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Re: why can't i verbalize? » ghost

Posted by mair on January 7, 2005, at 14:48:46

In reply to why can't i verbalize?, posted by ghost on January 6, 2005, at 20:59:08

Ghost - this has been a REAL problem for me. It's really gotten better, but it's taken a LONG time and I still run into problems now and then.

I think alot of my problems arose from wanting everything to sound right and needing to explain things to myself before I could explain them to others. Sort of like spin. Of course when I'm upset and depressed and confused, I can't really explain things to myself so I would never get them out much in therapy. When I was in the worst shape, my T (previous one) would ask me a question, I'd start thinking of an answer I could verbalize, there would be dead silence forever, and eventually my thinking would take me into a more confused state until I just forgot the question. Telling me to Free Associate, as my current T does, just doesn't work for me. And what's worse is that I'd be so critical of myself for those long silences and I hated to be in the middle of those long silences so much that I'd dread even going to therapy if I knew the topic would be one that would be tough for me to talk about. At times that encompassed pretty much every topic.

A couple of things have made this better aside from the practice of years of therapy. Writing here about things helped because I could try ideas out before passing them along to my T. My current T is not crazy about my doing that because she feels that she ends up with the expurgated version after all emotional content has been filtered and distilled. She's right, but at least it got me over an invisible hump and now I don't seem to have to to distill as much.

The other thing that helped was working out an accommodationn with my T where I can just tell her that I don't want to talk about something. I'll say in response to a question (usually after a period of silence) "I don't want to go there," or words to that effect. Of course it makes her want to go there all that much more but the only pushing she does now is to try to get me to talk around the issue if not about the issue. So we may avoid what I don't want to talk about, but try to talk about why I don't want to talk. Sometimes in a more gradual gentle way this will help me screw up the courage to be more forthcoming and sometimes she gets the message that she just needs to back off. It sounds so simple but it's worked for me really well because it's gotten me beyond the embarrassment of the long silences. Either I tolerate them while I push myself to put into words what I need to say or I terminate the silences by telling her I've gone as far as I can. Just talking about all of this and working out these accommodations has helped to make me more comfortable with those silences too.

I don't know why I have so much trouble opening up and why then therapy has to be such a slow process for me. My T says I have trouble because feeling comfortable revealing things about myself without the fear of ridicule is my core issue. Maybe something similar is your core issue too.

I, like you, get hung up on concerns that I might start to cry. I've never shed a tear in 8 years of very regular and fairly intensive therapy; I'm in awe of people who are comfortable expressing their emotions. I don't know whether it's a control issue - sometimes I'm afraid that if I start to cry, I'll never stop because it will open this enormous reservoir of suppressed emotion. I worry that I'll just be too needy. Maybe some of it is just conditioning.

Please keep talking about this; it's a subject near and dear to my heart. I hope my experience is helpful. It does get better with the right therapist - it just takes alot of work.

BTW: I hope I don't sound too much like someone who has this all worked out. I suffered through a very long silence yesterday that brought back awful memories of what therapy used to be like. We still stumble. (;

Mair


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poster:mair thread:438698
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050105/msgs/439052.html