Do I Just Need To Accept That I've Been Beaten By My Own Resistance?

[barefoot]

Thanks @Suzetig
I don't think I'm very good at self-soothing... :-(
Maybe I'll have a bath later and play some music to hum along to while I have a soak.

The stuff about reminding yourself who your T is is helpful. I think I can say all the things about mine that you've said about yours. Except mine hasn't explicitly said she'll be there as long as I need...but she has repeatedly said we will work something out and she won't just abandon me/leave me hanging.

And this reminds me that I thought a couple of weeks ago about writing down assurances she has given me (e.g. "We will work something out.") so that I have them for easy reference when I'm in need and my anxiety is spiking. I didn't end up doing it. Maybe I could do that in the morning so that perhaps I will then feel a bit more secure when I see her in the afternoon...

I don't know whether I should tell her about all this or whether I should just try to be as together and measured as possible in the session so that we just sort out practicalities. Maybe I should try for the latter and aim not to get sucked down the rabbit hole of trying to explain how upset, anxious and afraid I feel about this whole situation? I suppose the priority is getting some certainty about a plan. Getting an emotional about how hard I have found the last few weeks may just end up being a distraction? Or will it look like I care more and it matters more? Or is that just manipulative - if she sees how upset I am, she may be more inclined to stick around to help...? Ugh...I don't even know if that is what she'd think...!
God, I'm getting on my own nerves so much!

 

[barefoot]

@Sandstone - yes, I can see how the fear and uncertainty about the future have meant that I haven't really felt secure or settled in recent sessions. To be fair on my T, she has tried to bring it up a couple of times but I have had other things I really wanted to talk about, plus I think it's fair to say that I was also being avoidant because I didn't want to talk money/open up the possibility oh her saying we should stop. So, it is my own fault that I am in a position where I don't know what's going to happen and where my anxiety about it is spiralling.

Yes, it is very hard for me to say what I want/need. Often because I don't know! But when I do know...it's just so hard to get the words out, so I will often just feel mortified and my voice will get hijacked. So, my usual reply when she asks me what I need or what I need from her/the space, I usually only manage to come up with, "I don't know...nothing." I don't know why it is so difficult to feel like I have a need and to express it...

When T emailed in the new year to confirm our next appointment after Christmas break, she said about our next appt being 60 mins. We usually meet for 90 mins. I think she thinks if we switch to 60 mins, we can eke the remaining session hours out a little bit more. And I am pretty certain she thinks we have discussed and agreed that change. But we haven't - I was expecting that we were meeting for 90 mins as usual. I do get her thinking of moving to shorter sessions - particularly if I am relying on her to offer me a heavily reduced rate going forward. But I feel like I have so much to say tomorrow and I don't think I can fit it all in to an hour. But I just couldn't bring myself to ask if we can meet for 90 mins this week. So, for once, I did know what I wanted. I just felt like I couldn't possibly ask. And I know that's stupid. I know if I'd have asked for 90 mins, she would have given me 90 mins.

 

[barefoot]

Remember what your T has said - she wants to go on working with you, and she believes you and she can sort out the finances.

Thank you. I need to keep remembering this otherwise I'll drive myself nuts and won't sleep very well tonight.

 

[Sandstone]

Hope it goes well today, and that you can stay present enough to discuss it all directly.

 

[barefoot]

Thanks @Sandstone - will let you know how it turns out.
There is a tube strike today too, just to add to the stress! Perhaps the schlep across London will force me into the here and now and make me more present!

 

[barefoot]

So, I didn't get a plan sorted on Monday to clarify what we're going to do when these last couple of pre-paid for sessions run out.

But - it was a good session and I felt more at ease there than I have for a while and the relationship felt good and I felt that she was really on my side with some stuff. It felt like a good "reconnecting after a break" type session and we talked about some helpful stuff. So, I actually feel calmer and more secure about things even though "what's next?" is still TBC.

I didn't mention that I wanted us to agree what we're going to do going forwards until ten minutes before the end (useful!) And she asked what I wanted and I said I wanted to keep seeing her but I didn't know how that would work with my current financial situation. Then I forced myself to look at her. And she just looked back at me and didn't say anything! So, then I started babbling about the mind maps I've been taking in and about the fact that I think creating those has stirred up lots of stuff and now my head feels too full and busy. So she suggested that next week we get straight into some of that stuff that's whirling around. And I was a bit panicked then because I really want/need to do that but I was also thinking, no, we need to agree the plan because I was meant to do that today and haven't so I MUST do it next week!

So I said that and she said ok but she was quite casual about it. Not in a dismissive way. More in a way of "let's focus on what you really need at the moment and, if we don't get to the other stuff next week, we can sort it out later."

On the one hand I was surprised to mention the plan/money and have her not say anything! Especially as I said it is causing me some anxiety. On the other, I do feel much calmer about things. I feel more like...I can trust that we will sort the plan out when we need to. Because she doesn't feel concerned as she just seems totally confident that we'll work something out so let's just focus on what I really need at the moment (i.e. brain dumping all the stuff that's currently buzzing round my head and causing me huge confusion and anxiety) and the rest will happen.

