A few weeks ago I wrote about how I was shifting away from having a regular weekly appointment with my T. Somewhat embarrassingly, I have been in to see her every week since then (although I am taking next week off, finally!) I have had a lot coming up but at least I have made progress on a couple of things.

The main reason I had to come in again was stuff going on between myself and my H. Things had been improved between us since he had started some new medication, and the couples T we had been seeing hadn't been particularly helpful (he spent half of a session trying to convince us about why we should buy a second car), so we decided to take a break from seeing him. However, after a few weeks things started to get really rough between us which was very stressful for me. I was somewhat happy to see I could handle it without reverting to SI or losing my cool totally, but I was still having those urges, losing sleep, etc.

A nice thing that came out of this was I got T to record a voicemail for me to listen to when things with H were rough. I had to remind her twice, which was hard, but what she finally did was really really nice.

But otherwise, I decided I needed to try to find a different couples T. This turned into a HUGE ordeal as we'd already gone through this twice before. The first time, everyone my own T referred to me was far or not on insurance, so we went with a referral from H's T, but I didn't like her much and her office was right next to where half of our inlaws get their hair cut, so H wasn't thrilled about that either. We only saw her for one session. The second time my T went through like a million names, but the ones that would have worked didn't have space and we ended up with someone random. He wasn't totally bad yet seemed to lack a clear focus in working with us. It felt like we were just talking about stuff yet not resolving the underlying issues.

So it was discouraging as hell to be looking a THIRD time. I actually contacted my old individual T to ask if she would see us. She initially said yes, but H didn't like her hours, and when I told her more about what our specific issues were, she agreed with my current T that we were best off finding someone with a Somatic Experiencing or similar training (which she doesn't exactly have). So that was discouraging that she didn't even seem to think she was qualified to help us. Problem is, everyone I could find with that training was either not on ANY insurance, or far away from us, or both. Meanwhile, H really didn't understand WHY we needed a specific kind of T and I was doubting myself about it too. In desperation I asked an acquaintance of mine who is a psychologist for help figuring out if the whole SE thing was really what we needed. She said we needed someone who had done their own work and who worked in some experiential mode, not necessarily SE. But she gave me a list of like 10 names of people who also took no insurance. In desperation, I managed to find out about our out of network coverage, but H was pretty unhappy about paying an extra $50 per session or whatever it would have been. Then my friend (incredibly, really, considering how busy she is, and rather triggeringly to me) got on my insurance provider website and found us a few more names. We wound up calling 7 different T's who were recommended and also on insurance. Of those, 5 said no, 1 never got back, and 1 said he would have to ask his billing lady then didn't call back. Just as I was moving into a state of total despair, I called back the guy who was going to ask about billing. When he called back and said he would see us and had a time next week we could make, I was so excited he must have been really confused, lol.

So we got to see this guy yesterday. On the downside, it took us a full hour of sitting in traffic just to get to his office. On the upside, it was a TOTALLY different experience than what we had with our former couples T. I have no idea what kind of training the previous guy had, but this new one does Emotionally Focused couples work as well as Somatic Experiencing. After asking us a few questions, he went straight into talking about attachment and family of origin connections, something the former couples T never really even mentioned. Even H noted he was doing a better job of listening to us (rephrasing most of what we said to show he understood) and that he was taking charge of the session instead of letting it float along. He also asked us to check in about how we were feeling at a couple of points in the session. He honed straight in on the fact that H had trouble holding on to the feeling that I cared about him, which he connected to insecure attachment. He said the issue was not just about what I was doing or not doing, but also about what H could or couldn't take in. He even connected H's general stress issues with the lack of secure attachment. He said the process would be about learning to have a more secure connection by becoming more skilled at it. In a nutshell, it kind of amazes me how different an experience it was, and at this point I'm not regretting the time and tears I put into finding someone better.

Aside from that, I just wanted to mention a realization I had last night. For some reason, just recently I had a resurgence of anxiety about my T. For the first time in a long time, during my session this week I was nervous just being in the same room with her. I was reflecting last night about how I was worried about her judging me, related to things we were talking about where my mother judged me in some way. Then for some reason it hit me that all this time, I'd felt like a helpless victim to my mother's judgements. I knew she could be judgemental, and yet when she'd fired stuff at me I had taken it sitting down. Never had I said "Mom, you have no right to judge me like that. You have crossed a line." Yet I was an adult when most of these things happened. I realized that I was worried about how she hurt me, but I didn't think of how I wasn't there for myself and hadn't done anything to protect myself from her. I felt regret and anger that it hadn't even occurred to me. But I realized I am a different person now, and I do know how to stand up for myself, so I don't have to be as afraid of people judging me anymore.

So that is about it for now I guess. I know I wrote a novel so thanks if you actually read it!