My 1st Voluntary Therapy Appointment

[Samantha_38]

2nd appointment....not doing so well after. I'm still not out of it and its been more than 24 hours. We talked about my "other" trauma. How ridiculous does it sound to just keep labeling things and your first trauma, then your other trauma...then the trauma after your other trauma...etc, etc. YUCK!

Tangent...anyways. Not as good. I could not go back to class afterwards, and ended up going home. Good advice from everyone who suggested I make it when all I had to do was go home afterwards. Too bad I didn't listen. I don't know how I'm ever going to be able to make an appointment without having things afterwards though.

I'm just in a really bad place right now. Everyone looks like him, everything feels like him...everything is him! And I just want HIM to get out of MY head and go back to where ever the heck I've been hiding him for most of my life.

How is this therapy thing going to make me better? I feel terrible!

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

We started out messaging on an anonymous message system.

I am shocked. Meeting a therapist online like that? Not knocking it if it works for you but personally that would make me too nervous.

Good luck with your therapy. It is hard but it gets better.

 

[BloomInWinter]

Samantha, it is not ridiculous to give traumas non-triggering labels. It's a form of containment which is extremely helpful for the healing process.

It's normal for appointments to stir things up. Afterwards is a good time for practicing self-care skills, mindfulness, and discovering what actions help you ease your distress. Be gentle with yourself.

 

[desiderata310]

Sound like me after my first few appointments. Keep going.

 

[Bedbug]

Hi @Samantha_38, I expect you've just been too busy with school and the kids to spend time on here, but your last post was a little worrying. I hope you're ok. I've been thinking about you.

 

[Samantha_38]

I am shocked. Meeting a therapist online like that? Not knocking it if it works for you but personally that would make me too nervous.

It's not like he's just from some random place, it was through my school. They have a program for identifying students who may need help without actually making them reveal who they are first. The invitation to fill out the survey, that was connected to the messaging system came to my school email from a university address, and I see him on campus. I can almost guarantee I would not be in therapy if this opportunity had not happened to me. I was SO locked up. Having the chance to meet someone a little before I had to actually "meet" them, really opened me up. I can see where it may not work for everyone though.

@Bedbug - I've been alright. School has been crazy, I just got done with midterms. Which means....WEEK OFF for me! That practically never happens in my major, but I'm excited for it. I've also been very triggered by practically nothing lately, so being on the forum doesn't always help that so much.

Let's see, I did decide to go back, and I saw him yesterday again. I wasn't feeling up to it at first, but I told him about it, and he just made me a slot that I could come if I wanted to. I started feeling better over the weekend, so I went. It went ok. He decided we may have been going a little fast, so I think he's trying to cut down the amount of time we spend on my past. Unfortunately everything that even starts out as problems I'm having now, kind of just turns into talking about the past.

It has definitely been really tough, but its not like I thought it was going to be easy. Yesterday started out really good, but then kind of ended on a bad note. I've self harmed forever, almost as long as I can remember my abuse, and it hasn't really ever gone away, but gotten worse again since I've been talking about things more. We were talking about it, he knew because I had told him through an email. He wanted me to show him one and that was tough because I get kind of "protective" over the whole thing, but I did it. Then he was trying to get me to say how I feel when I do it, and what I thought were bad things about it. I kind of shut down, and then was messing with the stuff that hadn't healed yet. Not like out in the open completely, but he noticed.

I pretty much completely shut down then. He was asking me to stop, and said we could talk about something different if I did, and I don't know why I couldn't just stop...but it took awhile before I could do it. His voice was kind of different when that was happening, and I got scared and thought he was mad at me. He wasn't though. He said he was just trying to be more serious and emphasize that I needed to stop, and he said to "bring me back".

I don't know, obviously that doesn't make it sound like it's going good, but it is. We still message back and forth quite a bit while he's working. I'm a lot better at writing. I can't say much when I'm in there, so I think he gets a lot better information from the messages. He's completely ok with this, I've asked and made sure about a hundred times. We've been talking about trust and what that means, because I don't really get it. I kind of just tell him what is going on, and he points out when I should maybe think about something in a different way, or what I could do to stop thinking about something, or tells me when certain things are pretty "normal" considering everything so I don't always feel so abnormal now.

I don't know, probably pretty common therapy stuff, just a lot of it through writing instead of face to face. Even though I've opened up a little, I still get really scared and nervous when I'm in there. I can't even hardly look at him.

 

[zaniara]

I hate it too when my therapist talk to me about self harm. I haven't done it even once since December, but have had marks on my forehead that looked self-inflicted and made him ask. He is pretty 'firm' in that too.. It's scary, but he really cares. But it feels awkward when he take it all so seriously, when I really haven't. It have been a way for me to comfort or try to calm down what could otherwise get even more dangerous. So I've felt very cornered when he talked and asked about it. And even more so when he was pretty clear about that it wasn't okay for him if I continued it..

But then I lost control and hurt my self without 'choosing' to. And it almost spun out of control in a very dangerous way. So after that I have thought about it differently, and have found a way to resist the impulses. It still sucks him sort of checking me out though..And the impulses are not gone. But I handle them.

Hang on. Good to hear you've found good help. Just stay with it and be as honest as you can. About how you feel most of all. Talking more about trauma can wait.

 

[billie]

Wow, this could be a new venture for you hun. I wish you well :)

 

[Samantha_38]

@zaniara - "Cornered" is a good way to describe it, but I'm not sure that was all I was feeling. He has been very open about it, in the sense that he's made it known that he's against it, but he's also accepted the fact that it isn't something I'm just going to be able to stop in a day. I'm not afraid to tell him when I've done it, or when I'm feeling like doing it. I really don't like sharing it though.

He's told me now that we need to talk more about why it means so much to me. I guess I don't really know why. I just know its something I've always had and "it's mine". I know many other people do it, but my scars and the stories behind them are "mine". It irritated me when kids in high school that I knew started doing it after they knew I did it, and it irritates me that he wants me to explain it to him.

I can't even explain it to him, because I don't understand it, but it irritates me that he wants me to try. It's something that I don't know how to describe any other way than "it's mine", and I don't feel like sharing. Out of everything we've talked about so far this is the first thing I've reacted extremely strongly to, so it's kind of weird because I would have thought sharing information about my trauma would have been worse. We haven't gone into too much detail about the trauma though either.

"One step at a time...." he keeps telling me. Sometimes I feel like I'm going a quarter step at a time.

Thanks @billie .