You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink”
Terry Pratchett
I'm struggling to write about a lot of my therapy sessions, which is ludicrous given that I started this blog so I would have a place to air some of the things I was finding confusing or difficult.
I guess the thing I am finding most difficult at the moment is my fear of giving myself an inch... Of allowing myself the luxury of being heard an understood.
I'm caught between denial and the desire to deny myself. It's a hard place to be stuck and there's not a lot of space to manouevre.
OK. So. Who doesn't have an issue with trust? I mean, it's a hard thing to trust someone. Especially a therapist.
And that's the problem.
I don't trust her. I don't think I even WANT to trust her.
I explained to her that I was utterly ashamed at the me who she saw. It's not the 'me' that everyone else sees. It's a miserable and introspective, selfish and hopeless me.
I was DREADING going to therapy on Friday because it feels like such a RISK to be seen like this.
I explained it to her saying that I saw it as me having two options.
I either go and present myself to her as honestly as I am trying to... and in doing so, I am laid wide open to the horrible fear that she will be disgusted with me for my negativity, disgusted by my weakness, just disgusted by ME. OR I go and chat about lighthearted things and give her my 'outside' part, pragmatic, logical, competent, cynical and humourous. However, in doing this, I leave her room in a state of inner agony because I have sat close enough to relief to touch it but in keeping with denying myself anything good, I have chosen to walk away with desperation.
She said that put her in a double bind.
I said that put ME in a double bind.
I have bound both of us.
She said that she knew she couldn't soothe me at the moment.
Then she tried anyway and started saying that therapy has been around for so long because it works and that we could make the suffering go and ... and then she said other stuff and my mind went far away and I saw those bloody grey patches if I looked up. (I need to explain the mind thing, but that is another post).
I gripped the cushion and concentrated on the bones in knuckles,imagining them going through her glass window. ( I realise I sound a little crazy here but...)
In my whole body all I could hear was me screaming, "You're going to hurt me. You are going to hurt me".
I can't get past this. She is going to hurt me. She is going to get sick and tired of me. She is going to get horribly impatient and tell me to get over it. To get a grip. Tell me that I have to grow up. Tell me that I am being pathetic.
I want to leave her before she does that.
If I let her kindness touch me then I am just weakening my defences, and if I allow that for a second, BANG! She'll sock it to me and it will finish me off.
I am so stupidly afraid of her.
I explained some of this and she talked about transference.
I am uncertain and my mind is unclear.
I can't trust her not to destroy me. How can this ever work? (Answers on a postcard to...)
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