Conflict

So I went to the extra session with the therapist lady. It was fine, but not good. I am not nearly as articulate as our dear “host” (hate that word, but I can’t think of anything better right now), so I am pretty sure I did more damage than good to the therapeutic relationship. I’m not sure she figured out she was talking to a different part until the end, so she probably was confused as fuck and super annoyed at my inherent resistance and basic lack of verbal communication skills.

But I did talk. Well, I tried to talk anyway. I told her that there are just always so many things I could say, so it’s hard to know where to begin. Plus there has been a whole lot of regulations put on what I’m allowed to say throughout my life and let’s just say people historically have not responded very well to the shit I have to share. Among other delightful things, I’ve been called a liar, manipulative, crazy, psychotic, delusional, attention-seeking, and a plain old “spoiled brat” by a variety of mental health professionals, family members, and other random assholes. So I tend to just freeze up. I am terrified of saying the wrong thing or of being accused of any of the aforementioned undesirable character traits.

Plus it was just a hella distressing time. The body is tired as fuck. We aren’t sleeping well. We barely eat. Our stress level is impressively high. It’s hard to form basic sentences while fronting sometimes. Add to that all of the input (read: arguments) I get from the others and it’s just constant head chaos. I don’t know how the host even does it all damn day. We don’t generally get along, but I admire her ability to run this show as well as she does. Kudos.

Then there was a point where shit just got intense. This lady made a comment that made me feel like maybe she thought I was stupid (HUGE trigger for me), so I laughed and said “of course I know that!” Except, then she said she felt a certain way about me laughing at her and she asked if perhaps the way I react to people contributes to my feelings of disconnection from the world. What the fuck? I did NOT like the way this was going. I (of course) started cognitively deteriorating and imagined that she was blaming me for the way people have treated me and especially for Zooey’s abandonment. My brain was reeling. No bueno.

So it was basically all downhill from there. I couldn’t put two words together to save my life. Eventually she gave me the “10 minute warning”, which she has never done while the host was present, so then I got all sensitive and offended that she was freaking out that I wouldn’t leave her office on time (another trigger related to Zooey). So I literally said “Omg, don’t freak out, I’m gonna leave your office on time!” And she was all “I’m not freaking out, but obviously something I just said really upset you.” And then I just started crying so I didn’t punch walls. Ugh. Then she started talking about how there was some conflict in the session and that it was important for us to talk about all of the things that come up while we’re in that space (omg, kill me now). At least time was up.

As I was leaving, though, she asked, “Is there anything else you want to say to me before you go?” and I just said “It was very nice to meet you.” She looked only mildly taken aback and quickly responded, “It was nice to meet you, too.” So…there’s that. Cat is officially out of the bag, yo!

I don’t know how I feel about this. I came home and took a 4 hour nap just to NOT have to deal with it. I feel slightly better now that I’ve rested. Plus the nerds of the system got to spend a few hours studying, so that helped settle some stress. Except: wow, boring.

I guess the point of therapy is to help identify the patterns that keep you stuck in destructive or painful behaviors/thoughts/feelings. She wasn’t wrong to call me out on laughing at her, but nothing about the experience made me feel safe to engage with her about that interaction. But maybe that’s okay. She says we can go slow and build trust gradually. I like the idea of that….but I’m just sorta like: what am I supposed to do in the meantime?

Cuz lemme tell you, this is a lot of heavy shit to hold onto by my damn self.

-Julia