From 2009:
When my therapist and I started talking about the rape, I thought, "Great. In 6 weeks I'll be completely cured." Where I got this wacko idea, I don't know. Then I thought we would just deal with the rape...but we started looking at it in the immediate context of what was going on in my life in the months before and after, and suddenly more things began to make sense, such as why the older of my two rapists was able to gain my trust so quickly...why I was especially vulnerable to being set up...
As we processed the written account, my therapist would pick up on certain things I'd said in almost an offhand sort of way. He would see a significanse there that I didn't. So we would end up tugging on that piece of yarn, so to speak.
I started getting frustrated because I felt like we were taking detours. I had this whole plan in mind and then, in the middle of dealing with stuck point number whatever, we were suddenly talking about something completely unrelated to the rape...and I was reading books about this new thing, etc.
Now I'm beginning to see a pattern. I make some seemingly casual remark in the midst of a bunch of other stuff. My therapist says, "Wait, go back" and seems to think whatever I said needs to be looked at more carefully. I say, "Oh, that's nothing." He disagrees. I get defensive. Then I surprise myself by starting to panic. I realize that my mindreading therapist is trying to uncover something that seems to frightening for me to deal with. I insist, "We can't talk about this!" and either refuse to say why or come up with some excuse. (My latest is "Because you're a guy.") I become adamant that this is THE ONE THING I refuse to tell my therapist. In fact, I refuse to think about it. I'm angry at him for reminding me if whatever it is.
I go home. The panic builds. I can't stop thinking about the forbidden topic. I wrestle with myself over it. In extreme cases, I strongly consider quitting therapy. I feel like I'm going crazy. The pain is overwhelming. Finally I reach a point of such desperation where the need to tell the thing outweighs my fear of disclosing it. I drag myself to my next session, huddle on the couch trembling, hide my face, and force myself to talk about whatever it is that I've sworn to myself I would never talk about.
I am just beginning to see that some of the stuck points of my rape, the ones that I can't seem to work through, the ones that I least want to face, are somehow connected to something that happened years before. These "detours" really aren't. The more resistant I am to talk about something, the more important it is for me to bring it out in the light.
So I suppose my therapy seems somewhat freespirited in that regard. Sometimes it feels disjointed. But I'm realizing that the rape was not my only trauma, and that some strongly held faulty beliefs I've clung to all my life have made it really difficult to work through parts of the rape.
- Posted using BlogPress
