Posted by Daisym on May 2, 2008, at 22:26:03
While on vacation, I was injured. It was serious enough to put a pretty big damper on things and I'm likely to need surgery later this month. The pain isn't the issue for me. It is the loss of control and feeling so conspicuous - people keep asking me if I'm OK and want to help. This should be a good thing, but I hate, hate, hate it. I'm sure this is triggering lots of old feelings - being able to be invisible was so important. And I felt like such a burden - and needed to pretend everything was fine. Depression has descended like a thick fog and doesn't seem likely to lift soon.
I figured out that I hate what a fake I am. I hate going, "it's fine - really, I'll just make the best of it" - even though that is exactly what I did, after all, what else can you really do? And yet I hate when I show all the sad and angry feelings in therapy, even though those come from the real me. I can see that I'm making a choice to hide my real self from the world, but nothing is going to convince me that the world would ever want to know the real me and see the real feelings. But it is exhausting to work this hard to stay hidden and it is lonely. The conflict feels insurmountable.
To make it all worse, my therapist told me something really wonderful that is happening in his life so I really feel trapped in the fake place - I know I don't have to hide what I'm feeling from him but I feel like I should. I'm finding it hard to admit how deep the depression is and how fragile I feel. I don't want to add stress or be a pain to him right now even though I know I'm supposed to be honest about everything. Especially since I've made a big deal in the past about him trusting me with some personal stuff - telling him I can handle it and it won't get in the way of therapy. Here it is again - another huge conflict.
I want to duck therapy for the time being. But I don't know if this will make things worse. Really I just want to sleep forever and not deal with it.
poster:Daisym
thread:826923
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20080423/msgs/826923.html