sometimes i envy @battlestardidactica their weird weird brand of everything-matters people-can-be-closeread psych (by which i mean, uh, the entire field of psychoanalysis), basically entirely because i feel this pressure in therapy to bring things up that are productive, or problematic in productive ways, that can be read and advised on and solved. there is, probably, more space for me to be unproductive or self-indulgent than i’m allowing myself to believe, but imagine having it be explicit that it’s not actually the most unimaginable waste for me to try to closeread my intense resentment of my apartment shower for an hour or so
ok that’s not really what i’m mad about. i think what i want is to just express my feelings, even the petty ones, even the stupid ones, even that thing where i admit to myself that i feel actively wounded and mistreated every time the shower in this apartment runs out of hot water less than ten minutes in, which is every time i shower, and have it be treated like something legitimate. what i actually want is for it to be allowed in its own right; i want someone to nod and validate and agree that it’s okay for me to feel about things and even that maybe it’s okay to be upset that i can’t get to the end of washing my hair without the water going, that that’s genuinely annoying and shitty. but i’d take having my emotions be valuable as a source of data for deeper analysis, that would at least make them permissible.
what would someone even say as a “useful” problem-solving response to that, though? i can’t imagine it, so i can’t tell my therapist about it, and if i can’t tell my therapist something i certainly can’t subject anyone else to listening to me talk about it