Posted by littleone on November 1, 2004, at 0:52:49
In reply to do you ever write to your therapist?, posted by Froso on October 27, 2004, at 7:53:31
>> The last few months I found a way to communicate with my therapist, to overcome my embarrassment. I write to her, pages of thoughts and feelings and memories, or film scripts which narrate my life, childhood etc.
Do I write to my T? Do I ever!!!
I went to one T for a year without even realising that writing was an option. I am a very quiet and withdrawn person. If I do talk, it is not about me, ie the internal me, just superficial stuff. Even after a year with this T, I had gotten nowhere. I still couldn't even tell him what I had done on my weekend. One day during my bad spells, I wrote him a letter and mailed it (couldn't even hand it to him). He thanked me for it and talked a bit about it, but he never specifically said that he would like me to write again. I ended up leaving him not long after that.
Then I started seeing my current T. When he realised I wasn't exactly a chatterbox (his wording :) ), he specifically asked me to write out pages and pages for him. I go twice a week, so a lot of my spare time is spent writing to him. I really believe that if he hadn't have done this, he'd still have no idea about what makes me tick.
Though he does get up my nose now and then when he tries to prove he cares about me by saying that my other T's haven't tried to get to know me as much as what he has (ie they didn't ask me to write when talking wasn't working). Geez, just because they get an F from me, doesn't mean that I'm automatically giving him a AAA+. Though I do love him tremendously, so he must be doing something right :)
It's gotten a bit easier after 6 months of this. I can now pretty much just free associate on paper (or keyboard) as long as I can keep the ideas of writing and of actually handing over the notes separate. If I thought about him reading what I was writing, there is no way I could give it to him. Mind you, I do write some really hairy stuff in code. It's a pretty simple code, but it seems to have him stumped. I keep telling him to give it to his secretary to decipher, but he can't understand why she would get it when his obviously brilliant mind can't crack it. I keep telling him it's because she's not a shrink. She wouldn't try to analyse it or interpret it. She'd just spot the code.
> And suddenly I felt close to her
Yes! Even though it sometimes feels like I'm doing correspondance therapy and I'm sure I'm missing a lot by writing instead of talking, it still feels wonderful to have someone understand me when no one else has. Can't help but feel close to him. That is, when I'm not beating him over the head for not cracking the kiddy code :)
> Lately I'm not writing as I've been feeling suicidal and I haven't even told her about that as I don't want her to see I need her so much or that I long for her full attention.
I really hope you can share this with her. Someone here (sorry, but I've forgotten who) mentioned recently how the secrecy around s can really make it much more powerful than what it really is. By talking about it, it helps a lot. I've had the exact same problems you have and I wouldn't be here now if I hadn't of written to my T about them. With my prior T, I wrote him an anomynous letter. But he still knew it was from me from the handwriting and little things that were mentioned (a hobby I do, the area I live in, a mention of the accident). Though I certainly wouldn't recommend this approach unless you really couldn't communicate any other way. Plus it would be a terrible approach if you were right on the edge. Just in case your T couldn't pick the sender!
Also, I have a real aversion to the s word (and the k word), so when I write about it, I say "offing myself" which kind of sounds jokey and minimising and I know it's not giving credit to the seriousness of the issue, but it works for me.
poster:littleone
thread:407824
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20041026/msgs/409886.html