I don't know if this kind of thinking is simply me justifying failing to nail the plan on Monday. It might be. But - I do feel a lot calmer and I do feel more secure about her and confident that she will offer a workable solution for us to keep working together. If the calmness is short-lived and I get back in a frenzy about being uncertain about the future/convinced I'm going to be dumped, I will have to re-think and make a more concerted effort to really nail the conversation about the future next week and bump the other stuff to the following week.

Sorry....long post just to say "I didn't do it but am currently feeling calmer!"

 

[Suzetig]

That sounds really productive though - my sense of it from reading what you wrote is that you're able to trust that if she isn't concerned about it, you'll be ok too. That she isn't overly concerned about the money and has it in mind that things will be fine with her and she isn't going anywhere?

I remember my T saying - at a point when I was frenzied with anxiety about our relationship - "you might just need to trust". It was hard to hear but she was right - I needed to remember I could trust her to tell me if there was an issue and trust that she would try to fix it if there was.

I'm glad you're calmer, try not to second guess that - just accept it for what it is.

 

[barefoot]

you're able to trust that if she isn't concerned about it, you'll be ok too. That she isn't overly concerned about the money and has it in mind that things will be fine with her and she isn't going anywhere?

Yes, thank you - you have just articulated what I spent ages trying to explain!

So, yes...trying to trust that...and trust her in that context... That in itself is a challenge and a learning curve and therefore a potentially valuable therapeutic experience...

And trying to trust myself that it's ok that I feel calmer despite still not actually having certainty and clarity...

Realise that I've kind of taken my own thread off topic here as I guess the whole question of whether my resistance has defeated me/my progress still stands. So still awaiting clarity on that too...!

 

[Sandstone]

I'm reading Link Removed and thought of you. I'll just quote the most relevant chunks from an article that goes over familiar ground but that I found quite encouraging.

Nor is Phase 2 work the grand ‘centrepiece’ of trauma recovery work, the Holy Grail that Phase 1 work was merely a preparation for. All three phases of the three-phase approach are equally important, and all represent the ‘real’ work: just as the survivor is attempting to integrate the various aspects of their identity, personality and history into one coherent whole, so the therapy itself should be seen ...as an inter-related and inter-dependent series of steps which all build towards the client being able to move forwards in their life, in touch with all the different facets of themselves, with their past connected into their present, and where they can make choices freely and consciously rather than being forever dysregulated by the trauma of the past.


and

trauma processing involves disrupting survivors’ automatic responses to the trauma. When faced with a traumatic reminder, a survivor will often instinctively respond by dissociating ... by feeling a cascade of emotions which build towards a sense of overwhelm and catastrophe. .. But if they can gradually learn to take control of these automatic reactions, and... for these responses to be disrupted, they can gradually begin to feel more confident that they have the resources they need to be able to face their trauma and that it will not continue to control them.

and

The presence of a supportive other during this process cannot be overstated... Clients often have greater confidence in facing this material when there is a reasonable guarantee that the therapist will be there to help them deal with it, for as long as it takes. Consequently, threats to the stability of therapy, such as coming to the end of funding, impending holidays or prolonged absences, or relational ruptures with the therapist, can understandably increase a client’s unwillingness to work on Phase 2 material, and this should be respected and reframed not as resistance but in fact as self-preservation and the survival instinct: the client’s inherent wisdom knows when it feels safe enough to proceed with this work.

 

[barefoot]

@Sandstone Thank you so much for thinking of me and for taking the time to share the link and pull out some key excepts – and apologies for not replying sooner...I haven't been on the forum much this week.

I've just read the link and pretty much the whole thing resonated with me!

On the one hand, it feels reassuring and, as you say, encouraging. On the other, I'm not sure what this means for how I continue on with my current therapist (plus, I still don't know what will happen after my last two pre-funded sessions run out - the last bit you quoted about "threats to the stability of therapy" really leapt out to me!) Even if the future of therapy wasn't uncertain though, I'm not sure what this means for how we move forwards with this stuff.

I guess I could send her this link and discuss it with her? Not sure if I feel I can do that...I think I'd want to wait until we had agreed a plan for moving beyond these next two sessions...

I shared some new stuff (well...old stuff but it feels new and I haven't told her about it before) with her this week, so I'm not sure where (if anywhere!) we will end up going with that.

I guess the article made me think is talk therapy really the thing that's going to help anymore? The article seems to think not...


This bit:

"Survivors can learn that traumatic distress hijacks the mind, and that the body responds as in an emergency, but that there are ways of learning to thwart this hijacking. They learn that they can do something to calm their pounding heart and jerky breathing, and that they do not need to remain victims of their bodies’ responses"

was interesting to me...but I'm not really any clearer from the article about how you do that/how you work with a therapist to achieve that? If the key thing is "changing the survivor’s automatic responses to traumatic reminders at an implicit-memory, bodily-response level, not just an intellectualised discussion"...I'm not sure what that looks like and how that happens. And I'm not sure how that relates to what my T and I do. Or what we could do.

Thanks again for sharing. It was a really interesting read and I'll definitely be revisiting it.

 

[barefoot]

Actually, after a little more thought, this:

"Thirdly, and overlapping into Phase 3 work, the client begins to make meaning out of what happened and begins to address some of the no-longer-helpful beliefs that have developed as a result of the trauma"

feels like where I want/need to go. But I don't know if I'm getting ahead of myself, if this is overlapping with phase 3 and if I haven't really connected to/expressed my feelings around trauma?