We start on all the paperwork and get the financial stuff out of the way. She asks me if I can handle coming to see her once a week at first, which is ok with me. We go into when my first attack happened. I tell her about the restaurants, but that the "BIG ONE" didn't hit until years later at my sons school. She tries to find a connection and asks if I've ever had problems in school. I can only recall a few incidents. She writes them all down. She asked me if there had been other traumas in my childhood. I recall a few more things and again she puts it in her notes.
After talking some more with the therapist, she asked me about my perfectionism tendencies and why I felt I needed my husband close by all the time. She made me mad when she asked me if I enjoyed controlling my husband. But come to find out it was just a routine question to see if there was an underlying motive for my tendencies to constantly wanting to control every situation.
By the time I got done she had a big piece of paper full of notes that she put into my chart. I left her office pretty encouraged, thinking that with her I had gotten further in one session, than I had with my previous Therapist in 8 sessions.
Back home I felt really awkward once I started thinking about all that stuff from the past. I had tried to put all that behind me, but evidently it was still very much alive since I remembered it all so quickly and vividly.
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So first thing, after I got home, was to order the book through amazon.com, Earth's Biggest Bookstore.
On the way home I can hardly concentrate on anything but what has happened to me during that session. And even back home I'm still all torn up about it. Tears keep flowing without me being able to control myself. Laying in bed that night I'm really in a terrible state of mind. I keep thinking about that situation 24 years ago and how a parent can toss away their child, not just once, but again 5 years later and then again 2 more years later. I keep having to cry and feel like I'm totally losing my mind. Of course that brings on several panic attacks. I finally cry myself to sleep.
The next morning I'm still horribly depressed. I finally talk to my husband about it and he's able to get me back on track somewhat. I still feel like my stomach has been cut wide open and this gaping wide hole has been left there. I guess I finally have one bodily feeling with my feelings. I don't know if I want to go back to Therapy after this. I'm ready to quit, but my husband won't dare let me. For the rest of the week I just go on with my life. Now I'm wondering if I actually dealt with that situation or if I just filed it right back where it was to begin with.
The Therapist asks me about my progress during the last week. Which there wasn't any in my opinion. I tell her, that I'm so frustated with feeling guilty over what influence my actions due to the panic have on my family. She explains to me, that I have no control over what my family does. That it is their CHOICE to be put into the limited life style, and therefor I have nothing to feel guilty about. It makes sence when I think about it. We also discuss the outbreak of the angry feelings that I had experienced all of a sudden last week. I had just read the part about feelings in the Panic Workbook and after I was lying in bed that night, relaxing my mind, when all of a sudden my stomach and legs got really hot, like they were on fire. And then I was choking a pillow, with the thoughts of all the people that I realized had hurt me really badly. I was very amazed over this, but yet felt somewhat relieved afterwards. My therapist explains to me, that it is quite all right to have those feelings as long as I don't act upon them towards the person. There is nothing wrong with having the thoughts of choking somebody. Thoughts can't hurt anybody, they might be unpleasant if we tell them to the other person, but still it won't physically hurt them.
Then we talk about me having such a rough time with the memories from the last session and my thoughts of quitting therapy already. She explains to me, that it's my choice and right to do that, if I wish, but that I will not get better if I don't deal with whatever is causing me all this distress, and that I hadn't dealt with the memories, otherwise the panic would be gone. She also forwarns me that it will get worse before it'll get better. I agree to continue, but can't promise how long, which is ok with her. My husband also assures me that he's going to be right there with me through these rough periods. It scares me to death, but I know I've got to do it.
My husband mentions that I just won't try to expose myself to the feared situations. I explain why I won't do it. That it seems to be a waste of time and energy, since I get so far in accomplishing something and then month later fail miserably at the same task. She explains to me, that with this disease there are no failures as long as I keep trying. Any accomplishment, no matter how small, is a success. That seems wrong to me, which shows, that I've got much too high expectations of myself, along with thought patterns that wouldn't make sense to the smartest of people. Example: Going for a drive and a tree falling across the road that I have to travel on to get home. My thoughts in that situation would be that I couldn't STAND to be blocked off. Wrong!!! It would just be very uncomfortable, but that doesn't mean that I couldn't stand it.We will be working on this thought process over the next few weeks.
