In Session Today: Part VI

I really like the bit that your T said in his reply about you have revealed more of yourself and nothing bad has happened, so maybe you are more okay with yourself. You have an awesome T. I imagine that you are also passing that acceptance onto your own clients and are an awesome T yourself.

Sounds like a great session Echos. Very Intense. I have similar thoughts about my T. Have been able to discuss some but not all. My T does not allow touch but my desire for it is huge. Can I ask how was the hug after such an intense session?

The hug was normal, nothing remarkable about it. He didn't squeeze me like he sometimes does, I think he wanted to be particularly gentle with me given what we had been talking about. I understand what you say about the desire for touch being greater than the touch possible in therapy. Hugs have become part of our routine now, normal for us, and I think for me that allows them to feel more okay, and enough, because I know what to expect. It's like an infant thing again I think.

I liked when he said that too. I also really needed to hear "you are okay, what you said was okay".

I have learnt so much from my T. He is my greatest ever teacher. I still don't think I'm half as skilled as he is, but that will take time and greater experience. Thanks.

I came in annoyed, that bit wasn't you. I told you just how triggered I was over the weekend and we dived straight into parts work. Looking back, was that the best decision. You stood your ground as I repeatly marked how annoyed I was over and over. I think I knew then I was being pushed too far, but I think I like it, kinda egg it on? It was defiantly that final bit though, I defiantly did not know we would go there and that was the final nail. I asked you to stop, but you always need to get one last word or sentence in. That is defiantly on you. I want to mention that because maybe i tell you to stop too late, but when i do you don't. It wasn't just one last thing but two last things. I was out of it and heavily in distress saying you feel sorry for the 'little girl' only triggers that. I really don't get your need to continue. You asked me if I was going to be safe. I hate that. I hate that so much. What does that even mean??? I couldn't talk and so it was a meaningless question. Eventually I answered. But too be honest I kinda of resent then sentiment.

You left the room and gave me space to calm down. I needed that even though it makes me sad. I feel vulnerable getting up from my seat and can only move once you have gone. You left the room and waited for me down stairs. I almost forgot to pay... I think thats the first time I have forgot. I managed to switch into something. I can't remember who.

I know last time you said you thought about me after that happened. I kinda wanna tell you I am OK. Just so you know and don't worry about me. I also know you are away for a week and I don't want that to get in the way.

I haven’t seen him yet but I see my Pdoc tomorrow. But I switched my meds on my own. Doctors have gotten pretty annoyed at me when I’ve done this before. This is the first time I’ve done this with this doctor. My therapist knows and she says this time was different because I was just going back to my old dose. I’m still freaking out. Especially since my symptoms are worse. I just couldn’t deal with the side effects of the higher dose. Then there’s always the whole “will he refill my Xanax” anxiety. Ugh. I’m a mess right now. And I also have work tomorrow for the first time in 5 days.

I've dragged out starting EMDR for as long as I possibly could. The growing up with multiple schizophrenics, I have a very complex psychiatric history. Post-partum psychosis, DID with a psychotic part, bipolar 1 disorder with psychosis, OCD, PTSD with psychosis. I'm integrated now. We completed integration 5 years ago and the quality of my life improved incredibly. I still have residual trauma to resolve, hence the EMDR. I know what I went through to integrate. I can deal with the PTSD episodes with medication and soothing techniques. I really, really don't want to go digging around all those old traumas. My therapist, who I trust completely, says this is a good treatment for me. My psychiatrist, who has literally saved my life on more occasions than I can count and kept me from being permanently institutionalized, is neutral. Maybe I'm just trauma work weary. Nothing is going to resolve the kind of life experiences I have had. I just want some peace. At some point I have to give my therapist an answer. I just don't know what that answer should be

Thank you for sharing your session and his reply back Echoes. You've been very brave and you can read his care in his email.

It's okay Artie. I fluctuate between either ET or paternal transference and my first instinct is to cancel our next session, when R gets too close. Both bring up huge amounts of shame for me, but i'm not where I was when I first started and neither are you.I believe everything has a time and a place. When you're ready to go back you will.

