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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 5 of 5. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Annabelle Smith on November 21, 2010, at 18:13:02
Thank you, Solstice, for your comment on the other post.
I came home yesterday for Thanksgiving holiday. I will be here for a week. Being home is so painful. It makes me more and more confused-- how to be, what to feel, how to love, what to do.
No one, especially my parents, know what is going on. I feel like they are even part of the problem. I come home to this little farmhouse-type home, where I have always lived, with all of its memories, and it aches in that empty place. Emptiness and absence. It are the same rooms and walls and floors where we used to love and be happy. Now, I feel hate and trapped and miserable.
I feel like I am living a lie here. Sometimes I feel like I am going crazy; other times, I think that maybe nothing is wrong with me. Usually, I just feel chaotic in the in between. I feel strange, like my own voice is reverberating back and forth in the inner recesses of my mind.
My parents love me too much. They have always been present for me; always encouraging and supporting. So, I don't know why I hate them right now. But I do. I wish they would take back some of their love, because I feel like it is strangling me. I love them more than anybody else, but sometimes I hate them with a fury. I need to get away from them and from my crazy family life. My mom is always worrying and blaming herself for everything. Around me over the past year, she either blames herself for the way I feel or she totally ignores and denies everything that I feel, telling me that I am fine and that everybody feels like this. When I ride with my parents in the van or do anything with them, I feel like I am a kid, not an adult. I feel trapped and don't know how to be.
When people look at me-- my parents, people at the church where I grew up (and visited this morning), professors, employers, "friends"-- they could never imagine that anything is wrong. If I told them what I really feel, they wouldn't believe me. They would tell me I am fine, just maybe a little depressed. Sometimes I feel like I need to do an action to prove that this chaos is real. But I think about the different actions and consider the consequences-- they are heavy, and I haven't been able to act yet. Maybe I am just too chicken; maybe my feelings aren't real.
I worry that my therapist doesn't even believe me. I think that's why it is so hard to talk in a session about anything that really matters-- because I feel so detached from it, and when I speak of it, I am afraid that the act of putting it into words will trivialize all that it contains and embodies for me, leadig to more unreality. I don't know if what I feel is real or not. All I know is that I feel chaotic and cannot communicate this in words to anyone.
I think that the chaos eternity in between my sessions is coming from an experience of something being unresolved. I leave most of my sessions feeling this unresolution, like what I wanted to say was not able to be said. Maybe even more so than idealization, this unresolution is the real source of chaos and longing. I won't have another session until nearly another 13 days. My therapist told me that I could call over the break if I had an emergency, but I will never be able to call him. I don't know what counts as an emergency. It feels like a constant crisis, and I don't know what counts as distress, what level is enough to call. He might mean it has to be on the brink of self-harm or suicide. If it is not there at the moment, then it is not worth talking about maybe.
I feel unentitled to feel the way that I do. Nothing has happened to me to warrant this, no particular event. But it is just here. I feel like a lie.
Posted by annierose on November 25, 2010, at 11:18:25
In reply to Home, posted by Annabelle Smith on November 21, 2010, at 18:13:02
Going home can be difficult for most people - even with the best of families. We tend to settle back into our childhood roles - whether or not we want to.
I really think you need to share all these feelings with your therapist. He can not help you with them unless he knows they exist. So all those feelings that feel unresolved will remain so unless you begin to assign words to them. It's hard - but the only way through is towards them.
And as I said before, you might ask your therapist if you can see him twice a week. It might help you with those intense feelings between sessions.
Your post was directed towards Solstice - but I thought you might want a reply. A lot of people are not on the boards over the holidays.
I hope you are able to enjoy your Thanksgiving dinner.
Posted by Annabelle Smith on November 25, 2010, at 16:13:53
In reply to Re: Home, posted by annierose on November 25, 2010, at 11:18:25
Thanks, Annierose for your response.
I just feel so exhausted and overwhelmed.
Thanks for your suggestion, but I could never see my therapist twice a week. I know that he was super busy when he worked me back into his schedule for the first time last month. I feel like he did me a huge favor by making time for me initially. In addition to that, I only pay half of his usual fee on the sliding scale, so he is already giving me double kindness. I can't ask for me. Plus, I don't know that I could really afford two sessions, even at half-rate.
I swing back and forth between feeling totally dependent upon him to feeling like I will have to do this all by myself. The inbetween is so hard to work with.
I have been having problems with binging while home. I feel so out of control-- I have so much work due in the next 3 weeks: a 20-page research/term paper, a 8-page paper, other assignments, and many essays for applications. This is the I-want-to-check-out feeling. I feel like I can't make it; but food seems like the way out now. Binging on icing and ice cream and chocolate to be numb. But then the problems just come back worse.
Posted by annierose on November 26, 2010, at 9:35:47
In reply to Re: Home, posted by Annabelle Smith on November 25, 2010, at 16:13:53
these out of control impulses are the very type of feelings you do need to share with your therapist. they will not magically go away - although I wish often I had a magic wand to make it so. I got the impression from your previous posts you have all these feeling coming up (understandly so) but withhold sharing them with the very person who is best able to help you.
sometimes it is easier to bring in your writings - things you wrote here to share with him. I know how hard that is - to share our most vulnerable selves. But the reward is great.
Posted by Annabelle Smith on November 26, 2010, at 15:34:42
In reply to Re: Home, posted by annierose on November 26, 2010, at 9:35:47
>>"I got the impression from your previous posts you have all these feeling coming up (understandly so) but withhold sharing them with the very person who is best able to help you."
I think that is exactly what is happening. And I think this is where so much of the feeling of chaos is coming from-- on a deeper level, even when I am not exactly consciously aware, I know that I am doing this. It happens when I waste time in sessions by going silent, watching the clock, and just blanking and feeling detached.
Thanks, annierose
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