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?

How about writing it all down as you have here and giving it to your therapist either when you meet or email it first?

@Mountainpika that is a great idea, however I'm too embarrassed to do it, I'm too old to be feeling this way.

I just feel like I'm making a fuss over nothing and I need to forget it all and move on. Like lobotomise myself metaphorically. But I can't do that, I've tried and it doesn't work.

Those feelings also fit with parentification!
You really should show this thread to your 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? "

You need to tell your therapist this is what you're feeling and talk about THESE feelings before the other stuff.

Once you're helped to work through and understand the feelings of guilt and disloyalty (which are currently a barrier to your progress) you will be able to move on to talk about the things in your childhood.

It’s not a court of law, OP, and your mother isn’t the person undergoing therapy. You don’t need to defend her. No one is accusing her of anything. It’s about you, and your guilt is something you should absolutely be exploring. No one is suggesting your mother was a bad person. Even if she were alive, she wouldn’t be in the room to ‘tell her side’ - this therapy is for and about you.

My parents are good people, tried their best, and were themselves the products of very deprived and dysfunctional backgrounds, so they had no idea parenting involved any more than basic food and shelter. Their negligence and kowtowing to authority meant I was sexually abused very young in a situation they repeatedly put me in. In therapy I’m not accusing them of anything, just exploring the effects of what happened on me.

This is a natural part of being a teen and young adult but if a parent does when you are still young you haven’t had the chance to reconcile. There’s an episode of griefcast with Julia Samuel that explains this.

You can share these feelings with your therapist. You can also get a new therapist if they're not able to help you deal with these feelings some one more experienced perhaps - just because your current one is lovely doenst mean they have the right tools to help you

I showed LOTS of anger - not all the time, but as a result of the serious shitty things it would happen, it would bubble up and explode in a verbal tirade and hysterical crying sometimes.

But I learned how to curb it, thankfully. It just made my caregivers distressed and as i grew up I was just mortified to cause them pain.

I highly recommend reading some of the work of Gabor Mate or listening to his YouTube videos or podcasts. He is a physician who specialises in trauma and looks at where it mostly starts in childhood. But, he never blames the parent. You can still feel upset by what happened without blaming anyone and this is what Gabor talks about at length. Your therapist needs to stop looking for someone to blame and help you to come to terms with what has happened and help you process the complex emotions involved.

EMDR really helped me to get some stuff off my chest. Have you heard of chair therapy? That has helped me too. You need to feel your emotions, not hide them away behind the rule that you can’t upset your parents. You can feel how you feel without blaming anyone. ‘’You will be saved in an ocean of tears’’ - that is where healing starts.

Thank you, that all sounds interesting, it sounds really safe from my perspective if he never blames the parent.

I had been thinking of getting one of his books for a while so I think I will do that.

To be fair to the therapist she absolutely does not talk about blame or say anything like that.

It's just a couple of times she has, in a appropriate and validating way, expressed slight indignation and empathy for me at some of the things i have told her.

It's just my own fault really because I do feel pissed off and angry and I try to be as honest as possible but then feel talking about it makes it all so real and awful and I get guilty.

EMDR really helped me to get some stuff off my chest. Have you heard of chair therapy? That has helped me too. You need to feel your emotions, not hide them away behind the rule that you can’t upset your parents. You can feel how you feel without blaming anyone. ‘’You will be saved in an ocean of tears’’ - that is where healing starts.

EMDR sounds fascinating. Did you have it for particular traumatic events?

Is chair therapy the gestalt technique where the therapist gets you to pretend someone is in the empty chair, and talk to them? I could not do that!

Tears aren't okay for me about this stuff. I can cry about the fact my mum is dead, because I really miss her and that bit feels uncomplicated.

I absolutely cannot cry in front of anyone over the difficult stuff in our mother and daughter relationship. That is absolutely shameful and horrific and I only do that silently when nobody can see. I cannot have that witnessed.

