Posted by finelinebob on May 14, 2004, at 14:40:54
In reply to issues with talking in sessions..., posted by B2chica on May 14, 2004, at 12:40:30
> last T session was Real tough for me. I finally danced around the actual topics i want to talk about with my T. I'm still not close to talking about them but i was able to admit that their there. i told him that i rationalize myself out of talking about them.
> Bad news is i've still been cutting and i'm beginning to wonder if i'll ever stop...Part of why I injure myself at times has a lot to do with that physical pain drowning out the emotional pain. Besides the endorphins that physical pain apparently releases, I think I get a lot of psychological relief as well. With such powerful "rewards" kicking in, I think I can understand a little better why I respond to my most intense emotional pains with self-injury -- the net effect, psychologically, of that response is "positive".
B2chica, I've found that I've gone through four different stages in my therapy. First, I talked about what I **wanted** to talk about. Second, I began talking about what I **needed** to talk about. Next, once I really had a better understanding of myself and had developed a great deal of trust in my T, I started talking about what I **didn't want** to talk about. These days, some of the things that come up are things so painful, I wouldn't even let myself admit to or acknowledge them -- those eureka! sorts of moments when you realize just how well you've pulled the wool over your own eyes for so long.
Talking about things I don't want to talk about makes part of me very angry. Doing so is sort of a betrayal of me by me, and I can get pretty self-abusive about that betrayal. Hitting that fourth level -- actually revealing to someone else, no matter how much I trust her, something I felt it necessary to hide from myself -- well, my anger and self-abuse know no bounds. It took, I dunno ... a year? more? for me to learn how to speak when I activate that anger and self-loathing. I literally mean "speak" -- I would think the words, but my jaw wouldn't move, no air would come out of my lungs, nothing.
I don't know if you feel any resonance with any of this, but I just wanted to share that and say I've been in a similar place. "Dancing around the topics" ... before I learned to confront this "censor" inside of me and get the better of him, I had this metaphor or "vision" I used to explain how it felt to my T: I saw myself out in the desert somewhere at night, in a small clearing and surrounded by these huge boulders, dancing around a huge bonfire. I always felt that my "answers" were in the fire, but I could never get myself to turn around and look at it -- I was always looking instead at the shadows my dance would cast upon the boulders.
If this is *at all* familiar, then I think you are sooooooooo very close to making a breakthrough for yourself. Being able to stop the dance and face the part of you calling the steps is so hard, but once you succeed it can get easier and easier the more you do it. For me, it's still always a very hard thing to do, but I don't have "lockjaw" for 40 minutes trying to say one word anymore ... or for even 5 minutes. 1 minute, sure. 2 on occasion. But not 5, definitely not 5! And I still get incredibly angry with myself, but I can wrestle with that part of me and win. The more I take control back from that part of me, the less I feel I need to hurt myself.
hth, and hang in there!!
flb
poster:finelinebob
thread:346814
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040512/msgs/346853.html