Therapy Is Hard Work

I’ve been struggling.

The pain, the fear, the lack of sleep, and the intense body sensations have been hard to move through.

Last session was hard and intense. I had just opened up about the attachment distress I was feeling. I ended up having a flashback, and up until that moment, I hadn’t been able to share with her any of the ones that come up. This time, I did.

She linked the flashback to the attachment distress.

Since that session, I had been feeling a lot of rage. Anger is a hard emotion for me to feel. It brings with it guilt that makes me feel a lot of disgust toward myself.

When the session started today, all I wanted to do was end the call. I was feeling angry and closed off, and I just didn’t want to be there.

At some point, I realized I had been scanning her for signs that she hated me or didn’t want me there. Once I realized I was doing that, it made me remember doing the same thing with the second therapist I worked with. It wasn’t long after that when my fear ruined everything.

So I started paying attention internally, and I told her I was scanning her. I told her that I almost picked a fight and that I’ve noticed I tend to do that after vulnerable sessions.

And then I just broke down.

Because the anger was gone, and all I could feel was the fear.

I told her I was also scared that while I was able to catch it this time, there will be a time where I won’t, and I’ll fuck it all up.

She said, “Then we can work through it.”

“If it happens, and it may, we can come back and try to work through it.”

That response, her knowing I may not always catch myself and telling me she’s willing to come back, talk it out with me, and try to work through it… means more than I think I can express with words.

I know the blueprint of my past therapy experiences has helped her prepare and navigate working with me in a way the therapists before her didn’t get to have.

And I’m still feeling a lot of grief around those losses.

While I’m grateful for her words, I don’t know that the fear of being left to figure it out on my own will ever fully go away.

I’m immeasurably grateful for her.

She has shown up in ways that have been transformative for my experience in therapy, and it has allowed me to experience the pain that’s coming up in a new way.

I won’t discount the things I’ve learned from prior terminations being part of the helping hand in this. I know that without learning things about myself, I wouldn’t be able to have the experience I’m having now.

I just wish it could have been this way the first time around, so I didn’t have to carry additional grief throughout this process.

During session today, she linked the rage I had been feeling to the flashback. She told me that when I shared the memory with her, rage was what she felt while hearing it.

During that session, when I shared with her, I wasn’t able feel anything. She made sure to tell me that it did end up coming up afterward.

I guess it shocks me how hard it is for me to link these things on my own. I wouldn’t have guessed that it was connected.

The links help make sense of things in a way that helps me move past the emotions that are coming up.

It’s still hard. I’m still struggling with a lot of pain.

But I don’t feel as lost as I have been.

I just wish I had a map of what to expect during this journey. Pain wise. Healing wise. Navigating things as they come up is hard and I want to get this right. So badly.