Writing A Summary

[Deleted member 10686]

I've been through a lot if therapy in the last 3 years, and I feel overwhelmed about seeing a new therapist on Sunday and having to start new all over again. I'm thinking about writing a summary about myself, what I struggle with and how I feel, and sharing this at my first session. Maybe it'll help me find some solid ground with this new therapist so I'm not starting from dmsquare one. Any thoughts on this or suggestions or ideas?

 

[arfie]

Strikes me as a good idea for your own benefit. You can carry it with you to the session and if sharing it doesn't feel right, nothing lost and you still have the benefit of having organized your thoughts on it. I used to carry my journal to therapy with me in this very spirit.

 

[Hashi]

Sounds like a really good idea to me.

I'd also say that I think it's fine to share with a new therapist whatever you feel about having to start over with them. Nervousness, anxiety, therapy fatigue, whatever it is. I think it's helpful to both of you to have that out in the open. I spent the first two weeks of seeing my second therapist talking about how much I didn't want to leave the first one! :oops: She was glad I'd told her, and she adjusted the early sessions a bit to give me some time related to that.

I don't know your background but it sounds impressive that you have been working hard at therapy and are continuing to do that even though you have to start with a new therapist and that is very hard. I'd like to send you encouragement and support. I hope it goes well.

 

[Deleted member 10686]

Thanks both of you, I think I needed reassurance that it wasn't a dumb move. Mainly I feel like I need to express my irritation, the hurt I feel regarding the way my last two therapist handled terminating therapy, and my fears of starting over again if only to be ditched or disrespected again.

For a brief history, the first therapist was great, we had a string therapeutic connection and I was attached. Then he terminated therapy because he said my friendship with my best friend was "risky" and if I had t choose between my friend or therapy.

Then I started seeing this woman, for the last year. She was great, helped me a lot, but she started getting very flaky, canceling every week r coming extremely late, so I terminated.

And now here I am. I have a lot of resentment for past therapists and it's making me unsure about this one.

I guess it'll be good to be straight forward and say how I feel, start therapy the right way, or try to

 

[The Albatross]

I attempted to write a summary... sort of like the one page bullet document that Anthony suggests. Got off to a solid start then got stuck and essentially was unable to complete it. When I see the list and my brain starts compiling and grouping incidents (the major ones) it became overwhelming and I had to quit to avoid depressive cycling. I am just not there yet. I can rattle things off a few at a time, or sometimes more verbally... but there is just something about having it on a page that I back away from, still.

It is what it is and one day it may be completed. It is sitting in a Word file.

What I also found as I attempted to compile the list was significant difficulty with the time line, and I realized that I had or have the tendency to blur out dates and split up events by breaking them up into several memories independently instead of recalling them all at once. I also found that several places groups of traumatic events preceded pretty big chunks of lost time... weeks or months that I absolutely don't remember.

Hoping to ride on the coat tails of someone else's good suggestions here. I haven't nixed the attempt entirely, but tabled it as it was not something that my shrink actually asked for... it was my own idea to try to fast track the sessions.

 

[Deleted member 10686]

I have tried doing that, writing down my traumas, but it is very difficult. Right now I am writing a memoir (just starting) and it is proving to be very difficult, not only because of the content but also because of the confusion of time, the way my memories are sometimes lumped together. Someone's lumped by category/type of occurrence instead of following a time line.

As far as the summary for my new therapist, I was thinking along the lines of something very simplified, just something to give him an idea of what we are working with