RedTomato-good point!

I guess when I first went in last November it was due to panic attacks and test anxiety (I bombed a midterm and my prof. suggested I get help), so my goal was and still is to reduce anxiety.
I guess I need to talk to T about my goals and what other approaches we can take in addition to the breathing, relaxing, and energy exercises.

RT, i do think that ultimately it's our decision as to whether a particulat approach is the best approach. perhaps. maybe. but how many approaches are there? how can one say "this approach is for me" when they know nothing about the therapy world? really, how many people know what the menu is in the therapy restaurant? i sure as shit don't, so how could i even begin to guess what the best approach would be for me? i don't even know what therapy is capable of doing! i feel like i should be able to do this shit on my own, but have failed countless times and as a result beat myself up. i'm sorry, but you're addressing the part of the world that can actually put what they want into words. many of us can't do that. i have struggled with the idea of goals my whole entire life, but nobody can seem to help me with that. and i blame myself for not having the capacity to know what the f*ck i want in this life. and you want to talk over tea on a nice cobblestone patio about goals? sorry if my anger is a little misplaced, but your talk of goals escapes me, and that is my fault.

i do realize that people have goals in therapy. what's the point otherwise, eh? i guess my intial goal was to actually make a move in any direction after being in a bad marriage. that was my goal and i chose to leave the marriage. i believe it was the right choice. but by not means has it been easy. as a matter of fact, it has opened the floodgates of feelings that i would rather not have to face. fact. the other side of that is that i do believe i made the right decision. blah.

RT: "if i don't know what i want, how will i know when i get it"? to me that's just another set up for failure, which i dont' seem to have a difficult time doing on my own. no doubt, if i ever go back to my T he has his work cut out for him. I DON'T KNOW WHAT I WANT. i'm not trying to be difficult, RT ... i really don't know what i want. not within reason, anyway.

Again, i do believe you think that the vast majority of people know what therapy can provide. i don't think this is the case. not in my circles, anyway. and what i "get" from therapy? i hardly see the dude. i'm currently on "therapy vacation". i don't even know what that means. am i suppose to call him or will he call me (not)? if T stopped doing/providing/supporting what i get from therapy? i don't know ... maybe i'm dead

(((CD))) Do you know the first time my T asked me what I wanted in a session, I literally started hyperventilating? My survival had depended on paying attention to other people's needs, to the extent that even allowing myself to think about my own needs, let alone decide what they were and try to get them met, was an unthinkably dangerous thing to do. We did a lot of work around that issue.

At a later point in therapy, I was expressing how though I felt better, I wasn't sure what I wanted and my T told me that I had spent my whole life with other people too far inside my boundaries and now it was the way it should be, with me alone inside my boundaries (I don't mean that as abandoned, I mean that as free to attend to my own stuff, trusting other people to tend to theirs). But because I had not experienced this before, it made sense that I did not know what I wanted or even in some senses who I was. He really encouraged me to try different things and allow myself to pay attention to how I felt about doing them.

So I don't think there is any need for you to blame yourself for not knowing what you want. It may be that you were never given a chance to consider it or taught how to identify it (a really huge developmental step that is usually skipped with insecure attachment is learning to identify your own needs and how to act on those needs to get them met).

So actually, maybe your first goal in therapy is to learn to listen to yourself so you can figure out what your goals are. Therapy is weird that way, you just keep backing up until you find a first step you can work on, then build from there.

I do think that RT laid out some good questions to ask yourself and start to understand your needs and goals. I just want you to hear that not knowing does not mean something is wrong with you. You deserve compassion, even from yourself.

AG

Red, i'm sorry for that tirade. i am frustrated with life in general and am really struggling lately and i blew up at you. i hope you can accept my apology.

I struggle with goals too. I have had a lot of therapy and in the past I have tentatively given Ts my list of goals only to have them sort of throw the goals back in my face later. So now I am reluctant to give my new T any info on goals. But as it turns out she is a DBT therapist and she is very intense about it and I too am not used to this format of therapy. I too have had to adjust to what to expect from this T. Several times I have wanted to quit as well. It's to the point where one of her goals with me is to stop threatening to quit therapy. lol. I stick with her because she has something new to offer me. Plus I am impressed by her dedication to helping me. She is not lazy by any means.

So she came up with a treatment plan for me and now we have discussed bigger goals too. One of which is to have a life worth living because right now my life does not feel like it is worth living for. I am very lonely, feel hopeless and depressed a majority of the time. I have isolated from society and rarely get out and meet or see anyone. This has been a big reason why I frequently want to end it all. But I feel this new therapy may help. There is a lot of evidence that it does help people like me if I stick with it.

What do you talk about with your T? I struggle to know what I need to talk about to fix the reason I go to see a therapist.

How do your sessions start and end? I walk in and sit down, I struggle to get anxiety under control, then I talk some.

Is it like talking to a friend? Absolutely not.

Or does your T listen and not say much? The woman I see can talk too much. Right now I have asked that she not talk. Her talking has not been useful.

What types of questions does T ask you? Do you talk about your feelings or cognitive thoughts?
She will ask about both sometimes. Often her questions do not have anything to do with what I have been talking about. Usually her questions seem like a fishing expedition.

glad to hear it RT

One of the reasons I am sticking with this new therapist is because for the first time i am seeing a T who seems to really have a clear cut idea of how she believes she can help me. I have read up on the therapy and find it to be promising if not daunting. So this is why I am sticking with her. I have had a lot of plain talk therapy and though it's nice I don't feel it has really gotten me anywhere.

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