She then asks my husband how it makes him feel when I won't try or just give up. He just rattles his feeling off, sadness, resentment, mad, all that stuff, I have no idea off, what it feels like. That's amazing to me. After that he mentions the anger that I seem to express against him and the kids and that he suspects I have Borderline Personality Disorder. She asures both of us that I'm nowhere close to any kind of Personality Disorder, just some kind of emotional distress. After being asked what causes my angry outbursts, we come to the conclusion, that I have a very low tolerance level for any kind of stress right now. I have to continue scanning my body for feelings.
This week is rough. We had company from out of state and I was quite anxious about having "strangers" in the house. Everytime the boys would have a friend spend the night I'd have severe anxiety. So this weekend was a learning experience. Come to figure out, that once our company got here, that all the anxiety just left. I realized that with kids it must be the added responsibility for them. I had a pretty good time. My husband showed them around while I stayed home. I made it for over 3 hours by myself. I's quite proud of myself. Did spend some time with my computer though and time just flew by. Everytime I felt the onset of panic I refocused on something else really quick and it never came to a full blown attack.
The rest of the week wasn't so nice. We are now having severe marital problems because I have not tried what my counselor told me to do (driving). My husband told me, if I wasn't going to try, I needed to leave. So I sent for my passport. I wanted to go back to my hometown in Germany, but realized that I could never hurt my kids like that. So now my husband has decided to live his own life the way he wants to and to go where he wants to whenever he wants to and I'm going to have to adjust to that.
We talk about my childhood and what is was like living with the stepmother from Hell. That I felt helpless as a child against her and my father, and when I'm confronted with the fear of abandonment now, I feel just as helpless. This time I don't feel like crying just tense talking about the past. She tells me that there are two possible explanations for that. Either my defenses have grown tighter and I'm further disassociating myself from the feelings, or I've already learned to deal with some of this stuff.
We also focus on my unwillingness to try. Is it rebellion? Whom or what am I rebelling against. Or is it that I don't think I deserve happiness. She asks me to remember happy times with my family, which I have serious trouble doing that. She explains to me, that her questions and suggestions are only there to guide me into the right direction, but that the answers are lying inside of me. So in order to find out if I'm rebelling, I'm to sit in the car every day for 1 hour with nothing to do, and at the end of the hour I'm to write down what I felt, even if I hate the therapist. *LOL*. I can go driving if I get too bored though. I also am still supposed to scan for feelings, but not force myself. Just let them come or stay away, whichever happens is fine.
I then went on to telling her about my week in the car. I read all the entries I had put into the "car journal". She pointed out that I had fed myself many negative messages after not being able to make it back out of the driveway. I had also written alot about making my husband and other family members unhappy with my failures. That brought us to a comparison between my dad and my husband. I seem to have a tendency to want to please the male species, and that their thoughts of me seem to be very important to me. I have tried to please my dad with my actions for so many years without any results, that made me cry again, but also brought out some more anger against him for treating his children that way. And then lately my husbands constant pushing made me feel like I's not doing good enough, no matter what I tried. That's why somehow my mind must have associated trying as useless.
At the end of the session she asks me what I would be comfortable with as a driving exercise for next week. I tell her, anything but sitting in the car. *LOL* We decide on driving out of the driveway into the road every day. I can go further if I want to, but if I don't make it out of the driveway I have to sit there for a whole hour again and write more thoughts. I'm also to concentrate on all the negative statements I've made and am still making and write a possitive affirmation 10 times for each one of them. Furthermore I am to think about some of the issues that have come to my mind in the car about certain family members and to slightly focus (not dwell though)about them and write more thoughts about those issues.
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