Thursday, July 21, 2011
Important therapy session question?
Ok so during my last therapy session, I forced myself to be brave enough to talk to my therapist about how I have problems trusting and after we talked about that for a while, she wanted to know more in detail about what brought up the issue. Since I brought up trust, she obviously knew there was more to it. Finally I brought up transference, which is something we have not talked about before. It seems like such a big deal to me, but she talked about it like it was nothing out of the ordinary which helped at lot. I talked about what it meant to me, how my mother didn't give me enough emotional support when I was growing up, and how I always tend to seek other women who are older than me, seem like they have it together, and are successful, to kind of lean on and get emotional support from. My therapist has been a great example of this in my case. Even though I don't wish for her to be my mother, I have always wanted and wished for emotional support and comfort from her more than anyone else. I really look up to her and she is successful, caring, has a great personality and sense of humor, she loves life, is pretty, and seems like everything I wish I could be. I have tried to tell myself that I don't want her to be my friend because she's my therapist, but I definitely would want her as a friend if we were not in a therapist-client relationship. It is sometimes hard to think of the ethical boundaries that have to be respected. Anyways I told her I miss her when I am not in sessions and that I get sad after I leave therapy. I voiced my concern about telling her this because I was afraid she would become distant, not understand, or tell me to find a different therapist. But she did none of those things, and I am so thankful for that. She was just completely calm and talked to me for a long time about my fears and why I am afraid to trust. She said she might consider suggesting I try stopping therapy for a while since I am attached, but said it is probably not the best thing for me because she knows I don't have friends, and not very much emotional support from family and she said that is sad. In other words, she must know how much I need the emotional support she is able to offer me. She talked to me for a long time and one thing I remember the most is that she told me that even though I put her on a pedestal and see her as larger than life, she told me she is only human and even though she is a psychologist, she can't read my mind, so I have to tell her the things I need help with. I said I was kind of waiting for her to push me more to speak these issues and she said she has tried but it is kind of like beating it out of me. Plus she said I am an adult and it is my responsibility to bring up my issues. One other thing that really sticks in my head is she asked me why I was so scared to bring all this up and I guess I am just scared of feeling so vulnerable because my mom always ridiculed me and basically always turned everything on me to make me feel like it was my own fault for feeling bad in any situation when I cried or felt sad during my teenage years especially. She would lecture me to the point where I felt stupid for feeling any negative emotion because she made me believe it was my fault I felt bad. I feel so weird showing my true feelings to a point where I am so guarded now and I feel stupid a lot. Kind of like, I'm not normal and my feelings and thoughts are not normal when I am feeling sad or scared. My therapist told me that we are just two people talking and I love that because it kind of put the situation into perspective and helped me feel like it's not such a huge deal to bring up stuff that may feel vulnerable. When our session was over, she said that we had talked about a lot and checked in with me by asking me how I was feeling after discussing all that. My anxiety was really high the whole time but it went down the last 15 minutes she was talking so it kind of felt like something had been lifted off my chest so I could breathe again which made me feel a little dizzy and kind of like unrealistic. For some reason, I still can't believe I was able to bring those things up. I had to talk to slow at some points during our session, like putting one word after the other, just to get things out. I guess I have never opened up to a therapist about this before and a part of it seems so not a big deal when I view it outwardly, but to me, it really took courage. I want to be able to have someone in my life who I can tell anything to, and who better than her? I would just like to get to the point where it doesn't feel so scary or awkward talking about vulnerable things. I want to get to a point where I don't feel stupid. I am so happy I was able to communicate better last session and I feel like I trust her more now but I feel like I still have a ways to go as far as trusting myself. Can anyone relate to any of this?
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