May 7, 2013
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Tired of Therapy
You know, I am honestly just plain tired of my cognitive behavior therapy sessions. I know it’s been a while since I talked about them, but the past few have left me feeling very very negative. My next appointment is Thursday morning and I am planning on letting my doctor know that I am done with them. For those of you who can’t recall, they started out with the purpose of helping me get over my issues with dogs, separation anxiety and social anxiety.
Dogs? I still don’t want them around, but if they it’s not a big deal.
Separation Anxiety? I just plain do not get a chance to work on this enough to justify going week or biweekly. My next opportunity isn’t until July 1st and that will be an overload of four to five days by myself. When you need to learn how to swim, jumping off the 30 foot high dive isn’t exactly the best idea.
Social Anxiety? When my Uncle died a couple months ago I saw firsthand what would be required of me at a funeral. Right now weddings and funerals are out. But you know what I’ve learned through my CBT? It’s that not wanting to go to weddings does not make me a bad person. There is no such thing as a bad person. Others might see me that way(Ahem, family), but I can’t control their perception. I can only control my own. So I no longer feel so guilty about not going to my brother’s wedding in 2011 and am no longer worried about not going to my other brother’s wedding whenever that comes around.
But you know what does worry me? The fact that my therapist and I have been on a tangent for the past month or so about me expressing anger. When I was abused as a kid, I figured it would be too embarassing to talk about so I kept it in. When my Dad left my family in the mid 90′s I was deeply deeply angry at him and his girlfriend/fiancee/wife but when I showed even a hint of anger at him, he basically told me I was wrong. Not misguided, wrong. I wasn’t allowed to express anger at him. That divorce threw my Mom into a deep depression and being deeply sensitive myself I never felt like I could get angry at her because her emotional state wasn’t her fault. Being that dumb kid I was I took my anger out on inantimate things like lego’s or would swear up a storm at a friend’s house(Sorry Brad). I just had all this anger inside of me and no one to turn to. It sucked.
Well I feel like the older I got the less and less likely it was for me to express anger. Instead I use my sense of humor as a defense mechanism. Rather than get angry at my family for parroting the latest political talking points, I’ll just make a joke, get a laugh, and then move on. I don’t know how to do anything else.
And I’m not sure I want to know how to do anything else. You’ve seen me post hearts scores? As happy as I get at perfect scores and high winning percentages, I get equally angry when the cards don’t go my way. I usually play by myself and get furious at bad moves by the other players. Well now that fury is carrying over into other areas of my life. I’m finding all kinds of reasons to be mad at my Dad, Mom, Brothers and sister in law and potential sister in law, stepmother, friends, potential girlfriends and all kinds of other people from various walks of life.
I don’t want to become an angry, bitter and/or hostile person overflowing with negativity. I liked who I was before last month. Now I don’t. So I plan to talk about this with my therapist and tell him that Thursday will be my final session.
Comments (8)
As someone who wants (wanted) to be a therapist, I struggle with what to say. I believe in the powers of therapy to guide one into healthier mental states. I don’t know much of your history, but it sounds like you have a very good reason to be angry. Anger is a part of the healing process. Since you buried it, it’s now coming to the surface, and leaking into everything. That’s completely natural and normal. But the thing is, now you have to figure out a healthy way to release the anger, instead of burying it again, where it may fester. Your therapist may have a different opinion, but this is what I see. It’s ultimately your decision, and I can’t tell you what to do..but I would try to stick with it, as hard as it is, and ride it out until your anger is released in a healthier way. I used to have a LOT of anger because of things that have happened to me..and I’ve found that talking with people helped me a lot, and now I feel a lot better about my past. It still makes me sad sometimes, but only because it IS sad, and no one should have to go through the things I went through as a kid.
Anyway..I’m not around Xanga much anymore, but I wish you the best of luck with whatever happens.
You have to get angry to heal.
I’m sorry to be blunt, but I’ve been here, and I’m still going through it, but I’m beyond the rage stage. If you let yourself be angry and actually work through to the real, root reasons for it, you will move past this stage.
I think that by posting this, you’re asking us to tell you to keep going. That’s what I’m telling you. There’s very little in life that is as important as real inner healing. Unfortunately, the ugly feelings are part of the process. You didn’t deserve what happened to you; you do deserve a chance to fully heal and become the person you were created to be.
If this therapist isn’t working for you, find something else. But please don’t stop.
What is the reason for stopping? Do you feel the anger is getting worse, therefore the therapy isn’t working? I think with all the things suppressed, the anger will get worse before it gets better. It will be uncomfortable and even make you angry, but i think those are the first steps to healing. I really hope you’ll reconsider your decision. It sounds like you have a made a lot of progress. If this is a giant hurdle to overcome, think how amazing it will feel once you have dealt with it. Anger can be debilitating. *hugs*
@crazy2love - @Pickwick12 - @ShamrockLover - Thank you. From the sounds of it maybe this part right here is the real therapy. The previous stop wasn’t all that difficult. I will tell him what I wrote above and keep going.
@crazy2love - @Pickwick12 - @ShamrockLover - I just got back from my appt 20 minutes ago. We talked about the anger, frustration, hostility and more. We’re pretty much bumping everything else aside for the time being to work on figuring out how to channel all of that properly. I did not cancel any future appointments. Thanks again.
@Shadowrunner81 - Great to hear. Thanks for letting us know. Keep fighting the good fight.
I’m glad you decided to keep going to your sessions.
When anger is repressed and covered up with something else, it’s always going to re-surface and in a way that’s much worse than it would have had you just allowed it to come out as you felt it. By allowing your emotions to come to you as they are in any given situation, they don’t grow to become behavioral problems later on. I’m still going through this. I used to feel intense rage on a daily basis, and like you I would be equally as happy when something would go my way, I felt like I was experiencing symptoms of being bi-polar.
Learning how to channel your emotions will be good for you. I do a lot of biking to channel my anger. I tried to channel it into exercise in a general sense but that didn’t work, I just became more frustrated that whatever I was doing wasn’t working. I had to find a specific sport that worked. Having a punching bag around wouldn’t hurt either, I think
I hope you keep us updated on your progress. Just by continuing with your therapy while you felt like giving up, you’ve already taken a big step. Proud of you
Fuck dogs. And dads.