard correctly.

SG

Hi SG,

Thanks for your response, it's good to be heard & to hear more about how it was for you with your former T.

That is interesting that the misunderstandings had that effect on you - I am having a strong reaction to them too. My T's style is very active and quite provocative - she will often respond very quickly to what I'm saying, checking out an interpretation of it or asking a question in a direction I don't expect. Sometimes I don't know if something doesn't feel right because it's wrong, or because I have been unaware of something. I'm getting better at saying exactly what my response is, rather than clamming up, but sometimes if there's too much reactive 'stuff' between what she's proposing and how it is for me I just can't articulate it, and come away feeling like I've been misread. Which really disrupts my trust of her. Anything that seems like a clinical error (mistakes about history) slots in to a whole lot of other stuff going on.

Those are some serious signs of stress you were experiencing with your former T. I'm sorry you went through that. It's funny, if one felt like this on the way to meet a friend for coffee, one might know more easily there was a problem with the relationship. But SO much is happening in therapy - old upsets are being revisited (and hopefully, resolved), one's learning new ways of relating, exposing oneself to someone unknown in very brave ways - it becomes EXTREMELY difficult to get a measure on what's the stress you should expect, what's the stress you came in with, and what's the stress that tells you something is wrong.

The more we talk/write about this, the more I'm inclined to take some time to check in with my T about my reactions. Last week after my session I slept all afternoon and then had a long cry, feeling like I just couldn't move. I guess even if this is a 'normal' or ok reaction I need to tell her.

I suspect I'm like many on this board in that it's not always easy to tell when I'm having a big emotional response to something - that response is sometimes delayed &/or internalised &/or unconscious to me &/or incongruent with what my face & body (let alone mouth!) are saying. I know I can't expect her to mind-read. But often find that I do anyway....

I'm glad you are in a more stable relationship with your new T. It seems to me that even if things get more challenging, this time she's spending attuning to you will be building strong foundations. And is healing in its own right.

all good wishes,
J

quote:

Sometimes I don't know if something doesn't feel right because it's wrong, or because I have been unaware of something.

Yes, I understand this. I was very hesitant to challenge him because of this.

quote:

It's funny, if one felt like this on the way to meet a friend for coffee, one might know more easily there was a problem with the relationship. But SO much is happening in therapy - old upsets are being revisited (and hopefully, resolved), one's learning new ways of relating, exposing oneself to someone unknown in very brave ways - it becomes EXTREMELY difficult to get a measure on what's the stress you should expect, what's the stress you came in with, and what's the stress that tells you something is wrong.

Yes, exactly! It is very hard to tell. Thank you for saying this so clearly. I guess the only way to tell is to get messy and try, and learn, and then use what I learn to try again.

Thanks, J! All the best to you, as well -
SG

Hi Jones,

quote:

This week she said something in passing about my reaction to a situation being a trauma response that came from early childhood, as though that was what we had been discussing all along. But it's not, and the person she mentioned doesn't really feature in my earlier bad memories. And I don't know if she just slipped up and misremembered or misunderstood my history, or if this is what makes sense from my reaction or what.

I was thinking about this and maybe your T meant that the reaction to the situation you were telling her about, while the situation and people involved had nothing to do with childhood, the reaction you experienced was triggered by some childhood trauma. I am not very good at putting it in words but I think it is like a bridge, when something upsets us or causes us to have a reaction as adults, we immediately cross a bridge straight back to feelings and emotions that we experienced in childhood when traumatized. Because we weren't able to process those feelings because we were just children, we never learnt how to deal with them and now as adults they are very very painful.

There are others on this forum who can explain it so much better than I can, hopefully they will chime in.

Hi Halo!

Thanks for your thoughts on this - I do get what you mean here, you explain it beautifully, and I do think that 'bridge' is one I'm crossing over when I don't mean to (I like that concept!).

I didn't explain myself very well to start with, though. The problem was that we had been talking quite a lot in the last couple of sessions about traumatic situations I'd been through as an adolescent with one of my parents, "S".

We'd also discussed, a few sessions back, some difficult early childhood stuff, not really involving S. Then when we were talking about a present day situation my T said something like "so your reaction seems like a trauma response, coming from those very old early childhood situations with S". I got confused because although there is *also* some difficult (maybe not traumatic) early childhood stuff involving S, we haven't really discussed this yet!

I think she just made a mistake, though it's possible this is an interpretation that I just haven't understood. It sorta seems like it shouldn't be a big deal (and after writing about it here, I don't feel as concerned about it now). If we were talking about fish or public transport I guess I would have just checked it out on the spot, maybe even corrected her. Sometimes it feels like when I walk in that room, some kind of rubbery fog gets in my head and makes it SO hard to communicate! Maybe that's more of that bridge-crossing going on.

J

Hi Jones,

It took me a while to get to the point of being able to ask my T to clear up a point of confusion, but it's worth it. It's also worth it to tell your T if something in a previous session made you angry. That's what it's all about!

At first, I was afraid to speak up, thinking that to do so would be somehow disrespectful to my T, or rude, or whatever. But when I finally did, we discovered a whole new side of me that revealed *why* I felt this way, namely that I have a tendency to be passive and compliant and have a fear of abandonment if I speak my mind.

Once I prefaced a comment to my T that I was afraid I would offend him, he said, "nothing you say can offend me." Part of what he meant is that whatever I say to him is never actually about him, it's about me.

quote:

Sometimes it feels like when I walk in that room, some kind of rubbery fog gets in my head and makes it SO hard to communicate! Maybe that's more of that bridge-crossing going on.

I've been there, big time. Do you also sometimes forget what you talked about in your session the second you leave? Me too. It's resistance to the work you're doing. A part of you *really* doesn't want you doing what you're doing, and it's protesting by resisting. Of course, you often don't know you're doing it.

It also sounds like you're struggling with something that I struggle with, too, which is a tendency to figure it all out, and figure it all out now. Therapy can be confusing, disorienting, bewildering and hellish. But, there are changes occurring below your level of awareness that are for the best. Remember, so much what we experience comes from our unconscious, and when we stir things up in therapy, it can be a very wild ride.

Keep up the good work.
Russ

I love every single word of your post Russ!

Hi Russ,

Thanks for your post, that was really cool. It's really interesting to think of that rubber fog as a resistance thing - I hadn't considered that at all. It's hard to imagine that I am in control of that, though I know subconsciously I must be.

Yes, I totally want to figure it all out! You should see me on the internet, looking up things that might have been mentioned or implied... actually, that's how I ended up on this message board. I guess I'm scared if I don't keep a few steps ahead I will be overwhelmed, and I won't be able to function in my life. Well, seems I'm getting overwhelmed whether I like it or not... and for now I'm still functioning, in inelegant coughs and starts, at least....

I haven't had the forgetting thing much, though a couple of times in session I've found the fog is strong enough that I actually can't hear or understand what my T is saying. I do lots of obsessive replaying of the conversational detail, and those bits BUG me.

Thank you so much for the encouragement. It is a wild ride indeed, and hard to stay with it.