My issues stem from childhood, which I knew already. But I thought it was one traumatic event, but EMDR helped me process some of that emotion and helped me see it was another issue that was the root cause all along.

the chair therapy - yes you talk to an empty chair pretending a key person is sat in it listening to you. I don’t do it in front of anyone, I do it alone, undisturbed. A chance for me to say my peace and get things off my chest.

it’s hard going and emotionally draining, but it can really help.

before you do any of the above though, maybe ask your therapist to help you uncover your ‘rules’. These are things we learn in childhood - I.e I can’t cry. I can’t speak badly of my parents. I can’t complain . I can’t be weak. I must be to blame. These all need deconstructing and reframing before the other stuff will work. You sound like you’re holding a lot of shame. There is nothing for you to feel shameful about. You need to unpick where the shame has come from - you need to help set yourself free from that shame, it doesn’t serve any purpose for you.

I cannot have that witnessed

what do you think would happen, OP, if you did cry about the mother daughter stuff? Your therapist won’t be shocked, your mother is not here to be hurt or betrayed: the only person feeling all of this is you. you say you’ve tried to lobotomise these feelings away: why not try letting them out instead?

The only important person in the therapy is you. And it is entirely possible to honour the great things that existed between your mother and yourself - and also acknowledge the things that caused you pain and hurt. The latter does not negate the former.

@Watchagotch72 I know rationally nothing awful would happen.

But it feels like the therapist would see the terrible ugly parts of my inner being that I keep carefully controlled in my daily life, and then she will confirm that I deserved what happened.

Whatever she says, I will take it as confirmation that I deserved everything, all the bad stuff, she can't really win. So, neither can I.

This is what makes me feel I need to quit therapy, my brain is too vicious.

I mean, I won't quit therapy I suppose because I recognise I need some help, but am at a loss knowing how to move forward when I am like this.

I had a similar experience with therapy. After discussing my feelings with my therapist, I came to the conclusion that as humans we're all flawed. A person will make some good decisions in their life but also some bad ones. Nobody is perfect. It's OK to acknowledge this and discuss your mum in a safe space with your therapist. Your therapist won't be judging your mum, because they know that they're only hearing about your mum from your perspective. The therapist is there to support you as you unpack your thoughts and emotions

I think you should write down this what you said and read it out to the therapist at the next session.

"It feels like the therapist would see the terrible ugly parts of my inner being that I keep carefully controlled in my daily life, and then she will confirm that I deserved what happened."

You can say to the therapist you just want to read it and have her hear it but you may not ready to discuss what you said.

Have you ever heard of the book "The Drama of the Gifted Child" OP? My therapist recommended this to me and sent me specific excerpts to help me see the situation I was in. It's about children who are put in caregiver situations inappropriately and so they take on a more adult position as a child and put the feelings of adults/parents over their own. That's probably a bad summary but that's what I got from it. Your mum didn't have to be a bad person for her actions to have affected you they way they have - she was only ever human and could only act the way she knew how to. You need to prioritize your feelings and focus solely on you and not feel like you should be guilty for acknowledging what you went through and how you are now.
If it helps - my mum died when I was young. I went through an awful mental health crisis a few yrs ago, and in therapy I had to confront how my fathers actions in the years following her death had negatively affected me. He wasn't a bad person, he didn't mean to affect me so much with how he grieved, but nevertheless he did. I don't know what it would have been like to be a widow with kids to suddenly look after alone, and I imagine he had no idea how to do it either. He tried his best. But it wasn't enough. I had to talk this through with my therapist, realise how much I was affected by my dads grieving and how it was sort of accepted by him and the rest of the family that I was "doing ok" even though I was just hiding all of my pain and anger at my mums death. By talking about it with my therapist and getting really angry about him, by really looking at my childhood with fresh eyes and realizing why I was so anxious and miserable all the time, only then was I able to eventually come to terms with it all and forgive my dad for his mistakes. I felt guilty at times talking about him like this, previously I'd always said my dad coped amazingly and had done his best for us, when in fact that wasn't always true. You have to get it out, no matter how guilty you feel about it. That therapy is there for you and you alone. I know it's tough though, it took me ages to really let rip about my dad, but I'm so glad I did.