Thanks Lemoncake

Before I even sat down he said “the therapist emailed me and I want you to know your not in trouble. But I want to figure out how to fix this.” He raised my lamictal a little bit. He also gave me a referral to a sleep specialist. He thinks my sleep is a big part of my problem. I’m glad he listens to me. He seems to be the complete opposite of the other doctor I had.

Today was tricky.

I wanted to talk more about this idea of 'the edge' from last week but when I started to talk about it, he moved the conversation in another direction. I noticed and I told him. He said 'happy to go back to talking about the edge' and then looked at me blankly. His voice said 'happy to talk about it' his demeanor said 'not happy'. I pondered on my sense it didn't feel safe or okay to talk about ET. I told him and told me my sense of him. I told him about how a part of me says "nope" to talking about something when i feel unsafe and described that process to him. He said he found it interesting and he'd never heard anyone describe that process quite like that before, but he was aware we were getting further away from talking about the edge.
I said 'well what do you think about it? Its your metaphor'. He said something meaningless. I said 'but what is it?'. He thought for a moment and I said, you know what don't answer. I feel like I'm trying to make you vulnerable defensively to make me invulnerable. I talked about that a bit, and how it didn't feel good. T said he had an answer but he didn't know if it was helpful. I said we don't know unless you try. He said to him the edge is letting the unconscious aspect of this process take over.
I said I felt attracted to the idea of their being an edge.
I asked T about how he had felt about the fact that what I had said had been in the context of talking about a hug, and whether he had connected it to what I had been saying about the hug before i mentioned ET. T said "that you felt wanted?" I said yes.
I KNEW he had thought that. I told him I knew it. I said I felt it in your hug last week. He said what did you feel? I said 'hesitancy'. He nodded.
It upset me and annoyed me, because I don't like that my hypervigilance is so often right. And because I don't like him thinking that about something I meant in a really wholesome way. I don't like that he would have gone on wondering that, if I hadn't realised he was feeling that way. I just looked at him a long time. He said he thinks the hugs are part of the edge, because they are a way we communicate non-verbally. I teared up and put a tissue over my eyes. He said "there's something raw and painful about this". I wanted to say "well duh" but I stayed silent. He asked me if I could tell him what was happening. I said IDK.
We sat in silence for a while. We started talking again, not sure how, it's a bit of a blur, but he said something that really stressed me out. I'm gonna put it in TW here for ET and CSA

Anyway, my vision was weird, which happens when I am stressed, and we didn't get much further. I half didn't want to hug him, but I am getting on an aeroplane tomorrow so it felt important for some reason.

He hugged me really tightly, I guess to show me that he doesn't feel weird about hugging me.

I emailed him after and told him about the shame and things I had felt, as well as not liking his assumption (I didn't tell him about how I felt about the phrasing, thought that would be better as an in person discussion). I titled the email "just some stuff" and when he replied he had changed the title to "your important stuff". He apologised for missing what I needed today, and said he will reflect on it this week, because it often means he is missing something in him. He said probably some discomfort in disclosing something. He said he wanted to reiterate that my needs are fine, and I am okay, and he signed off "with love" which is very rare.

Feeling a bit emotionally tired.

Echoes, i love these posts of yours. They are reminiscent of my sessions with my t, with whom there was the trust to let me (actually both of us) go where i needed to go, and to hold me as i needed to be held, both figuratively and literally.

I see my therapist tomorrow. she wanted me to write down a list of all the stuff that makes me anxious. The piece of paper is completely full. I’ll tell her about the cat as well. And my struggles at work. I may tell her that the only foods that has been appealing to me these past few days are Mountain Dew and Macaroni and cheese. I’m not sure if she’ll care or not. She specializes in autism so she may just chalk it up to a sensory thing or may be concerned. I also want to talk to her about my anxiety provoking vacation and my sleep issues.

We went over my treatment plan. Kept goals I didn't really want. I filled her in about my lab results and PCP. We talked about meds and how I need them. One of my goals is now stay compliant and attend therapy. There's 6 goals total. We touched on the fact my eating disorder has never gone away. There were a lot of questions today. Unfortunately she is moving clinics. I see my new T in a month and a half. I didn't really care for her but it sucks to start over.

