#defectiveness

[therapistintherapy]

Relapse

Today feels like I am relapsing into old thought patterns.  Some days feel like too much.

[therapistintherapy]

Looking back

My therapist wants me to do 'chair work.'  

I don't want to do chair work.

My dearest friend, who is also both a therapist in training and in therapy, says I need to do chair work.

I told her I just want to reintegrate my Warrior self with my Shaman/Healer self (I will explain these two parts at a later blog entry).

She said we didn't have time for chair work, but she wanted me to do it.

I told her I didn't want to do chair work.

She asked me why.

I said I didn't know her well enough.

She asked me what that meant.

I told her I have a lot of difficulty trusting people.

She nodded.

I told her I would think about it.

She said she understood.

I shriveled up into myself.

She said to think about it.

[therapistintherapy]

Followup questions

Can I be whole?

Do I deserve to be whole again?

[therapistintherapy]

Nerves and anticipation

I have too much to talk about.  What is important?  Why is there this sense that I have to do therapy perfect?  Why can't I just do o.k. therapy?  I guess I will have to just go in and hope for the best and do whatever comes up.

[therapistintherapy]

[therapistintherapy]

ouch, didn't see that coming

Part of my third therapy session was a discussion of why I wouldn't talk to someone about things that felt like they might cause confrontation.  She encouraged me to try to discuss something without too much confrontation.  She encouraged me to talk it through with her and then talk to a real person about a problem.  When I tried it, my life spiralled out beyond control.  There was such a backlash from the other person that I felt all my schema enact themselves.  I felt like my guts got ripped out.  I was accused of things I never did and it felt like shit.  I got angry.  I felt the anger well up and fire build in my chest and arms.  Then I shut down.  I got calm and felt nothing.  I still feel nothing today.  I sit here in class wondering what I am going to do to unfuck the situation.  I still feel like everything is raw and hurt and exposed, but the adrenaline is keeping away the pain.  There is a reason I used these defenses and this just highlights their effectiveness.  I want to stay engaged with my life and work through this, but I fear myself and how it will play out.  Tonight I am going to avoid and continue to feel nothing.  I earned it.  I confronted someone nicely and with poise and got smacked down for it.  I didn't lose my shit, I just tried to talk through it and failed.  At least I tried something new.  I hope something works tomorrow.  I don't want to endure this kind of reenactment of my failures over and over again.  I can't see any good come of that.

[therapistintherapy]

Second session, new therapist

We sat for a the first bit and talked around how exhausting it was for me to consider all the processes that were happening inside while I was sitting there talking to her.

I talked about how I had high expectations for myself, no big surprise unrelenting standards schema, to do therapy 'well.'

I admitted that I was concerned with what she might think of me after I go through this therapy with her, especially since I have a really super close friends that works with her and she is in my field.  I admitted I was concerned about a lot of things regarding impression management, feeling defective (schema) and generally not trusting people.

She admitted to having a nearly parallel process going on of wanting to go a great job too, because of a sense of responsibility to a fellow practitioner.  I have to admit that her saying this put me more at ease and helped me confirm anecdotally that self disclosure and being more of a real person with expertise instead of an expert makes therapy easier for a client to do.  At least it works that way for me. I had several moments of attempted dissociating and nausea.  The pukes threatened to come out a couple of time and I couldn't eat right away when I left.  Anxiety was high.

Then she suggested that despite our need to look at processes, she felt things would be easier if we became better acquainted.  So we talked about me for a while, instead of what I was doing in the room.  Anxiety subsided and I quickly moved into the realm of doing disclosure to her of safe things that seemed edgy.  Tip of the iceberg type things that allowed her to see into some of my stuff without showing her the Dark Passenger that road with me. When I got to my car I cried for about 20 minutes.  I had triggered my own guilt pretty hard surrounding responsibility for other people's deaths in Somalia.  But still no nightmares.  I can take the short term pain for long term gains as long as I keep getting to sleep at night without fear of those nightmares. I think I made a good choice for a therapist.  I hope she hangs in there and we can do the good work.  She is at least as smart as I am, if not more-so and she is definitely as fucked up as me at some point.  The look on her face when I said I thought she had been through some shit too gave her away.  At least trauma let's me evaluate facial experessions fast.

[therapistintherapy]

First Session, take 2

So here were my reactions to the first session as I drove in the car, as recorded on my digital voice recorder:

"getting out of therapy with [therapist's name redacted] my stomach was upset, um I feel like I want to barf, I keep gurgling gastric juice.  Uh, I think if I had eaten anything in the last ten minutes I probably would have thrown up.  I feel really tired like after I have a huge adrenaline rush, um, so I am pretty sure I had um, a flight reaction.  I know that several times I dissociated or tried to, threw up a lot of shields, talked about a lot of complicated things, um.  I threw veiled warnings at her, I think, about breaking my trust or making me feel she had broken my trust.and told her about noticing her unusual eye avoidance when I gave her a look of authority and how I felt like that meant she had been threw some shit too.  Um, she was really amazing at staying with me in what was going on and pointing out that I was pushing content.  rather than talking about the processes that I use.  Um, the idea of talking about my processes and defenses absolutely scares the shit out of me.  I want to run.  I'm already trying to think of ways to not be available on Friday, but I need to do this shit and get better so I am going to do my best to sit with it.  I feel like my insides are going everywhere.  I feel very exposed.  I feel like my mind is racing going a hundred miles an hour trying to figure out what the fuck just happened.

Um, and I'm struggling with wanting to learn how she's doing and actually getting something for myself out of it, um, and I think that that struggle will be in remembering that I am worthy of being better and not having this shit in my life anymore and not using these mechanisms to hide from my feelings but just to have them and be done with them as opposed to trying to learn what she has so that I can be better than I already am and somehow help other people which is really about other people instead of me, so I'm going to do my best to stick with this one...(big pause)  whew!  Look forward to writing a blog about this tonight.  I hope that I can stay engaged and keep doing this."

Ouch.  I actually meet her on Mondays, not Fridays.  I was pretty out of it at that point.