A few months ago, I came very close to quitting therapy. I just couldn't handle the fact that I had disclosed my deepest darkest secret to my therapist. I wanted to run away. Somehow I managed to stay, and we worked through it.
Recently I remembered something else, which I disclosed during my session last Wednesday. That was horrible enough. But Randy asked me to journal about what I had disclosed. I tried. I sort of succeeded, although there are parts that I could not write about. Writing about it --- just thinking about it --- made me want to throw up. Sometimes I found myself actually gagging.
So I wrote in my paper journal:
OK. I'm done. There is no way in hell I can read any of this to Randy. I can't talk about it. I wish I hadn't said anything. This is way too awful. I don't see the point. I don't want to do this any more. I want to go home and get drunk. Want to have angry, semi-rough, meaningless sex that is purely physical. Then I want to drink some more. Then I want to do the same thing again tomorrow and the next day, until all this doesn't seem so fresh and raw and painful, until I can just stop thinking about it.
Fuck therapy. This time I really don't think I can go back.
Somehow I managed to avoid the drinking and meaningless sex that night. But the next morning I wrote in my journal:
I decided that I was going to write Randy a letter, thank him for all his help, and then tell him I'd hit a wall --- reached the end of what I felt I could work through.
Then I wrote about what I thought was every possible thing we could talk about in our next session: this new disclosure, the stuck point journaling we're working through, the next two stuck points on my list, etc. I felt strongly that I simply could not handle any of those things, that I had reached the end. I actually started writing my "Dear Therapist" letter in my mind. But then I began to feel conflicted about that, so I wrote:
What am I going to do? Part of me wants to write that letter, but Randy won't let it go at that, and I wouldn't feel right about ignoring his calls.
Maybe I should just sit in his office and tell him face to face that I am way too scared to go on. And then cry my eyes out.
So that's what I'm going to do. Maybe not the crying my eyes out part... But I want to see this through. I've invested way too much time, effort, pain, money, etc. in therapy and I don't want to run away now, just because I feel scared, paralyzed, and stuck.
Randy and I have worked through difficult things before. One of my previous disclosures was so difficult that I couldn't bring myself to do more than hint at it, and he had to ask me questions to find out what had really happened. It was kind of like an extremely painful, therapy version of 20 questions. I've fallen apart during sessions. I've said things that I felt I was incapable of admitting to another person. I've sat curled up in a tight ball, session after session, face hidden, shaking and trembling. I've told Randy things, and done things, that I was so sure would make him gasp and say, "This is more than I can handle! I need to refer you to Dr. Supertherapist, who takes only the most disturbed and deranged clients, although you may be beyond even his capabilities. Perhaps a lengthy stay --- a few years or decades --- in a mental institution might help." Once I was convinced that something I told him would make him so recoil in disgust that he would throw me out of his office or, at the very least, clamp his hands over his ears and exclaim, "Never have I heard such vile filth! I really think you are beyond help!"
OK, so he doesn't actually talk like that. But the point is, when I have most feared that he would react strongly, decide I was too far gone for him to help, suggest I check myself into a mental hospital, or just look at me with disgust, he has never done any of that.
All those sessions that I thought I could not drag myself into his office for, the ones that I thought were the final thing that would make me snap and lose my mind completely --- I've survived them all. So I think I'll survive this too. Somehow.
And I did.
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