Taking A List To Therapy

[Lady of Longbourn]

I don't think that will happen Silk. And on some off chance it does then she wouldn't have been right for you anyway.

Be careful of black and white thinking.

 

[TimeToHeal]

Hi @silk123. Kudos to you for starting your list!

I often communicate with my therapist through email between sessions, and also keep up a list of things that may pop into my head that I need to bring up during my next session. I find it works best for me if I quickly hit "send" as soon as I finish writing a email to her! (I know she will forgive and spelling or grammar mistakes!) If I let myself go back and read what I have written I give myself the chance to second guess whether I should send it at all....or change the wording of something to sound less "crazy," or whatever.

So I guess what I'm saying is - write it down, fold it up, put it in a envelope, and don't look at it again until you hand it to your therapist! If you have more to add later, use a new sheet of paper! Just some ideas!

Good luck and hang in there! :)

 

[Justmehere]

I think your therapist will appreciate reading it and getting to know what is going on for you better! I have taken lists, journaling, even artwork that I have done to therapy, and each time I started doing it, I thought it was going to be the end of therapy, and possibly the end of me. However, it helped every time. I can really relate to your fears. Maybe just keep taking small steps towards this.

 

[silk123]

@TimeToHeal I too started to want to amend/change the words in mine to make it sound OK and acceptable but I made sure I didn't because I wanted it to be the truth.

@Justmehere I did it and talked about everything, I am happy but also in a semi-crisis as it has unlocked so much more stuff, so many more problems and questions.
This sucks.

 

[desiderata310]

WOOF! I too write emails between session and hit send as fast as possible. Sometimes I get a response and sometimes I get a text saying that he got my message and we can talk about it in our next session. It still freaks me out when I walk in and see my message printed out and being put in my file. He often references my email during those sessions.

I remember once I emailed him a series and I was in such a state that when he responded by text that we could talk about it in our session I freaked out and told him I shouldn't have sent it. HAH! He asked me why I had apologized : was I drunk emailing or something? No, just freaking out that I was doing something wrong.

There were a number of things that I emailed to open the communication because it was harder to start talking about it in person.

As far as opening other doors: yep. Been there too. So far this has been a process of me trying to figure out that I can trust my therapist. I am not completely there yet but I am getting there. Some things have happened that have helped. They were miserable to live through at the time but I've been so very close to suicide a couple of times in the last few months and he didn't freak out. He listened to me, got WHY I was there, heck, even knows I keep the means on hand and respects that it is… for lack of a better word, a security blanket and trusts that I am not going to follow through without calling first. When things DO go south, we've managed to figure out WHY I get there. I tend to manage high amounts of stress better than most so I don't know till it's too late that I am beyond acceptable limits. But I digress…

It's going to take a little time to get to a place where YOU feel comfortable trusting your therapist. I'm not going to lie: it ain't easy. I'm just getting to a place where I KINDA trust him. I don't trust easy and my trust has been violated so many times I resist pretty well.

Keep going. Keep talking. Keep trying to look your therapist in the eye (that one is hard for me but it revealed a lot about him today). See what happens. It's going to be ok.