Posted by Dinah on March 11, 2004, at 9:44:05
In reply to In a Quandary (disjointed grumbling), posted by mair on March 10, 2004, at 22:15:26
Mair, it's seemed to me that you've made large leaps in therapy in the past several months. That you're trusting your therapist more than you ever thought you would. So that while it may feel you're not accomplishing anything, from a third person's vantage point you most definitely are.
Perhaps you are like me in that you make haste slowly. And that it's better to concentrate on the little gains than worry about what you haven't yet accomplished. And realize that since you're so much farther along now than you were months ago, in a few months more you'll be even further along.
But if you do feel like you need to speed things up, writing down what you really feel and giving it to your therapist to read worked a lot for me. Including giving him posts from here. Gardenergirl's post got us past a roadblock that could have taken months without her help.
And if you do decide that it's time to quit, that therapy isn't helping you, then you have absolutely nothing to lose in terms of your therapist. Before you leave, knowing that you won't see her anymore, maybe you could open up and say all the things that you've kept hidden.
Really, what's the worst that can happen. I feel like I've gotten to know your therapist sort of third hand, and she sounds as if she genuinely cares about you. Are you afraid of losing that if you're open with her? You won't. You won't burst into flames from embarassment either. If you're afraid of the anger inside, I've been there. Nothing bad has happened to anyone because of my openness with my therapist.
Maybe you could start by figuring out what you're not saying. Then why you're not saying it. Then analyzing whether your reluctance to speak has a rational basis. Then discussing your reluctance with your therapist. I get the impression from your post that it's not so much that you feel confident you're ready to terminate as that you feel frustrated. Frustrated is a pretty reasonable feeling in therapy.
Altogether I think Fallsfall's post makes a whole lot of sense. More than mine probably. :)
And perhaps I'm biased pro-therapy. I really like that I feel there isn't anything I can't work out with my therapist, given enough time and patience at least.
poster:Dinah
thread:323114
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040308/msgs/323198.html