I continued my exposure exercises with my T. The exposure was about social physical contact - so today was us sitting together with our arms touching, shoulder to shoulder. It felt more pleasant than I expected, despite my nervousness and anxiety symptoms. I really liked feeling how real my T was: warm, alive, breathing and next to me. It helped a little to breathe in time with her. But I felt self-conscious about it too. I find it hard to lean into pleasant sensations and emotions. It's really strange to feel positive emotion in therapy, but I know now that therapy encompasses experiencing all emotions, not just the negative ones. That said, I'm keen on continuing the exposures in the next few sessions.

Today’s session was intense in ways I was not expecting.
‘I got your e-mail. I’m not sure whether you want to start there?’
‘I didn’t have a sense that we went particularly deep in the last session, but two days later it was the day I should have been working. However, they were at the [Famous Local Theatre].’

‘Yes.’

‘So I was brushing my teeth, totally focused on that, not thinking about anything…and I was crying.’

‘That took you by surprise?’

‘Totally.’

R asked whether I was alone in the bathroom, whether that gave me a kind of safety, as compared to being in a public place, thinking ‘I have to get out of here.’

‘It gave me a sense of safety, but it felt like an incomplete experience.’

‘An incomplete experience?’

‘Yes, I cut myself off quite quickly.’

‘It sounds to me as though you spend so much of your time holding it together that when you are off-guard, your emotions make a break for it. “Quick, her guard is down, we need to get out!”’

I laughed, and then shifted position. ‘Seems I am sitting on a hair grip.’

‘You would think that would be painful! There’s been a lot of laughter in our sessions lately, and it’s come from you. It’s been really nice.’

R asked whether I could recall a previous experience of feeling safe to let go – ‘I remember the session where you got quite upset and I sat on the floor by you throughout.’
‘Six years ago, before any of this became what it is now…a minor issue that I’m making into something major, apparently…some friends invited us to an Easter service at a Methodist church. Stop me if I have told this one before. I was performing throughout.’
‘Holding it together.’

‘Church on Easter Sunday, last place I want to be. Unusually for the tone of an Easter service, the vicar was talking about how it is OK to grieve. I made a little noise and managed to regain composure. The terminology is important. He said it is right to grieve. I crumbled completely.’
‘What jumps out at me there is permission. It is OK to do that.’

I talked about my sense of holding something I can’t put down. ‘I am keen that I do not harm anybody else.’

‘That sounds to me like you’re saying you need to do this alone?’

‘I’ve tried that before. It doesn’t work.’

‘That’s part of the reason I am sitting here.’

‘Given time, grief becomes poetry. This situation will become an unnatural disaster that lays waste to my inner world. If we de-personalise it a bit, poor boundaries got me into this situation.’
‘I can only hear a small amount of self-blame, but we can’t remove the responsibility of the other people.’
‘I feel like my boundaries are so far up that nothing is getting in.’

R replied that when you keep out bad emotions, you also keep out the good. We had a brief chat about Brené Brown, which gave me the guts to go ahead and ask for what I needed after a fashion.

‘The Critic has been giving me hell over this, but five minutes ago I was going to ask you something.’
Instead, I had discussed the writing for wellbeing training at work, where a discussion around boundaries had been triggering.

‘It sounds as though that discussion threatened your sense of safety at work?’

I explained that I had already notified my boss that I didn’t want to be involved with the social prescribing aspect. I was surprised that R didn’t seem fazed by the terminology. ‘My boss doesn’t know why.’

‘We’ve talked about escape routes before…I wanted to ask whether you would be comfortable being a bit closer to me when I am in that space. We talked about rearranging the seating before the break, but then other things happened. I feel like I need you closer.’

R reassured me that was OK by her, and we talked about the specifics. She reeled off most of the reasons I had been reluctant to ask.

‘I am going to say now, Lost…that is absolutely OK with me.’

I said that I hadn’t heard from the disability assessment people but would let her know when I did. We scheduled for the next two weeks.

