Posted by Daisym on January 2, 2008, at 21:43:20
You would think that seeing my therapist again, after a 13 day break, would be great - right? So how come I was so tied up in knots and bouncing all over the place?
The week before the break we had one of those "issues" - I ran into his personal life inadvertently and when discussing it with him, I heard my own unrealistic expectations. He accidentally made it worse by kindly talking about therapy as a fantasy and I took it and ran the wrong way with it. He didn't say "therapy is a fantasy relationship" but I heard it that way. So I was hurt and upset with myself for stupidly allowing him, and the work we are doing, to become so important. I also canceled the rest of my sessions for that week. He called and asked me to please come in and talk it out. He didn't want to go into the break on such a bad note. We worked it out, but the inescapable truth of the limitations of this relationship linger. He can't make all the hurt go away and he just isn't there at 2am when the dreams are at their worst.
I spent way too much time by myself over the past two weeks. And of course, the Holidays were hard, too much family around that I had to be perky for. I saw that episode on Oprah on "Why I jumped" and heard my own thoughts. My sister gave me the book "Reality Theory in Action" for Christmas (why is a whole different discussion) and while I found a great deal of the book insulting (it felt like fast-food therapy sold with ginsu knives "act now before this deal ends!") the idea that you might be making choices that limit your happiness rang true. Is therapy one of those choices?
So I had a lot to talk about today - including the need to present as "just fine, no worries, the break wasn't hard for me" and the need to tell him about how hard it actually was. The result was that I told him little bits of all of it and threw in some silly stories too. I could tell he was having a hard time following me although he could tell I was struggling to let him in and to feel connected. He noted that I tend to polarize my feelings about therapy when we have a break - falling back to "I should just get over all this and look forward, not backwards." He wanted to know if we couldn't do both - set goals for the future as we deal with the past. Why is that so hard for me?
I did such an unfair thing at the end too - - I told him that setting goals was really difficult and then stopped. He asked why I stopped and I threw out the Oprah program and the struggle with suicidal thoughts. And then the tears came and I left. I'm sure we'll talk about it all tomorrow. He asked me if I worried the whole break that he wouldn't want to come back and work with me. Well - duh. I was such an idiot that last week. Why would he want to come back to this? He just shook his head and said he didn't feel that way.
Why am I struggling so badly with whether therapy is an indulgence or necessary again? Why do I keep making it so hard on myself?
poster:Daisym
thread:803915
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20080101/msgs/803915.html