berryfines

I have started going to therapy with a woman who specializes in ACOA's and recovery. I really like her, I really like working through all my issues but every week in the days leading up to my appointment I still have major anxiety and nervousness about going to my appointment. I have to convince myself the day before that I can't skip it, that I must go.

Does anyone else have this problem? Even though I am feeling better and know it's working sometimes I really have to push myself to go.

miamifella

I think that good therapy is often uncomfortable--especially in the beginning. I think everyone has been at the point where they did not want to go to their appointment....especially if the therapy is working.

This might be a great thing to talk about in your sessions.

AnybodyNobody

In the past when I was in therapy I felt this way too, even though I was getting a lot out of going and really liked my therapist. I would feel anxiety building the day before a session and even start planning scripts in my head for what I should say. I think for me anyway it was part of the ACOA traits - It was scary and unfamiliar to be vulnerable and opening up to my feelings so I would feel anxious that I would do or say something to disappoint him, and then try to manage that anxiety by trying to control the situation (in my mind) by having the "right" things to talk about.

Good for you for going and I'm so glad you found someone who specializes in ACOA issues!

tromboneliness

That's normal -- it's the main reason a lot of therapists make you pay for the appointment unless you cancel 72 hours ahead!

I used to go to a therapist every Tuesday morning -- it would stir up so much stuff that basically, I got no work done on Tuesdays, because I spent the rest of the day brain-spinning at my desk. The guy was helpful, but not good for my productivity!

T

NWGRITS

Getting to therapy and meetings is easily half of my recovery battle. I know I need them, and I know I have to just get up and go. And yet I'm rarely ever happily bouncing out the door. Mr. Grits is normally pushing me out, telling me I can't come back until I'm less squirrelly. He knows that I will totally derail if I don't stick to my stuff.

thotful

When I first went to counseling several years ago, I felt filled with shame. I didn't know that's how I felt at the time. I simply felt like it was really wrong somehow to go. Something in my head said something was wrong with me.

I believe something completely different now. I need counseling for a safe-haven to talk to someone who has the outside view, no agenda, and lots of expertise. I no longer feel shame when going. I actually can't wait till my next meeting.

I did try a couple counselors here and there - there's one in particular that fit me the best, so I keep going to him.

seasaw

berryfines - I experience that, too. I get to feeling too 'busy' or 'tired' or whatever. We often just don't want to face and deal with our demons. We've learned that it's safer to bottle them up and keep ourselves occupied doing anything other than dealing with our crap - when really, the opposite is true.

HOWEVER, I am finding that I can tip too far the other way - too many meetings, self-help books, hours spent on forums (), and trips to the therapist working on Big stuff and I sink into a deeper depression because most of my week has been spent thinking about how my mom never loved me (enough) and how effed up I am because of it.

Balance, balance, balance. Therapy, therapy, therapy.

MikeH

Seesaw: Thank You! There's a lot of truth for me in this statement... You've said in a few short lines what it takes me "forever" to say...

seasaw

No problem the mind builds up poweful defenses against things it has come to see as 'dangerous' - so much so that we can experience somatic responses when we are asked to confront things that make us anxious. For example, feeling suddenly sleepy when something stressful happens. It's a big crazy world out there! practicing compassion towards myself is a powerful thing that has helped me with this.

happybeingme

Seesaw- what you just wrote reminded me I was watching a true crime show, they had a suspect in an interrogation room. The suspect was sleeping and the cop said the guilty ones always fall asleep.

seasaw

Interesting! All kinds of things make me sleepy

LadyOwl

You rock for saying this. When I've gone to therapy in the past, I've started to hate the track my brain gets in. Like, all week I think, OK, how am I feeling now, and what should I say in therapy about it, and where's that list of all the stuff that's piling on in my sad head?

I have such a conflicted view of therapy. For the reasons above (plus what you all have said) and because:

1. my alcoholic mother is (well, retired now, so, was) a marriage and family therapist and, not to play Blame the Parents all the live-long day, but, she's a huge reason why I need sit down and spill my guts to a professional
   
2. when my dad died unexpectedly when I was around 19, I started to go to help with the grief, and after a few months my therapist took a leave of absence (which did cruddy things for my abandonment issues)
   
3. I totally value the idea of the objective party who can give me new perspective, but, like seasaw said, I get stuck in all that analyzing and focusing and working on myself
   
4. I'm also incredibly hard on myself and deep down I (irrationally) think that I should be able to fix myself

My acupuncturist, who actually used to be an addiction counselor and is a very cool guy, told me yesterday that I could just go for one visit. Like, I didn't have to think of it as signing up for the full commitment of weekly sessions and endless months of talking, talking, talking. Just one visit to check someone out and see if she fits with me. I'm chewing on the idea.

seasaw

Ladyowl - my mom is (well, was) a shrink too! A psychiatrist. "Now tell me about your relationship with your mother?" Hahaha.

LadyOwl

Oh, seasaw. Let's hug now!

I have heard that mental health professionals' kids can be the most messed up, but I thought that was something everyone just said that to be jerky. Ha. And what's the scale we're going by? Anyway ... it's not quite as ironic as if she specialized in addiction, but, I mean, marriage and family therapy? Really? I'm in a much better mood than when I posted last, so now I'm just laughing.

I'm really opening up to the idea of going for some therapy, like, not committing to years and years of rehashing old wounds and dwelling on the past, but going for some short-term stuff. Because our whole family is really in crisis mode right now, and getting some help from a pro seems like a no-brainer. I'm stubborn but I'm also somehow coming around to these wacky ideas.

MikeH

When I first started with my therapist 9 years ago, I told him that every Therapist that I knew had come from a seriously-dysfunctional family. He assured me that his wasn't.

