stMarkus

I watched this thing and now I'm convinced I need to try out a male therapist.

Yes. I think I have changed somewhat at least by now and I can evaluate this a little differently as of today. As I started writing this, my mind is turning into mush so it’s not easy after all. But basically my way of reaching out for love has been through obsessive fixation. It makes me zone out, anxious, focus on external clues, insecure etc. This of course can’t have anything to do with real love or connection and I have discovered that the major underlying feeling in this state is fear. Fear of what? Of people like my mother, who is unreliable, whom I can’t trust to be a good person, mother, woman. I can’t trust her not to stab me in the back, not to betray my devotion for her etc. Growing up with people like this is like being constantly surrounded by fucking tarantula hawks. Of course I concentrate all my available conscious energy on her like she was the best person I ever met. But it’s not enough. Nothing is not enough for them as long as there is even a thread of sanity inside you. And this truly is really scary, even now that I think about it. The scores of people who have been driven beyond the edge and are in an asylum or worse and nobody will ever know what happened to them or who did it to them. Anyway there seems to be a trigger or several triggers for me that activate this kind of obsessive fixation to someone. I don’t know yet what these triggers are but this therapist, it seems, might have activated one or more of these in me and she didn’t address this issue. This process has more to do with me rather than her but still as she was open to having a therapeutic relationship with me from which, as she said herself, she received personal benefits/satisfaction, she should have addressed this issue of my triggers and fixation. Looking at this obsessive fixation and why it seems inappropriate as Together-Whenever-Wherever said, the reason seems to do with all the mixed, confusing signals I am sending as I am trying to divert my attention away from the fear that is really the underlying feeling. It’s like I decided a long time ago to act out a kind of satirical version of love and affection toward my mother to get her attention but since she didn’t care, it stuck with me. That’s what it is. I don’t really understand why I felt affection toward that therapist, I just went with the flow but I didn’t understand a lot of it so I was probably scared. The therapist was a 10. This combined with virtue signalling could have been the trigger.

Regardless, it seems a much better solution to a get a decent girlfriend rather than to pay lots of money to talk to a therapist for a limited time. At least in my current situation, where my funds are minimal. With a girlfriend I get pretty much unlimited time with her and practically for free and also physical intimacy. So I'm happy for now. I'm not sure what else to add here, maybe this thread is done. Any thoughts on girlfriend vs therapist?

Heeeey, I'm back, Instead of getting a new therapist, I found a girlfriend, it has worked well so far. Not in the sense that she's my therapist but that she just provides a certain comfort in my life. I might need start a new relationship thread, though. Similarities from my mother's relationship with me are popping up.....

I will be 2h30min bus drive away in another city and the bus ticket costs 1-3€ so it wont be a problem to keep meeting her in person but the problem would be the cost of the therapy. It's a little scary that I will have to present myself as a paragon of good qualities for the next year and possibly without any therapy but we'll see how it goes. She has given me great tools to recreate a sense of comfort and security within myself such as I've felt with her help in therapy. I would get better at it with more therapy, sad if it would end for some time.

Just to update, I went to another therapist for one session, an older woman. The session went well and she was very different from my current therapist. Still, I've had more sessions with the one described in this topic and they've all been very positive. Now with regard to seeing a male therapist, I think it's good advice that I might want to try out but the downside is that I've never connected with my father whereas I have invested very deeply in my mother. Having a positive mother figure substitute triggers the deeper emotional responses and cravings for love and connection for me. This helps with getting results in therapy. I don't really know how it would go with a male figure but at this moment, it wouldn't be as beneficial for me. Another update is that I've been accepted into training for a job that I've wanted for more than a year. I'll be moving to another city and the training lasts for about a year during which I probably won't be doing much therapy. Or at least I don't know when the next session will be. So for now, it's at least a good ending to the story. Also I've begun to journal more. Mostly dream analysis as I've been having interesting dreams. Probably will have one tonight as well.

The last session was me regressing to my early childhood. I was expecting this to continue but I didn't realize this journey of regression will take me to progressively later stages of my life. Thus last time I couldn't talk about sexuality since I was becoming a ~4-year-old version of myself and in that stage the emotions that needed expressing were mostly unrelated to sexuality. I felt completely at ease and safe that time but as a 4-year-old sexuality isn't part of my reality. I suppose this time I was moving forward in my development and sexuality becomes part of the issue. And with that come deep trust issues, defensiveness, shame, isolation etc. Very complex, painful things. The point is that I don't think the last session and this one are really comparable. The last one was something I needed dealt with to move forward and deal with the sexuality issue. Like a point on the map I have to cross to get to the next one. This time I refused the regression journey, I was mostly defensive throughout the session, we argued a lot etc. So it will be difficult but I really hope it is possible to connect with and let go of my emotions with this issue as well. With her. Soon. If there is no progress after the next session and I have to keep carrying the pain I would be inclined to give up.

