Starting Therapy Again

I started seeing my therapist again yesterday, via Skype.

She's a good therapist that's why I started seeing her in the first place. She specializes in personality disorders, but I generally don't feel okay after therapy though and I don't know what to do with the feelings I am stuck with during and after therapy.

I cry during most of our sessions and I cried again yesterday. I hate crying in front of her it makes me feel like a spectacle. I try really hard to control it and then it just comes out anyway and I turn into a gross blubbery mess. I would like to keep cool and just talk through stuff without falling apart, I can hear the words I want to say in my head but as soon as they start to form in my mouth I start loosing it. It makes me angry. I can write the words out without problem but if I try to read or say them I start crying. Why can't I just text her during sessions? Then we could cover more ground and I wouldn't have to cry.

Maybe I'm supposed to cry but it makes me feel stupid. I feel like she judges me for crying. She probably doesn't, or tries not to because she is professional, but I feel humiliated anyway. She's not a trusted friend, she's not a person who genuinely cares for me because we've built a relationship and understanding over time - she's a person I pay to listen to my deepest embarrassments and give advice, and when the hour is up she disappears from my life like she never existed to begin with.

I'm not saying she should build a non-professional relationship with me. I'm not asking for help outside the time I pay for. I don't want our personal lives to mix, I just don't know how to deal with how I feel about this. The structure of therapy makes me trust her less because it's disingenuous. And because it's disingenuous it feels offensive - like she's patronizing me - but she's most likely not patronizing me and I'm pretty sure I really need therapy and she's a good therapist so I need to keep going and this has to work out.

It feels extremely uncomfortable to show any weakness or uncontrolled emotion in front of a complete stranger and I don't think that's a me thing, I think that's a human thing.

I also can't be straight with her either, because she's a person too and has thoughts and feelings and I need to be considerate of her and them. I'm pretty sure she becomes insulted when I tell her that she is a complete stranger and that she only pretends to care because it's her job. And I can understand and appreciate why that is an insulting thing to say. But that's literally what we're doing, isn't it?

If we peel off the sugar coating, you are a person my parents pay to fix me because I tell them I need it, and I think I very much need fixing and I am eternally grateful for your help and my parents help, but we shouldn't pretend like what we're dong here is anything other than a constructed performance? Why does that reality insult you? Because it's not your reality.

Because, she might say: "I do care, I wouldn't have become a psychologist if I didn't care." And that's probably true, I mean there are people who simply do what they do for money and/or fame, doctors and psychologists included - but she's most likely not one of them. And I have no tangible evidence for believing this, I just have to because she is a good psychologist and my psychologist and I need her help, and because she is a normal human insulting her even if it is unintentional may make her less helpful.

I'm pretty sure she does kind of care but the kind of caring she has for me is different from real caring. It's not, not caring, because it's not completely caring either. It's a confusing kind of caring that doesn't make sense and kind of scares me because I can't bring myself to really trust it because it feels dangerous.

I'd feel better if we could put all the cards open on the table and speak to each other like we were two different parts of one person, without being scared of insulting or misunderstanding each other. I wish I could read her emotions too, I hate it when I say something and she has an expression and I can't tell what it means. But if I make her too aware of this she may become overly self-conscious like my mother and try to mask or alter her expressions making reading her even harder. But she won't do that because she's a professional psychologist and is better at this than me and my mom - but she's a person too.

I sometimes feel like she's an adult and I'm a child. Maybe that's why it feels so patronizing. She understands things about me that I don't and it feels like she pretends that she doesn't understand those things so she can't re-package them and give them to me in a way that won't hurt me - like when you try to explain bad behavior to a toddler. I feel like that, like I'm a toddler and she's an adult. I hate feeling like a child, because it makes me feel stupid.

I don't want to stop therapy, I just want to feel better during and after.

I rarely feel better after a therapy session. I feel raw after a therapy session, like my nerve endings are ablaze and the slightest touch will hurt so much I won't be able to stand it. I'm fortunate that I'm able to have as much alone time as I need after session to regroup but it sounds like you might not have that luxury? Could you talk to your therapist about techniques you can use after session to ground yourself, to feel more in control of your emotions, to feel more connected to reality?

One thing about having BPD is that we have to learn to tolerate negative emotions. We were supposed to learn this as children but no one ever taught us. I've found that mindfulness is helpful in learning this skill but there are other ways to do it as well. As you learn that negative emotions aren't going to swallow you whole, they aren't going to cause you to go crazy, they just feel like it... it becomes easier to bear them.

It will become easier to talk to your therapist about what you're feeling without getting overwhelmed but right now you're just completely overwhelmed by your feelings, is what it sounds like to me. It took me months with my most recent (current) therapist before I could hear some of what she was saying because I was so deep into my own feelings. It takes time. Be patient with her and with yourself.

I think it's more trust issues than emotions.