Tell your therapist this.

Also tell her how conflicted you feel.

You've articulated yourself incredibly well in this thread. Tell your therapist all the things you've shared with us, it will be so important in progressing your work together. The fact that you're aware of all of these conflicting emotions this is causing for you is incredible. Remember your therapy sessions are your space and time, to talk about what YOU want, your therapist will want you to bring what's going on for you. Good luck, wishing you all the best with it x

You don't seem in quite the right place, right frame of mind, to get the most out of therapy. You don't want to tell your therapist all the really pivotal hurtful things. But you admit that the alternative : "I've tried and it doesn't work.", either. So what do you suggest is the solution here?

@Oblomov23 That's not very helpful. Seeking therapy is a brave awareness of the need to talk about painful things. Even as you go to the sessions, you can feel huge resistance to speaking aloud the darkest parts of yourself. Thankfully, good therapy allows you to work at a pace that is right for you - only something you can know.

The conflict you are feeling is called by some therapists incongruence. You have competing ideas about yourself in relation to your mother and they are rubbing painfully against each other. Your loyalty to her is at odds with the real distress caused by your relationship with her. You can work through this at your own pace.

Don't give up.

I could have written your post OP and I totally understand where you're coming from.

My parents were both lovely people but I grew up with a very severe violent autistic brother who basically took every ounce of their time, energy and resources, meaning I was left very broken by my childhood. I was physically abused by him every day, and my parents were too, and they just couldn't protect me from him.

I never felt unloved during my childhood, but I just never felt safe and in my own home and it has left me deeply traumatised. It has left me with such a complex mix of emotions of feeling anger towards my parents for not protecting me, but also deep sympathy for them, as they were basically thrust into a nightmare by having my brother. The only alternative would have been for them to give my brother up to a home, and what parent is going to do that?

I went to have some therapy in my adult life and I found myself feeling incredibly guilty describing my childhood to the therapist as it felt I was doing some sort of disservice to my parents by going into all the horrific details. Its not really thier fault, but I guess its natural to want to be able to blame someone for how your childhood turned out.

In therapy as I was relaying details to the therapist, I kept also saying "But obviously I dont know what else my parents could have done in that situation" and she just kept saying "You keep making excuses for your parents behaviour" It just left me feeling slightly angry at the therapist.

Im not really sure what the answer is and I dont know what your exact situation is but hopefully it might show some solidarity of feelings. Im actually finding some of the responses on this thread super helpful myself.

@Johnduttonsbuttocks
That's not true. Just because someone starts or seeks therapy doesn't mean they've necessarily grasped the whole process, how complicated it is. Neither does it mean that they are ready and capable of getting the most out of their time, by recognising that to be most fruitful they do actually need to tell the counsellor the worst bits.

Keep going and keep talking, and don't worry, what you are experiencing is really normal. It's not easy to express yourself and get to the 'heart' of what is going on for you. That's why some people are in therapy for years.

Also, talk to your therapist about this. It's OK to talk about therapy in therapy, and how the process is going for you.

In therapy as I was relaying details to the therapist, I kept also saying "But obviously I dont know what else my parents could have done in that situation" and she just kept saying "You keep making excuses for your parents behaviour" It just left me feeling slightly angry at the therapist.

@yaaarrrp Feeling angry at the therapist is actually really normal and it can be really helpful to explore where that comes from. The truth is you are probably projecting something to do with yourself/ your parents, rather than the therapist.

The process of therapy is long and complicated and all these feelings do come into it, sometimes they get redirected towards the actual therapist. You just have to stick with it and keep going and try to explore what they are actually about.