I have been in therapy for around six months and will have a hard stop in May. I don't believe that I've gotten a lot out of it and feel frustrated. What can I do to open up to my therapist and stop wasting everyone's time with superficial chatter? What can I do to salvage this course of treatment?
I originally signed up for therapy because I wanted to be sure I wasn't sabotaging my romantic relationships (I've been a serial monogamist and want to settle down). I also have some other struggles, mostly with perfectionism, aka, crippling performance anxiety in all areas of life, and just some bad coping mechanisms that I probably should work on in order to be productive and happy.
In the past, I have had periods of time when I've had poor mental health. I had a very destructive bout of depression for a couple years (2013-2015), but managed to claw my way out with the help of medication (which I then stopped taking in 2016) and a lot of focus, willpower, and luck. For the past couple months, I have gone back on medication and am generally feeling meh but more-or-less stable in my life. Stable job, good friendships, etc.
In 2015, during the period when I was really struggling, I did attempt therapy -- but it went terribly. I had maybe four sessions total, with three different therapists. The first therapist said she wasn't taking on new patients, the second therapist got into a screaming match with me during our first session and then was suspended by her practice, and the third therapist just didn't seem to "get" me at all or take my problems seriously (I was in my late twenties, but he kept comparing me to his teenage daughter). This is my first time in therapy since.
I like this current therapist, she's nice and we get along OK. But I treat our sessions like a hang-out with a friend and just chat. I don't lie to her, but I gloss over things in ways that are kind of misrepresentative, in the same ways that you would when trying to save face with a friend. I can see I'm doing it and maybe so can she, but I have a really hard time opening up to people and she is no exception, so I keep doing it anyway. I have never cried when around her and can't imagine doing so. A friend finally got on my case for blowing off my therapist whenever she wanted to talk about my childhood, so I did talk about my past with her for one session, but then last week, I caught myself blowing her off again when she brought it up. I know this is counterproductive.
I would like to open up to her because I think that it's such a waste to just chat with her like we're acquaintances meeting for coffee. But I just can't. I feel like I'm always casting around trying to figure out where we're going with this, what I'm even supposed to be saying or thinking or feeling or how I'm supposed to be changing/growing. When I ask her directly for advice, she just says really banal things, like that I should try to live in the moment.
She seems to want me to guide these sessions, but I have no idea where or how I'm supposed to be guiding them. I brought it up at one point that I was worried about the timeline (there's going to be a hard stop in May no matter what) and she seemed to think that I was criticizing her pace and said that maybe I wanted a harsher but faster and more CBT-oriented approach? But I don't want things to be harsher in there! I already dissemble too much out of wimpiness. So I just dropped it and we moved on. It's possible that she's steering things, but in a subtle way that I'm not picking up on. And I don't want to control our sessions because I don't know what I would even do with that control and because she clearly thinks that I want to control too much in my life generally (and that's probably true). The thing is that I feel like nobody is in control of them, and that makes me feel pretty confused and frustrated.
What really shook me (and this is going to sound so ridiculous) is when I watched an episode of Brooklyn 99 and Jake said "Why learn to grow when you can fix the past? This is exactly why I don't need therapy." It really struck a chord because I'm plagued by a lot of regret and remorse that I can't let go of, and I am always coming up with ways to fix things or make up for things or compensate for or even just hide things. And those "hopes" mix in with all this fear of failure and performance anxiety until I'm freaking out that I'm going to screw things up again this time (except worse) and so I just freeze and/or withdraw. This happens with work, this happens with relationships, everything. So when I heard that line in Brooklyn 99, I thought, I don't want to keep trying to fix the past! I want to grow! But I don't know how on my own, and I feel like therapy isn't helping. Or even addressing any of this stuff.
Also, I think a huge hindrance in "the therapeutic relationship" is that I apparently don't know how to express myself in general, because people consistently assume that I don't feel things, even when I'm feeling things very strongly and really trying to express those feelings. This therapist makes the same assumption, that I'm cold-hearted or that problems/situations are not as serious as they are. It's very frustrating, and honestly pretty painful, but I don't know how to be more expressive than this.
At first, she was really confident that she'd be able to help me make my life better, like I'd be leaving therapy with a better job and a boyfriend and basically a great life. Of course that hasn't happened, I'm in my same boring job and still single and in altogether the same state I was in in September, except that I've gotten even lazier about pursing my goals and am slightly more mellow due to medication. It's just been such a waste and I feel like it's been a failure. I'm trying to salvage it. And like I said, I want to open up to her, I want to do my part. But how do I do that? How do I use therapy to actually grow, instead of wasting everybody's time?
Very concrete answers about things I should remind myself of or phrases/aphorisms that are helpful are great as well as more experiential or abstract answers. Whatever works. |
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