After getting to know each other over the years (and I was referred to him by my sister/therapist: they've worked together at church), he's essentially confirmed my theory... :-)

seasaw

Haha LadyOwl. *hug* Comrades! Yeah, people always asked if my mom was always analyzing me. My mom's specialties were OCD and child trauma (speaking to her own experience) and later addiction, which was a predictor of her own experience!! Poor woman.

You know, people oftentimes go into the healing arts because they want to be able to heal themselves or understand their own injuries, and I definitely get impatient with therapists who seem like they don't understand what I'm talking about, and some depths you can't understand unless you've plumbed them yourself. So yeah tons of therapists come from dysfunctional personal backgrounds but I've definitely come to see that that goes for just about everybody!

Having a shrink for a mom didn't actually set me up to be skeptical about therapy - in fact I grew up wondering, if she was so good at what she did (she was well-respected, always giving talks etc), and believed in it, why she couldn't apply her professional beliefs to herself and get HERSELF in therapy. But doctors are the worst patients. As an young adult, there were a couple short periods when I went conditionally NC - telling her I wouldn't talk to her unless she was talking to a therapist (because she would treat ME like her therapist, and her best friend, and...). When your car breaks down you take it to a mechanic, right?

Therapy has been great for me. During my great personal depression of 2004 it saved my life; having a smart shrink who you can relate to, trust, and has good ideas and practices a modality that works for you can change your life in a wonderful way. But it's like finding a good professor in college. Luck is involved.

tromboneliness

Heh... so a few months ago, my psychiatrist (very old-school, though, so he did talking therapy as well as write 'scrips) retired on me!

Of course, he was 83 years old, so I can't say he hadn't earned it! He'd been treating my Mom since before I was born... and I have an AARP card!

Nonetheless, there is that sense of having been abandoned again...



T

LadyOwl

Thank you for all of this. I know a lot of it on an intellectual level but have had a hard time applying it to myself and my situation. I think for a long time I put my mom on a pedestal (feels so weird to type that) and somehow convinced myself that she didn't fit in with those healers who need healing.

I submitted a contact form to a therapy place I got a referral for from my acupuncturist. I even used excerpts from forum posts! I am really struggling right now and am at the same time feeling a lot of personal growth. It was a huge step for me to submit that contact form. Hooray for self-care!

Northwest side note: I went to Evergreen and lived in Seattle for a little more than 10 years (left in 2010). High fives!

seasaw

Oh cool, good for you, that's great. If I took anything away from being my mother's daughter, it was a lesson in what not to do - to ignore all available evidence, information, and knowledge and ignore the need for self-care. Talk about self-sabotage. Self-care begets all other care. It's amazing how much we can intellectually KNOW and not apply to our own lives. Let the circle be broken! I can SAY that I've figured that out and still feel guilty for taking care of myself... working on it!

And GUESS WHAT we (my family) are from Chicago. I just ended up in Seattle because.. Well lol because my mom is nuts and lied to me and tricked me. Hahaha. It's way too dark and rainy here in Seattle.

berryfines, thank you, sorry we kind of derailed your thread, maybe there was something in it for you!!

Aellyce

Hi guys.

Not ACOA here but I just posted a bit about my experience with therapy on this thread, which originally addressed somewhat similar issues as some posts in this one:
http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...obligated.html

I have certainly experienced a whole range of diverse emotions with regard to therapy in the past >year, and especially recently (like I describe in my post in the linked thread). It goes all over the map from anxiety and fear, elation and sometimes euphoria, frustration, occasional dark feelings, sometimes intense attachment other times discomfort that I've become so attached to it, sometimes to the level of an obsession... but what I can say without doubt is that the benefits override the cost (both emotionally and financially) by far for me.

I think what probably often happens for people who have had difficult childhoods due to conflicts and lack of connection in the family is that similar experiences surface in the context of the therapeutic relationship, including the accompanying emotions around it. The extent to which therapists use this part of the relationship with the patient, and how much they choose to directly work with this information, varies between approaches and depending on each therapist's theoretical orientation and personal preference. I love working with this kind of content and with someone who is really skilled, interested, and open enough for it (as it's usually not a one-way thing). My current therapist is truly excellent in this area, so he gets a lot of it from me because I feel quite comfortable working with that projected stuff, and increasingly so with someone who has his level of interest, openness, and expertise. I also like very much that he seems naturally good at this and at connecting with me in many different ways, some of which are completely non-verbal. Similarly to what I suggested above about the influence of early life experiences and relationship with our caretakers, I don't see why therapists would be exempt from such influences. They get extensive training in how to handle these things, but that does not mean they become completely free from the effects of their own life experiences, that is just not realistically possible in my opinion. And yes I think it's true that often people are drawn to this profession driven by the curiosity to understand their own problems and possibly "fix" them... I know first hand because I work in mental health-related area myself (and the primary drive was just what I said) and have met many psychiatrists and psychologists. I often see the motivation just like that of an artist's who likes a certain kind of art and decides to choose it as their own way of expression as well. How good they will be at it is a different question.

What I would always suggest to everyone about finding a mental health professional and especially a therapist is to look for interpersonal compatibility between them and ourselves. I think some of us have a better intuitive sense for this than others but, in any case, I think it's best to work with someone that we appreciate as a person, I would say this even for shorter term, more focused approaches such as CBT, even though it's sometimes said the interpersonal interface matters less in those. To me, I can't imagine being in therapy with someone I do not respect personally and value their opinions highly. I think the point is often that we need to put some faith in it and trust that they know what's best for us even when we are lost, and they are able to take the responsibility for it.