Saturday, Apr. 16, 2022 - 10:29 am.
I started therapy on Wednesday. It’s online so it feels like I’m cheating a bit, but at the same time it is very convenient. I’ve been saying I should go to therapy for maybe about 20 years now and I’m glad it’s finally happening.
The catalyst to go is the adoption process. The adoption unit sent us (Andrew and me, individually) to work on a few things related to emotional availability for a child with a complex history. My motive is being too rational when I need to respond from an emotional place.
I am emotional, very much. The evaluation showed that I’m very empathetic, but I freeze, I get overwhelmed by emotion and I respond intellectually or just not at all. That is correct.
I liked my therapist. She seemed to understand what was going on as much as, and even a bit more than me. The possibility of trauma surfaced. The disconnection with my own body, and the ways it turns against me due to everything that’s wrong with it. The suspicion of sexual abuse, of a big thing that happened or many little things that have accumulated over time, most of which are remembered by my body but not by me.
I’m relieved to look into all this at last, though I’m also very scared of what might come up. My therapist is a humanist, on the somatic and mindfulness side. I didn’t know this was her focus when I logged on for the first session, but it’s a happy finding. Responding from the intellect has served a purpose at some points in my life, but now I need to hear from my guts.
She asked, very emphatically, if I was well. And I am, but I'm not. That’s always been the problem, maybe? I’m never fully well and never fully ill. The times I’ve been devastated and heartbroken I’ve also been laughing and discovering fun things. I suppose it can get confusing, but that’s exactly what’s happened.
Most of all, I hope I can learn to speak. I have so much turmoil about some things in my relationship with Andrew, little things about our domestic life, but as I said above, they accumulate over time. I keep them to myself because I just don’t dare to bring them up. And then I get excessively angry over an unrelated tiny thing, he sees that and gets annoyed because I know it looks like I’m blowing everything out of proportion.
I shouldn’t blow up at these tiny things. I certainly shouldn’t blow up at him, because it's not that he's done something wrong. But I should speak, speak instead of crying myself to sleep silently like I did last night, over stuff that fixed itself in the morning.
Not a very cheerful entry this one, but a very honest one. It's hopefully the start of an improved version of myself.