How can you do therapy if you can't articulate your feelings or experiences accurately?

[CrapExplainer]

I'm struggling a little.

I don't think I am good at expressing my feelings or thoughts or experiences properly with my therapist.

I often just feel like I'm telling a story about a particular issue (upsetting childhood stuff, mainly) and then get really stressed because I feel guilty and disloyal to my family. Like they're not getting to put forward their side of things so it's not fair? They are dead and can't explain why they did things particular ways.

The therapist seems really on my side and it is so uncomfortable, my mum did make some grave mistakes but she did love me, and I'm sitting there with a stranger telling her how my mum's decisions hurt me, but my mum can't defend herself. She was not a bad person at all - she made some fucking brave decisions - just somebody in an impossible position and ended up kind of sacrificing a lot of our mother and daughter relationship, to save another child.

I don't know why my mum did what she did so I can't defend her properly and just feel awful when I feel the anger and hurt towards her. She would be so hurt if she knew how messed up I still am over this. I need to fix it and make it go away.

Sorry I'm not explaining properly and going round in circles.

Does the guilt and discomfort mean this isn't the right way for me to find healing?

I can't stop crying. I mean I clearly need therapy but it feels like I'm doing it wrong and making everything worse.

It's not the therapist, who is kind and safe and trustworthy. It just feels like I can never assimilate and adjust the tangle of stuff in my past, especially because the people are dead.

Maybe tell your therapist you’re uncomfortable with how it’s going.

it does feel like you’re prioritising the imagined feelings of your mum, over your own actual feelings though.
Wouldn’t your mum prefer you work through it whatever way you need to?

you can say you don’t like someone’s actions without defaming their entire character. And you can be hurt by someone’s actions even if it wasn’t their intention.

therapy is hard! Sorry you’re having a tough time

It sounds like you are getting to the crux of your problems in therapy which is why you are are conflicted and dealing with very painful feelings right now.

Unfortunately this IS part of the healing process. People generally start to feel better after confronting their difficult issues. But unfortunately it’s difficult and takes time. That’s why it’s often described as ‘doing the work’.

In the long term you are likely to be able to recognise some of the things that you are starting to the recognise now, without the horrible feelings of guilt you have around them.

Well done to you for getting this far and all the best with your therapy going forward.

I’ve been watching a docuseries called couples therapy on BBC iPlayer and in one of the sessions the therapist said something like the part of the story that’s more important is how the person experienced it and not the actual facts.

You’re in therapy for you and the therapist is there to help you work through your own stuff. The actual facts or how things went from your families perspective are actually not so relevant.

As a pp said it’s worth sharing the emotions and the feelings you are having around disclosing this information. The guilt and the discomfort are also relevant and probably part of the picture that your therapist can help you understand.

It doesn't matter the whys and wherefores - what matters is your memory of what happened and how it made you feel. Don't try to untangle it - that's why you are going to the therapist. I'd start at the earliest memory and just say what you remember from your point of view, as that's the only thing you know. Then explain how you responded/made you feel. Then on to the next. Your therapist should guide you through it.

@Pufflebow thanks so much for that.

Yes, I think you're right that my mum's imagined feelings are very important to me. We were very close in lots of ways and she had such a tough life and died so young it just isn't fair.

I actually think another thing that's going on for me is generational trauma. I think I'm feeling a lot of the shit unjust things she suffered.

Sometimes, all the shit stuff she suffered in life overwhelms me and I cry for her and all she went through, it's like I'm channelling her pain, including a lot of her pain that she boxed up and was not able to feel herself.

It sounds mad but sometimes it feels like I am doing therapy for both my mum and me.

Rambling now, but I'm so lost.

Talk to your therapist about how you’re feeling, as this feeling of guilt and worry about blame is important to address.

But I think you are missing the point about therapy - the therapist knows that your mum will have had her reasons for behaving the way she did - your therapist works with all sorts of people so no one knows better than them that most people are trying to do their best, even when they fuck up.

But your mum isn’t in therapy - you are - so your therapist is focused on how things impacted on you.

It sounds to me that you are doing important work and you should keep it up, just address your concerns with your therapist.

Yes and the generational trauma is worth talking to your therapist about too.

Believe me, they don’t think badly of your mum - but it will be really useful for them to know what you are feeling about it all.

I’ve been watching a docuseries called couples therapy on BBC iPlayer and in one of the sessions the therapist said something like the part of the story that’s more important is how the person experienced it and not the actual facts.

Thank you @NameChange2589 that is interesting.

I'm not sure it applies to me though. As a child and teen, I would not have said I felt anything wrong or traumatic at the time - I was completely invested in being completely ok and tough and successful and able to deal with all the unconventional aspects of my childhood. On the surface I 100% felt they didn't matter and would have argued that because anything else made me feel embarrassed.

But on another level aspects of it WERE very painful and confusing, so I just tried my best to cut those feelings off and assumed that I felt that way because of some innate flaw in me. So I was ashamed and kept it private for years, until I became seriously depressed in my late teens and a bit of my twenties.

