Why is it hard to talk in therapy?

[LucyLou]

My task from therapy this week was to think about and wrote down why it's hard for me to talk about things/why I get to a certain point and then stop....I've done this but I wondered if some of you guys could share too? Only if you're comfortable, obviously. I will post mine too, after couple replies.....think I just need to know that I'm not on my own with some of the things I have wrote down, before I send to my therapist. TIA

 

[Midnightmoon]

Have you been with your T long? That sounds a hard task to work on. I struggled, and still struggle, with this, but I needed my T to give ideas as to why. It's like I didn't know the words until she suggested them!

Ideas we came up with:

Feeling guilty for burdening T
Feeling over dramatic
Worrying it would make it worse as how to cope with the things that it might bring up
Worrying that it wasn't real
Not knowing if it was worth wasting time talking about- is it relevant
Parts becoming disengaged/ wanting to run/ wanting to sabotage
Dissociation and switching, not remembering the question or what we were talking about

 

[Charbella]

For me it’s not always the same reason but here are some of mine:
I just CANT say it out loud. It feels too big in my mind.

Saying it out loud will give T a chance to comment and I’m not up for listening to it.

I know he isn’t going to like what I have to say so rather than listen to him tell me reasons it’s not my fault I just don’t say it is my fault.

I’m not ready to dissect it, I’m not ready for the questions he’s going to want me to answer.

The words necessary for saying it are SA and I’m incapable of using them.

Hope it helps. I just got similar homework so there it is.

 

[One step at a time]

There's all the usual reasons involving shame, guilt, being sure it's our fault, we will be blamed, etc.... but also:

Sometimes, brains have their own wisdom and logic about what we can/can't handle. Trauma is hard stuff, and blew our circuits the first time around. So for many of us, it makes sense to chip away slowly, if we have any choice in the matter. And sometimes brains are really good at protecting us, and do the slow, gradual release of information for us, a bit at a time. (Other times, brains dump a whole lot of info at once, we flood, and need to deliberately go about stemming/slowing the flow). Brains might do this more if present life is chaotic (deal with the current chaos before digging around in the old stuff), if there is a reason to distrust T (legitimate, like they're brand new, or illegitimate, like their hair is purple), or if we were trapped and dissociated to cope.

 

[arfie]

my reasons are as variable as the subject under discussion, but the most consistent commonality i've found is that the reasons it is hard to talk in therapy are the same as my reasons with just about everybody else on the planet. even myself. typically, the subject is hard for me to even think about, much less talk about.

 

[mszl]

For me it were problems with naming/identifying emotions related to these events. My thinking was, if it's not bringing any hard emotions, maybe it's not that big of a deal, not important. But turns out my problem is I suppressed these emotions. I think this led me to downplay during my therapy with university psychologist and got under diagnosed.

 

[Movingforward10]

Saying it out loud, and T validating it: makes it real and no longer something I can pretend I’m making up.
saying words feels too much. Too great. Overwhelming.
shame.
lack of fight.

 

[No More]

My off the wall answer? Because it’s not really what I needed.

I didn’t need validation, I didn’t need to dredge up horrible awful details over and over again. It was hard because looking back on reflection, that style of therapy is not what made the difference for me.

It was community, and fun, and safety in friends, and shared experiences, and physical movement, and yoga, and sunrises, challenges, pushing myself and finding I could achieve, and exercise, and dancing with friends until the sun came up. It wasn’t sitting down talking about it. It was getting up and going out and doing. Over and over again, no matter how hard or unpleasant.

 

[LucyLou]

This is kind of what I've come up with for my therapist on the reasons it's hard to talk.


When it comes to talking about stuff, there isn't just one thing that makes it difficult. There is so much more to it.


Pretty obvious one at the top would be that I'm not going to be believed.


Just using the words and saying them out loud is difficult....it can be hard to even write the words sometimes too!


I wouldn't want anything to change the way people see me.


I wouldn't want anything I say to be the reason that people treat me differently.


I'm a little worried about the reaction or being told that I'm overreacting, etc, because even I feel like I've overreacted to some things, at times.


Issues with self blame because I'm always going to feel like I could/should have done more.


I feel bad, like I'm doing something wrong or like I shouldn't be saying these things about people.


I know from trying to talk about stuff before that it's so hard to pull myself back from. It can be overwhelming, and it's hard to even think of myself being in that frame of mind again.


Embarrassment - I don't even want anybody to know any of this has happened to me - Even you, as the therapist


Keeping things to myself has kind of become the "norm" - It's been a little different over last 3ish years because I've spoken about few bits with my friend but she's the only one and even she doesn't know everything.

 

[Friday]

1. For me, It’s mostly not having the space to deal with the explosive fallout.

First my jaw locks.
Then my mind blanks.

Attempting to push past? Equals a MASSIVE adrenaline dump & symptom spike that takes being in the middle of a workout in order to burn through without rapid decompensation. So there are things I can talk about during sex, sparring, running 10k, cliff diving, riding, etc. that I cannot talk about without somewhere for all of the adrenaline to go. Not without risking my life, the lives around me, my sanity, and my freedom.

I figured it was a worthwhile skill to learn… so I did try for a few years… but gave it up as a bad go, in favor of environments that work better for me. Plenty of trauma therapists are more than happy to take therapy “on the move”. Hell, even EMDR was a byproduct of attempting to mimic the effectiveness of trauma therapy done whilst walking in the woods to a stationary/office setting.

2. IF IT’S NOT THE PHYSICAL REACTION?

Then it tends to be the interlocking TANGLE where words simoly don’t suffice / what’s going through my head isn’t linear enough for words to grasp. If I could open up a window to my brain? There would be 5 or 50 different images/movies/timelines all playing at once.

Using a white board to do a rough “bubble scape” &/or “network model” is a fairly effective work around. As I can draw out the big groupings / headings & intersections.