Therapy Sucked!!

[Snowflake]

Errrrrrr

 

[joeylittle]

What happened? Sorry it was a rough time.

 

[Snowflake]

What happened? Sorry it was a rough time.

I think when we don't talk about abuse I feel guilty. I feel it was a waste-possibly shortest appt -40 minutes. I am upset with her and myself. i want/need her attention and didn't get/feel it.

 

[joeylittle]

I know that feeling - usually think that I've wasted time also, when we don't do trauma processing. But sometimes, the stuff we do is useful in other ways.

What did you and she talk about, instead?

 

[Snowflake]

I know that feeling - usually think that I've wasted time also, when we don't do trauma processing....

We talked about taking a few minutes each day to focus on breathing -we tried. And then talked about home life.

 

[Snowflake]

I called and apologized. Now I want to call and quit!

 

[WillyKat]

You know, you're doing OK. Therapy is difficult, sometimes more so than others. My advice is to take that breathing stuff seriously. That's part of the 10,000 mile journey we're all on.

Take care.

 

[seedling]

Hang in there with it. I've felt that way too.
There was a while when I felt that every fourth or so session really got down to it. Then I'd be back to talking about things that seemed like trivia to me. I saw later that it all built on itself and it takes time.

My motto with therapy when I feel like that is: "Just go one more time."

 

[Suzetig]

Sounds fairly normal to me but yes, it's frustrating as all hell. I found for a long time I'd come out feeling like I just hadn't done anything useful - no tears or trauma or I'd felt like I had avoided talking about what I needed to but actually we were building a relationship that has been a safe, stable place for me to work through some very hard stuff. And because we've really gone slowly it hasn't been retraumatising or as awful as I thought it would be.

Keep breathing, keep talking about what's around for you and your relationship - that's where the work is. You're doing fine.

 

[barefoot]

Agree with others here - this can be very slow, frustrating work. I can certainly identify with how you're feeling. There have been COUNTLESS times that I've been annoyed with myself after sessions for wasting time and not talking about anything important. In fact, I feel frustrated about wasting time after pretty much every session. Most weeks, I go determined to talk about X or Y and to not waste loads of time at the start wittering about nothing in particular. And pretty much every time I start wittering then realise over an hour has gone by and I haven't brought up what I wanted to talk about. I've been doing that every week for 18 months and I find it absolutely infuriating.

But, infuriating as it is, I also agree with @Suzetig - I think I'm doing it to create safety. And I can beat myself up over it - why do I still need to do that for so long every session when we've been doing this together for 18 months, so I should be able to not have to do that now and the fact that I do is pathetic and ridiculous.... (Very common thoughts for me!) Or I can just try to accept that, I just do need to do it and that's ok... I'm trying to do the latter but am still spending a lot of time in the former!

Also agree with @WillyKat re the breathing exercises...when my therapist first suggested this to me I thought it was a waste of time and I did a lot of eye rolling about it. Turned out to be very useful and it's a habit I've decided to try to get back into this year.

This is tough work but know that you're not alone in how you're feeling about it - hang in there!

 

[Panda Bear]

Sometimes the in between where we aren't really doing what seems like major work, is us building a safety net of skills and trust, so that we can survive the tougher stuff down the road.

Some weeks I totally act like an ass and just piss around because I don't want to do the hard work....but I have the skills and trustworthy foundation now. So when it happens these days, I'm just being an ass. But in the beginning? It was me learning to trust and not my fault completely.

You'll get there!