Posted by cricket on September 21, 2005, at 13:27:30
Okay, I am still hanging in there with my therapist. I knew I was going to want to pull back, but he wanted to talk about the last session.
He asked if the kids were better about going there after the last session.
I said yes.
He said what about you? Do you still feel like something is expected of you here that you can’t do?
Yeah, I said. Talk. I feel like you expect me to talk. And I feel like I never know what to say. And when I do finally find something to say, it’s always the wrong thing and you don’t like it.
Then he talked about a lot of things that I can’t really remember. I wasn’t very present. Whenever we talk about my inability to do therapy, it feels painful. I feel like fleeing.
Then he said that I felt that there was something innately wrong, defective about me.
I said. “Yeah. Duh.” Did he really think that was an insight?
But then he did get clever. He said, “You’ve lived almost your whole life with a gun to your head. You’re very tough and you don’t really mind the gun. In fact, you would like it if you could do therapy with a gun to your head.”
I said, “Yes, exactly. So let’s do it like that.”
“But therapy is the one thing that you can’t do with a gun to your head. You have to be relaxed enough in here, comfortable enough just to talk. Let what comes come. Say what you want to say. I don’t write the script.”
“Yeah, well I think you have a hidden one that you check from time to time and I’m not following it.”
Then he got clever again. “Think about how it is with (he named an alter). You have a special place where you talk to her. You go there regularly. Sometimes you talk, sometimes she just tells you images, sometimes you’re just quiet with her, right? But nothing is forced. And it just happens. I want this to be like that.”
That brought tears to my eyes because for the first time I saw that it might be possible for therapy to be something other than excruciatingly painful. And I was also so glad that he didn’t say well you used to talk to your grandmother when you were 3
But now this is the second time in a row, that he’s actually asked me to look at relationships in my internal family (as my T calls them and as I’ve heard Damos call them too) and use that as a model.
It makes me feel both pathetic and hopeful.
But how? How do I get there?
Right now, when I wake up every Tuesday, and remember it’s therapy day, this awful feeling of dread sinks in. On my way, there my heart pounds a mile a minute. I feel nauseous and light-headed. Then I get there and I freeze. I feel like a trapped animal. I watch his every move, with only my eyes, my body is as still as possible.
Over time it has gotten worse. How in the world can I change this?
poster:cricket
thread:557662
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050920/msgs/557662.html