It felt like a long session. A big one. Lots of shifts and good conversation. For now, a snippet from the end:

Me: Oh, I have a story for you. When I saw (ex's therapist), we were talking and he mentioned the empty chair technique and asked if I'd ever done that with you, and I did this (horrified face) and said, "Oh, God, no!"

T starts laughing

Me: I told him you'd floated it out there once, but we didn't try it, and he said, "I can see why."

T, still laughing: I remember.

Me: I kind of went, (raised eyebrows) "Mmm. Hmmm..." and it never came up again.

T: Yeah, that didn't go over well.

Then we talked about the empty chair exercise in general because it's interesting, and had an unexpected little therapy moment over why I had such a visceral reaction, then it was time to go home.

"You're with me, but I still feel alone. "

Cross-posted in LT's Thread--please respond there if you want to say anything at length.

T yesterday (saw him Monday, too, but that session was pretty much entirely about my marriage, so not writing that up). There was something I wanted to bring up with him, but I was anxious about it, so I just chatted about how the past few days had gone, which had included having a nice lunch with a friend and watching the (previous week's) Project Runway with H (as part of trying to spend more time with him). Which led T to ask if I watched much reality TV, and I said mostly competition stuff, like Top Chef and Amazing Race, not like "Real Housewives" or Kardashians or stuff like that. T: "This is a safe place, you can admit things here." Me: "OK, occasionally, H and I watch the Bachelor/Bachelorette." T (joking): "There, don't you feel better now sharing that!" Me: "I guess..." T: "Are we just going to talk about TV and movies the whole time?" Me: "No, sorry about that." T: "Why are you apologizing? I was contributing just as much to it." Me: "True!"

I mentioned the comment I'd made at the end of last session about maybe talking about reducing sessions soon--I'd then emailed him to say "never mind." Me: "I think I partly made that comment to see what it felt like when I said it." T: "And it didn't feel right?" Me: "Felt OK in that moment, but then I got all weepy later." Talked a bit more about that, which led him to share the three 1-week vacations he's taking this summer. So those could be tests of sorts to see how I do. T: "You know, reducing your sessions--that's not the sole indicator of your making progress. Because you are making progress. But maybe twice a week is part of why?" Me: "Yeah, I wondered that, like maybe I'm doing better in part because of that." T said he had a client who's doing great but still seems him weekly because they think therapy helps them stay that way. T said how much mental health can affect the rest of your life, so he thinks therapy is important. Me: "Of course you might be a bit biased about that." T: "Just a tiny bit."

I said there was something I wanted to bring up but was nervous to do so. T: "It's your hour." Me: "OK, so...I guess, some of this is probably about ex-MC acting differently toward me after I talked about certain transference things with him. Like he'd say he was fine with me at the time, then be weird the next session. So...I think I'm really hypervigilant about that sort of thing." T: "OK." Me: "And I guess...in the time I've talked more to you about my transference the past few weeks...it's like the email replies you've given me since then have been really short. I mean, it might just be that you were really busy." T: "I may have been on my phone." Me: "Yeah, for the one you said that , and I totally understand. I think I just worry that it's you backing away, like" [I made the x sign with my fingers, as in "get away"]. T: "I'm certainly not doing that intentionally."

Me: "Or I guess I wondered if you were trying to get me to email less by doing that. Like make your replies less satisfying, so I'd be less inclined to email you." T: "I don't think I'm smart enough to do something like that. It seems rather devious." Me: "You'd be smart enough, but..." T: "Right but I don't see how it would help if I did that." Me: "Yeah, I'd want you to talk about it. I guess I just sort of worry you were seeing my emails and were like, 'Ugh, not LT again.'" T: "I can assure you I've never thought that." Me: "OK, good." T: "And remember, if it did bother me, what would happen?" Me: "We'd talk about it?" T: "You've got it."