Then all my family couldn't understand why I was depressed and though they never said it, they thought I was being a princess and should be ok. Because I had loads of advantages, education and sporting and social, and they couldn't understand why I wasn't thriving.

This is why I feel, in part, a massive fraud.

It feels like the problems are just me and my character.

Thank you @mondaytosunday

I actually really can't talk about the earliest, most hurtful memories. They're too raw and I cannot be sure I will be able to maintain composure, I honestly feel I will be devastated beyond where I can ever return from if I talk about the most painful things.

I can talk about some pretty hard stuff but the rawest pieces - no, I actually feel admitting to those feelings will somehow kill me. Or at least leave me broken forever.

It doesn't make sense I know, they're just words.

I was given good advice to share the toughest bits as a story as I couldn’t face talking about it being me as was just too painful to re-live

Show your therapist this thread. Its good that you can appreciate she had a hard time, but did you have to parent your mother? You seem very on her side and not much on yours.

'but did you have to parent your mother? You seem very on her side and not much on yours.'

I was wondering this too.

Please share everything you have shared here with your therapist. I used to worry that I was 'not doing therapy right' but really that's not a thing, so long as you are engaging in the process in good faith, which you clearly are. This harsh judgement of yourself has come from somewhere - did you learn somewhere in your life that you had to be 'good', to get things 'right', to not 'let people down'? You sound very enmeshed with your mother, like you have difficulty seeing you and her as separate people - does that make any sense? It's not a criticism - I had a very similar experience - but it's something that therapy can help you unravel.

Your therapist will really value you sharing your feelings with her, including the incredibly painful ones. You are doing a great thing for yourself by engaging in therapy - it can be intensely painful and gruelling work, but it's so worth it

If your mum were around then she would still be 'on your side' it's her role to create a safe space for you to be expressive. You sound paralysed by guilt, your mum is gone, so of course it's complicated you can't actually confront her and resolve this or move on. But it sounds as though you need to stop trying to manage how others see her. If you process the things that affect you, yes, you may end up with a changed view of your mother - but if you keep her on a pedestal how will you accept what happened to you and begin to process the affects. It sounds as though you're doing amazing work ok yourself. Best wishes op

I meant the therapist would still be there for you if your mum were around to clarify!

Sounds like parentification to me.

I can relate to not being able to even contemplate talking about the raw stuff for fear that once I open up the box it will never go back in and turning into a gibbering wreck for the rest of my life.

I never found past-focused therapy very helpful. It felt like wallowing and emphasising the very worst memories on the face of the planet. It made me ruminate more on the past, not less. It was horrible. I also found myself trying to please the therapists, they never seemed to understand why I was so upset or be able to cope with what I was feeling.

Anyway I found practical and future focused stuff way more useful, e.g. Power of Now, and some life coaching approaches which do address negative or unproductive thought patterns but in the context of making the most of life and aiming higher for the future. After all life isn't about the past, that's gone, it's the now and the future that count.

I would tell the therapist how you feel about your feelings about the feelings of guilt.

Parentification is a huge burden to carry, its a relief to be able to let it go.

Understand the difference between what happened to you as a child, that you couldn't rationalise or interpret, and the way you think now, as an adult. That's why you're feeling so conflicted - the child who loved her mum and couldn't see why bad things happened and the adult who can comprehend (partially) why your mother had to do what she did but is scared of being disloyal.

You are actually dealing with two quite different, separate but related issues.

First, you are trying to repair the damage to you, whatever caused it, and however it was caused.

Second, you are trying to make sense of what happened to your Mum.

Your Mum may have had perfectly sound reasons why she did what she did, but one effect was that you got damaged, and you need repairing. Mending you doesn’t change what your Mum did or her reasons why she did them. If you break your arm, you don’t avoid going to A&E because you had a good reason to fall over. You will need to explain how and why you fell so they know how to treat it. Your therapist is trying to repair YOU, and she needs to know how the damage was done. Once you are better, you can explore, if you need to, what your Mum was dealing with.

Does that make sense?

How about writing it all down as you have here and giving it to your therapist either when you meet or email it first? Then she can read through it and work out the best way forward for you. That way you can include everything you want to. It's so easy to forget what you intend to say/ask when you're actually there. I always make notes when I see my GP and give to her when I go in.
Good luck.

No, I definitely didn't parent my mother.

I was an utterly selfish teen and young adult and put myself first, to be blunt.

It is now, as a much older person I feel guilty for that.

thank you to everybody who has replied, reading through them now and want to make sure I understand as well as possible.

Yes, this does make sense.

The problem is I get really angry at my mum. But then feel so guilty and awful.

I just bounce back and forth between these two positions, being really angry at how things panned out that meant I drew a short straw, but then such guilt and regret at the extent of the anger.

I'm driving myself crazy.

Were you allowed to show anger when you were a child?