Another session. Ended up talking about the specific ways my mother and grandmother used me, touched me. Couldn't even go through them all. Held back some of the information with more nasty details. Need to come clean next time. Now can only feel pain, isolation, can't reach out for help, feel shame, like I can only be alone with this. This kind of a panicky constant pain, also probably can't sleep. Hello darkness, my old friend.

@Eh Steve Thanks! Your sincerity really means a lot, I appreciate it. I feel happy reading your post. Like someone actually cares. I am still amazed at what happened in the last session. How everything happened so smoothly, that I didn't have to think about anything, just let the emotions take over. My mind can't really comprehend how it all happened, how all my most powerful defenses decided to fuck off for once, how I regressed back into my childhood and faced the most painful moments with the support of caring physical touch. Yet I feel a very good, loving sense of security knowing that my mind really doesn't have any meaningful power over this part of me, that I can rely on a powerful source of pure, loving emotion.

Hey labmath, thanks for your interest. I will gladly take anything with a grain of salt or sugar as long as there is interest. I don’t really know, that is something we would need to talk about but really it seemed more to do with me and my past rather than with anything external. For example my mother was always too ashamed to talk about sexual topics. It has caused me tremendous suffering, it results in isolation mostly. It was singular in the sense that I was in a state where all my defenses were completely down and I was able to connect with another person through the physical touch. It just felt good, secure like I could be myself with all my traumas and such. Basically I felt like a small child in my past, like I couldn’t handle all the pain alone, I needed to feel the presence of someone caring, empathetic and this was provided by physical touch. I think one of the results of this is that I am more attracted to women who are emotionally available. Well no, it was the first time I felt I was not alone with my traumas like I overcame them or something like that.

OK so I did a session with her yesterday morning and the results were extremely unexpected so I ruminated on them, let them settle for a day before posting here. I felt good about seeing her the day before and the morning before. As it got closer to the actual session and when I arrived there, I started feeling more nervous and anxious as usual. That is not necessarily anything negative, it was more of a positive nervousness. I had some specific topics on my mind to start with, primarily my acceptance of responsibility over my life, my attempting to feel more in control in general and the role of control in the relationship with my mother. Another topic that I wanted to discuss concerned a book I had read recently, "Your Brain on Porn," and how it had affected my life in real and positive ways. The topics discussed on the forum and other related topics were in the back of my mind but those were the ones I was going to start out with. The session begins, we're sitting down, we take some time for me to calm down a little, to start to feel present and get acclimated with the therapy setting. I still feel slightly nervous but I start talking about the control, my mother, responsibility, she says it's great to hear and asks in what ways it actually changed my life. Then I want to move to the book because I changed my habits in a very real way after reading it. Yet I start to feel this difficulty in talking about pornography, masturbation etc. I really want to talk about it but I start to feel the block, the isolation, I feel myself closing down more and more into a sad cave of loneliness and isolation. I mention a few times that I'm having difficulties in expressing this thing I want to talk about and she offers to move to another topic but I want to keep at it and we just sit there in silence mostly. After about 20min into the session I'm still struggling to express myself, to say what I want to say about the book and its effect on me. Her supportive remarks and questions are not helping and I feel myself going down a spiral. I am in a pretty sad state by now. Presently she asks me to close my eyes and imagine a guide who would help me. At this moment the session is smoothly transitioning into what resembles hypnosis, she is changing the tone of her voice and helping me in visualization. Immediately and pretty clearly I see myself as a young child, about 5 years old. The child is happy, confident and curious and seems to wonder what really happened to me that I am in such a state. This is where I suddenly feel I'm really starting to break down, this sadness starts coming in huge waves, I am beginning to cry but I push back on the emotions because I'm afraid to break down. This reaction relates to the child I saw, his happy demeanour reminded me that everything can be better, it's just that something bad happened to me and his concern and curiosity brought this immense sadness to the surface. This goes on for a while. Every time the therapists ask me to visualize the guide and I see him, I get the wave and I cry but yet I push back the emotions and prevent a real breakdown. At about 30-45min into the session, my eyes still closed, I offer that I should lie down on the sofa/bed thing as it would be better for the hypnosis/visualization process. I get a pillow, a blanket, I lie down on my back and feel comfortable. My sense of time is long gone by now, I only now that I opened my eyes at 2h30min into the session. So I’m not just lying down and conversing with her while keeping my eyes closed, it actually feels like I’m in a different state of being, submerged in my subconscious but still aware enough of my surroundings that I can speak with her. The whole thing works better now that I'm lying down. After some time of me getting even more intense waves of sadness, of me crying but still pushing back on the emotions to stop them taking a complete hold over me, I get the sense that I am doing this alone and I need her help. She is talking to me and guiding me but I still feel alone, like a small traumatized child. Now I feel like I need the support of physical touch, that it would help me and that I should ask her to hold my hand. Yet I feel afraid to ask her and I get a huge rush of adrenaline as I think it would really help me get through these intense emotions pretty much for the first time in my life. I struggle for some time to express myself, I am blurting out that I need her help, she understands finally and takes my hand. This has a considerable effect on me, I start to feel in a way I can't really describe other than it's positive. Also the physical pain that was concentrated around the area of my heart is gone now. As I'm processing this new state of being I am beginning to squeeze her hand more and more tightly. I answer to one of her questions that it feels like I'm hanging onto the ledge of a building so I have to hold tightly. It was automatic for me, I didn't really perceive how tightly I squeezed her hand, apparently very strongly as she said afterwards. She tells me I needn’t squeeze so tightly and asks to loosen the grip on her hand I do gradually. I lose my grip on her hand, she is still holding it but I feel like her hand is slipping away and I tell her that so she takes her other hand puts it on top of my hand so my hand rests between her two hands. Now I feel her hand is slipping nowhere, I am gripping one of her hand too with normal force and I just lie there, processing this state. I can say that it felt good, still couldn't describe it really but I guessed that's what feeling secure feels like. I lie there like this, feeling calm and secure like never before, answering her questions occasionally but mostly in silence just taking in this new state of being. Eventually, after some joking and laughing, we decide that she should remove her hand, she does and after some time, maybe 15min, I open my eyes. It's 2h30min into the session, as I said. I feel calm, relaxed, happy, everything seems different, interesting, I feel curious about everything. We talk just for a little bit, she says we shouldn't really talk much more, that we should end the session so as not to analyze it too much so I would just embrace this new feeling. Obviously I didn't write down everything I said or did or she said or did but mostly it's all there so here you go. As you can see I didn't really get to discuss much of anything so I'll leave that for the next time or for whenever I will be able to discuss everything that's on my mind. The next session won't happen before at least a few weeks though as I can't afford it so for now this is not to be continued. Thanks to everyone who's expressed interest in this.

