Does Going To Therapy Every Week Make Me Believe I Need To Go To Therapy Every Week?!

[barefoot]

I usually see my therapist weekly but she's taken the best part of five weeks off. I've got another 10 days before I see her again. It's felt like a long time. I feel like...I've missed her...I've missed being with her... It's made me realise that I find going to see her comforting in some way...that there's something reassuring and maybe soothing about being in her presence in every week...

In terms of how I feel, I don't think I've felt any worse for these weeks that I haven't seen her. This weekend has been the first time that I've thought I wish I was seeing her this week because there's something bothering me that I'd like to talk to her about. I'm not having a big meltdown about it....I just know that, if I were seeing her as usual tomorrow, I'd want to talk it through with her.

I suspect though that, by the time I see her in 10 days, the current thing that's bothering me and that I want to talk about, will probably not matter any more....I'll probably be over it and won't need to bring it up.

It's got me thinking...is going to therapy every week actually making me feel worse and making me feel like I need to go to therapy because, every week, shitty stuff gets stirred up. And because, in a way, my therapist validates me feeling not great, which maybe keeps me stuck in feeling not great...?

I really like my therapist a lot. We have a good relationship. I like the acceptance I feel when I go to see her. She has definitely helped me with some stuff and has been a great support through some tricky times. I don't think I'm seriously considering quitting at the moment. But I am starting to think, perhaps I can manage just fine without being on the hamster wheel of therapy. Perhaps therapy just keeps all the shitty stuff on my radar. And maybe that isn't helpful. Maybe I'd be fine to just...get off the ride...?

I think my question is - is going to therapy every week making me believe that I need to go to therapy every week? When maybe I don't and would be better off not going?

Any thoughts?

 

[The Albatross]

Looks to me like you're gonna have 5 weeks (her time off) to decide that (maybe I would be better off not going). You got any attachment issues?

Is going to therapy every week making me believe that I need to go to therapy every week? Uh no.

 

[watundah]

Some people say therapy is a dependency trap and I can see how that could be. It sounds like you want to go but are not sure that you need to go. You could take a longer break than 5 weeks to see if a need comes back around vs staying on the hamster wheel. Some people do that on/off thing consistently based upon stressful times when extra support is helpful..

 

[barefoot]

Well, she's already been away for three weeks, so I have a week and a half left before she's back.

Not sure if not going would be because I can manage fine without or because I'm being avoidant...

We've never talked about attachment stuff, so I don't know...I don't think so... I have a big challenge around intimacy and feeling needy...and admittedly I've felt pissed off with her on one level for taking such a long break even though, intellectually, I get why she needs to take that time. But I don't think that's attachment issues?
I do feel attached to her. And I don't like that :-(

 

[barefoot]

@watundah Yes, maybe that distinction is right...
If I haven't needed her for these few weeks, I don't think I need her at all. I can do ok on my own.

And, yes, there's trauma I haven't processed and I know that's meant to be where we're going next. But now I'm just thinking, what's the point? Because, as things are now, this feels manageable. So, why stir up anything else so that I then feel not ok?! Feels counter-intuitive!

 

[The Albatross]

I guess I'd re-evaluate it (the reason you're in therapy). Sounds more like avoidance to me... "there's trauma I haven't processed and I know that's meant to be where we're going next. But now I'm just thinking, what's the point? Because, as things are now, this feels manageable. So, why stir up anything else" however that is definitely a distinction that you and your T may be able to discuss and come up with a plan for (ending treatment/therapy or otherwise). I'd have the discussion though.

 

[Sideways]

I agree with that @The Albatross is saying - it sounds like if may be an avoidance thing. I kind of like it when my T goes on leave, because it means that I get a bit of a break as well.

If that's not what's happening here, and you've actually already worked through the big stuff, I'd suggest scaling back rather than stopping altogether. Drop back to once a fortnight for a couple of monfhs, then drop back to once a month for a while and see how things go.

