I've been quiet for the last couple of weeks on the Board because I've been less upset and spending less time on the computer, thinking about therapy and thinking about my life. The change happened quite quickly. It was a sudden switch. I have gone two weeks without emailing or calling my T between sessions including the Easter holiday which meant I missed one of my sessions. I don't think that has ever happened before. I'm not worried about what he thinks. At first I was relieved and thought it was a good thing but at my session on Monday I realized I feel empty.

During Monday's session I realized that I don't have anything to say. Not my usual I'm afraid to talk or so upset I can't say anything. Instead I just felt empty and detached from things. I told my T about things seeming quieter in my head like there was less obsessive thoughts and rumination about things and that even though it should be a good thing instead I felt odd. He told me he thought that I had spent weeks wrestling with the issue of whether I could continue in therapy with him and that through our conversations I had had some resolution and felt more peaceful. I told him I would agree except I didn't feel like we had a conversation that helped instead I felt like the conversation about therapy was cut off inside me. I also told him that it was effecting a lot of different areas of my life and not just therapy.

For example I'm not crying nearly as much. I used to cry almost anytime I was alone and quiet, driving in the car, at church, before I fell asleep. I was so sad about my childhood and my relationships with my family (parents and siblings) that I was triggered constantly when I saw people who loved their children openly, when I saw someone yell at a child, when my children were unhappy or happy. A lot of different things would lead me to think about my childhood and I would get upset. That hasn't happened in the last two weeks. One of the most difficult things for me to talk about or even think about is my weight and my out of control eating and for the last couple of weeks I've barely thought about it and certainly not cried about it. I told my T that if I was eating less or exercising or something I could imagine my internal conversation getting less painful but instead my eating is out of control and it feels like my internal conversation is just gone.

If I try to think about the future or the past I get distracted. The only times I've been able to stay with any topic of more seriousness than what I have to get through today is during my sessions when T doesn't let us get distracted. Then I feel upset but I'm over it quickly. I'm afraid something is missing and while at first I was happy to have the noise and angst in my head stop now I'm scared.

Does anyone have any opinions? Do you just stop feeling/worrying about things even when nothing has changed? Could I really have worked through all the attachment and dependency issues I have with T to reach the point where I don't contact him and I'm not even worried about my vacation in two weeks? Do those things resolve overnight so to speak after almost four years of struggle?

This post is long but I started by writing about what was going on in therapy and in my life just before things went quiet in my head and I'll include those paragraphs at the end of this post if you want to read them. I was under a lot of different stresses at the end of March and wonder if it all became too much for me and I've gone numb. If so how long will it last?

At the end of March I was in the middle of some intense discussions with my T about whether I was going to continue therapy, my feeling that I didn't know what to do to help myself, my frustration that he wasn't helping me. I got angry at him in person for the first time, sent him long involved emails and pushed him to tell me about his theoretical framework, training, etc.

At the same time my parents returned from there winter vacation and started making some demands upon my time and I had a major disagreement with my only sibling that I've felt close to during my life. I realized that she wasn't interested in hearing and responding to me and my feelings but she was much nicer about it than my parents so she just ignored what I said instead of insulting or blaming or punishing me for it like my parents do.

I had a major fight with my teenage daughter. I've written about my struggles with her before but what really upset and destabilized me was my reaction to her after the fight was over. I was furious. I was physically still and I lay in my bed for hours but I was seething inside. I couldn't imagine how we were going to live together anymore. I felt like the relationship between us was irrevocably broken and I wasn't upset by that at all. I've never felt like that as an adult and I am so ashamed that I felt that way about my daughter. The next day we had both calmed down and had a good talk about the cause of the fight and the way it escalated. A few days later I punished her by not allowing her to hang out with friends after school and she asked me why I hated her? I told her I didn't and I was trying to understand her but I wasn't doing a good job. She has never used the word hate before not even in an angry "I hate you".

I told T about both fights in my next session and we had a good discussion about it. He told me he thought that the intense fury I felt and the thoughts of the relationship being over were memories of how I felt as a child that were triggered during the fight with my daughter. I actually could see what he meant because I am having trouble reconciling the me who felt that fury for an hour after the fight and the me who loves my daughter and spends a lot of time trying to talk to her and understand her. It actually feels like I was a separate person (but not in a DID way) just in a "I can't believe I could feel the two opposing emotions so intensely 12 hours apart" way.