I will do a 3h session with her, apply as much as possible of what I've taken from this thread and post the results here. She just replied to me, we'll likely meet some time next week. I'm imagining this to be like a real-life experiment, my life being under this great magnifying glass. Feels pretty amazing to do this and be a part of the whole community. I've also journalled a few thousand words recently (and will do more). I will send her all or some of that before the session to see what she thinks, if anything. It wouldn't be out of the blue because she tentatively offered to exchange some form of writing previously. Will maybe post some of that here if it'll be worth posting. Actually there will probably not be much to post about that but I did just want to mention that I'll be sending her my introspective writings. Thanks to Eh Steve and dsayers for the latest posts, Reading Eh Steve's post felt both painful and exciting simultaneously which was awesome. I definitely feel a strong urge to be honest with the therapist about all of the topics that might have seemed taboo before.

@Accutron I've really enjoyed your posts. I feel vibrant and challenged when I read them, like I'm getting a truly independent, outdside perspective, which is what I was looking for. This is what really stood out for me. This idea has been very dear to me that this therapist represents the mother that I would have wanted to have. The idea often feels to me like I'm chasing something that I will never reach but it still feels so close and there's extreme yearning for it. Like something good was lost and I just want to regress back to it for ever. Maybe I need to go back to that place just for a while in order to move forward? Maybe something else entirely? I don't know yet, we'll see. Through therapy.

The next time I'll meet with her, I will reduce my input towards her or her personal interests to see if the emotional bond is in any way conditional that way. I will also be weary of my possible compulsions to provide for my therapist's needs in spite of my own. I will want to do this without falling into pattern of paranoia, excessive defensiveness or shutting myself emotionally,

After the second session the current therapist offered to give me a hug because, as she said, I looked like I needed it. I declined that time but afterwards it has been customary after each session. This is something that helps to create a bond and a feeling that someone cares for you. Also the hugs are only meaningful because there is an emotional bond with the therapist. The hypnosis sessions also include physical touch but they're less significant. My last therapist declined to give out any hugs after I specifically asked her for them and told her physical touch might help me. She didn't specify any reasons for her anti-hug stance. The current therapist read my emotional state and offered me something that I needed because she also knew that if she waited for me to ask, it would have had a significantly lesser effect. This might have been one of the main reasons I continued seeing her after I found out she's a single mother.