Me: "The thing is...I was talking to a friend about it, and your replies recently *did* give me what I needed. I mean, I said I was worried about your reaction to something, and you reassured me." T: "Yes, I think I said 'all is well.'" Me: "Yes. And it's like...what else was I looking for exactly? It doesn't seem fair to say you didn't give me what I wanted...when I can't even say what it is that I wanted, because maybe I don't know. And I think that's an issue for me with other people, too, that I feel they haven't given me enough, but how can I tell them that if I don't even know what exactly I'm looking for from them?" Talked briefly about that.

Me (crying): "I guess sometimes I just worry that I'm like a bottomless pit of needs." T: "Is it that you think that about yourself or you think I or other people think that?" Me: "I guess both?" T: "I don't think that." Me: "OK, good. I feel like most people in my life probably don't think that because I don't express all my needs to them. With you, I'm more likely to express the needs because...like, you know what's in my head."

T: "With your emails...I can tell that what you write me is just the tip of the iceberg." Me: "Yeah, I try to keep it as short and direct as I can." T: "Which makes it more likely you'll get the answer you want." Me: "Yeah." T: "What I meant by the tip of the iceberg is...when I see what you've written me, I know there's a lot more behind that. Time you spent thinking about it, maybe an email draft you didn't spend, time talking to friends, trying to not email me." Me: "Yes, maybe listening to music...a couple beers." T: "When I'm replying, I'm trying to be cognizant of that and of your distress. It seems particularly intense if it's something about the relationship." Me: "Yeah." T: "And it's like I feel...'pity' isn't the right word, that's too strong. But I'm sorry that you're in distress and want to say what I can to relieve that in the moment." Me: "Thanks for explaining that."

T: "Also without really taking therapy into email and turning it into a back and forth exchange." Me: "I get that." T: "And I'm trying to be mindful of length so that I won't have to charge you for emails. Because I know that stresses you out. So I don't want you to have to worry about that. I'm trying to keep you in the green." Me: "I appreciate that."

Me: "Thanks for explaining all that. I think I just worry that...you've seemed really accepting of the transference stuff lately, and I keep worrying you'll change back to how you were like a year ago." (I started crying again.) Me: "Like I was cleaning and found this printout of your email reply from like a year ago about the stone...where you said something like, 'I guess I'll just have to try to learn to be comfortable talking about transference,' and it was like your discomfort was jumping off the page. I mean, you seem to understand more now, but I worry you'll just suddenly change your mind."

T: "I do feel like focusing too much on the therapeutic relationship can keep you from working on other things. But I don't feel like you've been doing that so much lately." Me: "Yeah, I guess even in talking about the transference a couple weeks ago, it was more in relation to other things from my past." T: "Yes, and it helped me realize that, even stuff about me is not so much about you and me as about patterns in your life. And how working with that and working through those can help you." Me: "OK, good."

T: "As you know, one of my goals for you is for you to see yourself as more of an equal in relationships. And for you to see your value in them." Me: "I guess this relationship is a weird one for that because...I mean, my main value to you is money. I'd like to think it's something more than that, but..." T looked thoughtful for a minute, then said, "Well, you're interesting." Me: "Yeah, I guess I haven't put you to sleep in session yet!" T laughed and agreed. Me: "I suppose if I start doing that, it will probably be time to start reducing sessions."

It was time to stop. Confirmed next week's sessions. I said it had really helped to talk about all this. T said he was glad. As I went over to pay, T said, "Can I ask you something?" Me: "Sure?" He said he had a client who hadn't seen in 10 years who had put him on this email list for a charity. And he wondered if it was OK for him to ask him to take him off the list or if he should just keep deleting the emails as he has been. I said I thought would be OK to ask him to take him off list, that he'd probably forgotten he was on there. T: "OK, I'm going to tell him that LT said it was OK!" Me: "See, you can't, confidentiality!" T smiled. I have no idea why he asked me for advice on that (he's asked me about an editing thing before, but that's my job). Shook hands as he said, "Have a good weekend. It's supposed to be nice out." Me: "Oh it is? You too." T: "Take care." Me: "You too."

It was a really good session, and I'm glad I brought up a few concerns. T's explanations about the recent emails and the stuff about how he sees transference now was helpful to hear. And it was nice to know he thinks I'm "interesting."