Hey, everyone.

First off, I´d like to apologize for being absent for a while. School has been keeping me busy, and I´ve been on my own about the therapy thing, experimenting a lot of feelings, anxiety attacks, and figuring out where to go from here. I apologize for rarely, if ever, responding to some of the threads here. I get nervous about reading about things that resonate with me and, to be honest, sometimes I feel even worse after reading them. It´s not like I don´t mean to help anyone, but I wasn´t in a position where I could say anything helpful. I feel better about that now.

Anyway, I´d like to update on how things have been going and voice some concerns. This going to be a bit long, so bear with me. Have been in therapy for a little more than two months now, third month on the 18th. My anxiety attacks are still here, though not as intense as they were a few weeks ago (with me not being able to sit down because of how intense my heart palpitations would get). While the heart thing is still there, my discomforts are now acid reflux. THANFULLY, I was able to figure out WHAT THE HECK was causing my chronic and painful sore throats ever since last July! All it took was some research. I finally saw a doctor about it yesterday and she gave me some medication for it. While it is psychosomatic, it will make it a little better. It manifests itself mostly as an acidy feeling in my feeling and a sore tongue, but I´d rather have that fixed with some mints than have nasty sore throats every day.

I also got some SSRI medication (fluoxetine, or Prozac). I´ll get this out of the way, for a long time, I was strongly opposed to medicating myself for my problems, because I didn´t want my happiness to depend on a pill. I didn´t want my body to be contaminated with chemicals that were going to ¨alter¨ my ¨mood¨, I didn´t want to become part of another statistic on the growing number of antidepressants prescribed in the country. I wanted to heal naturally. How things change in a matter of a week, when things seem desperate. After first being (kind of) lectured by a pharmacist and being strongly hostile about it, I realize now that things aren´t changing as fast as I thought (whether it be because of the therapy, therapist or how deeply rooted my problems are, but that will be discussed later) and I can´t stand having every day be an ugly and grim struggle, anticipating that I will feel awful at one point (whether it will be all day or just for a few hours). It´s affecting my school performance, my overall concentration levels and also my quality of life. So, my plan is that I will take this little pill for some months to help with my INMEDIATE symptoms, work things out through therapy and hopefully come off before the year ends. I don´t intend on being on this forever (or therapy) and through it all, I´m still skeptical and critical about most doctors´ compulsion to prescribe you with drugs when you mention mental health to them (especially the patronizing and estranged look they give you when you mention to them that, no, I get to choose what to put in my body and I want to be able to deal with this on my own).

This brings a question: does anyone have any experience with fluoxetine? I know everyone is different, but what did you experience? Did it help?

Aside from that, I am taking up swimming with a friend and may or may not be doing yoga. Just little things to make life better and take my mind off things!

I´m not sure about how to feel about my therapy. Part of this is what led me to seek medication. And that is because I feel sometimes like more bad than good is coming from it. But that could just be me (intense resistance and negative transference) and it drives me nuts to know that I´m sticking to it even though so many negative feelings occur outside of session, because some part of me believes that this is normal and part of the process, and that things will get better.

Regarding me and T´s relationship, I am in an uncomfortable position. At first, I felt really good vibes from him (mostly from the excitement of knowing that he is helping me through this) but now he is delving deeper and more continuosly into a topic that I (and I´m sure everyone) am very uncomfortable with (and I can´t talk about it here because then it would belong to the Sensitive Issues section). To try to sum it up, I have an attachment to my father that has led me to feel inferior to a lot of my peers and other people I meet, mostly males or people who display certain traits, like a dominating personality, stubborness or pride. It´s mentioned so many times, though, that I feel angry at this point, because 1) I love my father, though things have been shaky lately (at least with me, and as a result of my analysis) and 2) I don´t know, I don´t believe everything can be summed to something about my father. One side of me knows that this is right, but a big part of me is irritated. Which leads to my second concern, I keep feeling that everything is leading to something about how I act (subconsciously and consciously) with my parents and it´s making me angry. I guess it´s because I take all of this information and transform it into anger and anxiety over my parents and how things are, rather than taking responsability for my actions and changing myself. It´s frustrating. And I know that things aren´t supposed to happen inmediately, but I feel like I´m putting more weight on myself rather than liberating myself. It´s worse when my T asks very often if I´m feeling better or if I´m feeling more free, almost like it´s strange that I´m not getting better at this point. And that, in turn, makes me worry that maybe I´m not doing the therapy right, or that something is wrong (or that secretly I don´t want to get better).

On the other hand, I have this issue where I feel like he has this ´control´ over me, over what I do or what I feel, and I feel restricted to feeling certain emotions, especially when they are of love or excitedness to be around my parents and my little brother (both things which we have discussed in session and which I had unconscious conflicts in), or even of ¨noble¨ feeligns themselves. Because psychoanalysis is a permissive therapy, and it shows yout hat everythign is relative and nothing really is driven by a nature, but rather by psychological roles. And while I understand that, it makes me feel angry. I hate it. Because, again, I´m feeling more restricted.

I´ve tried to talk to him about this, but either I´m not making myself clear or what we do about it isn´t working or I refuse to make it work. I can´t go on with this feeling so hostile, skeptical and angry over him (especially when it´s mostly happening in my head). But, I don´t know, maybe it really is a problem... I feel like I want to run away, like quitting, like this whole thing is hogwash and not good for me, like maybe a different kind of therapy would be good for me (like CBT) or a different kind of therapist (maybe a female, who didn´t remind so much of what I don´t like about my dad), but at the same time, I have a bond with him that would be difficult to start all over again with somebody else. I like psychoanalysis, and I want to get to the root of things and not have to deal with them ever again, but I just feel so confused and a little unmotivated, that I feel powerless and lost.

To make it more uncomfortable, certain fears and obsessions have arisen after I started therapy and I wonder if that´s part of it too. I have read that PA can cure and is unable to cure obsessive compulsive behaviors and thoughts and I wonder if maybe that´s what is really happening with me.

I keep fantasizing that I will be able to fix things, that I will be able to make him understand exactly what is going on and that we will come up with some solution to get rid of the negative things that come from the sessions and that we´ll, in turn, just focus on what needs to be focused. But we´ve spent so long on this that I worry that this is just going to be a permanent state with this therapy and/or therapist.

To sum it up: major doubtful feelings about whether or not I should continue with him, hostility (though never open, because I tend to be diplomatic and softer with him in person), and kind of missing the point of this.

I hope this made at least a little sense. All of this appears in my mind so often that when I think about writing it down or talking about it with other people, I think that it will be clear to others, but I´m not so sure now, since I just typed as I thought (free association, heehee!) in order to not forget.