 

[barefoot]

I think it may very well be avoidance. But I suppose I'm wondering whether avoidance is necessarily A Bad Thing? Because I think therapy is perhaps making me think that things are a bigger deal than they are, simply because I'm focusing on them more.

@Ragdoll Circus - we haven't worked through the big stuff. We've touched on it but it's still "unprocessed trauma". But, again, I'm now thinking that I might be better off leaving it. Because I've been ok for the last few weeks. And my life is generally pretty good. I'm functional! And maybe that's all that really matters.

 

[Panda Bear]

You could just be minimizing the issues at hand...which likes to hang with avoidance.

It's sounds to me, like a break isn't a great idea....

 

[barefoot]

@Panda Bear Ok...yes, admittedly avoidance, minimising and denial are quite strong tendencies for me...! ;-)

But these last few weeks have felt OK. So part of me wonders if it will be easier to stay feeling ok if I'm not going to therapy every week, talking about challenging stuff and dissociating.... Those things don't make me feel ok :-(

It feels like I'm deliberately and repeatedly choosing to put myself in a process that doesn't make me feel ok. And I don't know that I can really see how it's suddenly going to be that I start feeling more ok through going. If anything, I can see that I'm going to end up feeling a whole lot worse once we start working on processing.

If I feel ok now, it makes sense to stay with that? Because it doesn't feel like the other stuff really matters at the moment.

 

[JEKBreatheandBelieve]

My guess is that avoiding trauma stuff is going to come back at some point if you don't head towards processing like you said you plan was.

Here's my opinion, you are doing well without your weekly therapy sessions right now. That is great and wonderful (amazing to me actual) and definitely worth celebrating. However, that can also mean that you are in a better place to start that processing work. Yes, it will be hard, but it's a whole lot harder when there's too much in the rest of your life to deal with (not that I am saying there isn't that in your life right now, it just seems that you can manage life outside of therapy pretty well), which means when you start with harder things, perhaps you'll be able to better cope with the after effects of that. And you can bring all of this hesitancy of starting it and your worry about it making things more challenging things, etc. to your therapist and tell her you don't want every therapy session to be that way because it doesn't make you feel okay. Maybe there is a compromise in here somewhere between going and not processing and going and feeling horrible all the time.

I think you're asking good questions of yourself and those on here to support you so you're really thinking about what is best for you at this time.

 

[Kintsugi]

I agree whole-heartedly with @Ragdoll Circus that scaling back (to, say, twice or once a month) would be a better step if you feel you really don't benefit from weekly sessions.

If you find yourself getting mired in the small stuff, can you tell your T that you want to put those things on the backburner and get to work on more serious issues? I try not to bring up current events in therapy unless they are huge and directly relate to one of my primary problems tied to trauma.

I feel like this thread has given me conflicting feelings from you about seeing your T. Do you look forward to it, feel validated and accepted, and think it's just stroking your need to brood on small stuff? Or does it force you to work on challenging issues, makes you dissociative, and makes you feel stuck in sadness? Those are very different narratives with different accompanying issues. In the former, perhaps you've become too attached to your T as a "safe" figure, and you're having trouble pushing past the mundanity of everyday problems to get to the very unsafe topics of major trauma issues. In the latter, your T is pushing you, but maybe you two simply aren't gaining the traction that is necessary to propel you to tackle the issues yet untouched.

I see my T twice a month. Occaisionally, I see her three times a month, because I am doing really badly. She would prefer that I see her weekly in order to push me harder while being confident that I only have to handle the fallout by myself for a week at a time. Seems like pretty sound thinking, although I can't afford four times a month, so we work on what we can, and if the fallout is too much, I can ask her if she has an extra opening. Seeing her only twice a month is nice, though, because I don't put every day under a therapy microscope. I tend to work the small stuff out by myself in between therapy. And I've gone a couple months at a time without seeing her because of circumstance, and because I'm not used to seeing her weekly, those breaks haven't felt all too major, even though there were times I wish we didn't have such lengthy breaks.