Posted by LostGirl on December 19, 2003, at 9:50:27
In reply to Feeling during therapy, posted by Karen_kay on December 18, 2003, at 9:12:04
These topics are so great. I can't believe it, like you all have experienced sides of me that I wouldn't be able to explain to other people.
My answer is - when I started seeing my former therapist, with my husband as a couple, I could only feel angry (at my husband) or numb. I always thought there was something wrong with me because I couldn't cry. Then I would start to find that after the session I would get sad. Then it got to where I would get sadder each time. Then I was terribly, horribly sad, not sleeping, etc. First incident of major depression. The therapist started seeing me alone in addition to as a couple. Started asking a lot about childhood, etc. At first I told all kind of stories as though I were a detached reporter. No emotion. Yet emotion would register in his face. He'd look sad at a sad story. Occasionally a tear in the corner of his eye. He would say things like "you felt hurt inside" and that was profound to me, because I couldn't have seen it otherwise. And I went through a period of almost constant heaviness in my chest, like something coming up, wanting to come out, but unable to cry or release it. Then I remembered something my mother used to say - "Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about" and I realized I had trained myself not to cry so as not to get hit at a young age. And not long after that, when I told something, and he looked sad, things would well up in me, and then I would sometimes cry. So, in that therapy experience, I became acquainted with emotions, my emotions, over a period of 3 years. Then he, apparantly also pretty attached to me started to play head games, basically out of his own countertransference (Forgetting to tell me about a vacation was the worst offense) and that was it.
But early on when I felt there was something wrong with me not having emotions, he said "you have them, you are just disconnected from them" and I believe that proved to be right.
poster:LostGirl
thread:291244
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20031213/msgs/291574.html