Posted by earthmama on March 2, 2008, at 23:30:52
Hi Babblers -
I've been lurking on this board for a few months, and I am SO grateful that you are all here. I started therapy for the first time in November, and I've been going twice a week (three times a couple of times) since then. I'm FINALLY starting to trust my T....I think!!
So, I have therapy tomorrow, and, as usual, I'm not sure what's the most *important* thing to talk about. For the first month of therapy, we mainly talked about how hard it was for me to even be there (having spent 30+ years being "independent" and "taking care of myself"). Over the next couple of months, I pretty much spilled my guts with a laundry list of my "secrets" - just "this happened to me, this happened to me, this other thing happened to me" - without really delving into any associated feelings (actually not feeling feelings is one of the reasons I'm in therapy). I think I was trying to get it all out, quickly, while he was still listening. There's A LOT there that I'm sure we'll have to return to eventually.
Last week, I saw him three times, and it felt like a "turning point" - we talked about nothing but what was happening there in the room - our therapy relationship, my giant laundry list of fears related to therapy, etc. It was good, and felt right. I felt like my trust in him went WAY up. We didn't talk about my history at all - just how I was feeling right then - and hey! I finally felt some feelings!
So, I have therapy tomorrow. I was planning all weekend on going in and picking up where we left off last week, especially because I started feeling the dreaded attraction to my therapist over the weekend, and that brought up a lot of issues. But tonight, I was reading a novel that TOTALLY triggered all of my PTSD stuff, and now here I am, up in the middle of the night, really anxious and dealing with that.
SOOOO, to get to my question. How do you decide what to bring up in therapy? Both topics seem really important. Is it more important to talk about what's happening in therapy itself....or to talk about this triggery stuff from the past?
I'm up way too late and I'm tired and confused.
poster:earthmama
thread:815860
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20080226/msgs/815860.html