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?

Therapy is a process, and it seems that you are at a particular sensitive point.

Have you tried art therapy? You don’t have to be able to draw! You could draw little characters and symbols to represent key events from your life in a sequential line. Then you talk through it with your therapist.

Sometimes this helps clients who find it impossible to verbalise certain events or feelings.

I could have written this myself!
When I first started therapy, I was the same. Really disconnected from my feelings - telling my story as A story rather than connecting the protagonist to my inner self. I could talk about my childhood with no emotion as it's a protective mechanism to dissociate from those feelings and memories and make them feel external to us.
At one stage early on, my therapist even challenged me, thinking I wasn't interested or engaged as I wasn't showing much emotion.
Once you start to resurface and work through those memories and align them with who you are now, I hope (like me) you will be begin to listen to your body and understand and express your feelings more. It's a process but the discomfort you currently feel might be because it's working! It does take time. A year or so on and I felt so much more connected to who I am and why I am the way I am and I am able to express it, and my therapist was bursting with pride!
Keep going OP, you're doing well!
Sending positive thoughts

Your therapist won't bat an eyelid at what you say. She's there to help. I don't know what kind of therapy you're having, but this is my story.

A year ago I went downhill for a variety of health reasons. Felt there was no future. (I'm 76) Then someone suggested hypnotherapy. The chap I saw is brilliant. I'm a new person. Totally non-judgemental and all he wants to do is help.
That's what your therapist is for. Be open with her, hard though it might be. A little at a time. Fingers crossed for you.

I think it’s difficult to be open in therapy when one has feelings that one is ashamed of. In my own therapy this has been true: feelings I KNOW that others will find horrible, selfish and so on, so I have buried them and when it’s time to look at them afresh, it’s hard to express them.

Also I recognise the conflict you describe: your mum didn’t mean to make you feel the way you do, she had hard choices, she had her own reasons and so on. It’s you that has got it wrong/shouldn’t feel this way as she was doing her best.

However I have come to understand that, whatever the reasons my mum had, I am allowed to have my own, valid, feelings, and it isn’t shameful to talk about them. Also I realise that my mum didn’t encourage me to have or talk about feelings, so doing so is “against” her. There is a conflict when someone you love who loves you behaves in a way that is inconsistent with that love and as a child one always blames oneself. So one is trained not to make a fuss, and it’s against the rules to speak out.

I promise your therapist won’t find the feelings shameful. For me, talking about all of this, finally, still leaves me trying to understand that I can’t resolve it with my parents, but since I identified it and raised it in therapy I have felt much much lighter. Good luck.

'I think it’s difficult to be open in therapy when one has feelings that one is ashamed of'

Absolutely. And you are dealing with vast amounts of shame OP. You said that you were very angry as a teen - this is not unusual - but also that no one was able to contain that anger for you and make space for it. So you may have learned subconsciously that anger is BAD, and if I have a lot of anger then I am BAD too. You've also learned that your self-centredness and single mindedness as a teen and young person were BAD, rather than part of a totally normal developmental stage

You're showing great bravery by confronting all of this in therapy. Please do share how you are feeling with your therapist. She will be able to make space for your feelings in a way that sadly many others in your life have not

That's not what I was saying at all. Of course, when starting therapy no one can foresee the entire process. If they did they wouldn't really need a therapist at all. Difficult stuff only appears once someone has made the brave step of engaging in a therapeutic relationship. It's a leap of faith, but there are recognisable stages and dynamics that the therapist will be well prepared for.

I wish the OP luck and urge them to keep going.

Thank you for all the replies, it is very interesting to read about everyone's experiences.

I have discussed some really difficult things already in my appointments. Childhood ACEs stuff. And that was okay and I think helpful, in that it I think I feel more relaxed and trust the therapist more for example.

I am extremely emotionally controlled when I discuss those really 'risky' topics and genuinely have no idea how to experience devastation in front of someone else.

So there are just a couple of things I feel like I can never go there, even though I've talked about similar but less potent examples that don't really fuck me up as much, even though at face value they are grim and they are true.

It's all stuff that has made me wonder if I have an inherent lack of worth, I suppose?

Normally I just try to nod a sort of acceptance at those things that make me feel this lack of worth - it feels like voicing them gives them power?

Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?

Which makes me think well, that's because they're not unfounded beliefs you are right you do lack worth, best not to draw attention to it

Yeah, this is why I know I need to keep going...

"Normally I just try to nod a sort of acceptance at those things that make me feel this lack of worth - it feels like voicing them gives them power?"

Voicing them acknowledges they exist - and then turn your back on them and ignore them. Visualise them disappearing into little puffs of smoke, annoyed that you've taken away their power over you. Or write them on bits of paper and burn them.

Hi OP, I just wanted to jump in on this part:

"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."

IANA therapist, but I've had a bunch of hugely useful talking therapy in my life. It's my hunch that your fullest healing will happen when you do talk about these 'unspeakable' memories. Firstly, you should not feel as though you need to 'maintain composure' in therapy sessions. I sobbed and choked and had my throat close up and blew distressed little snot bubbles in front of my therapist and it did help me heal. (She was not at all shocked or disgusted either!) When we are getting to the core wounds it is not pretty and it's not meant to be.

Secondly, I also felt at times that I would be devastated beyond return, or as I said it "will start sobbing and will never be able to stop and will DIE!" I really relate to this! Needless to say that this point of no return doesn't actually exist. You've ALREADY survived what happened to you. There's no way that vocalising the experience will destroy you when the experience itself did not... Please express how you feel to your therapist and work towards being able to 'go there' - I'm absolutely sure that it will ultimately help you if you can get past the wall you've built in your mind.

Wish you all the best and really rooting for you - it takes a lot of courage to 'do this work' and you are really doing it. Well done!

Reading your beautiful words just brought me to tears. I feel I could have written your words myself. You have actually expressed yourself so clearly. I'm sorry, I know how sore and sad this is. 💐

But sometimes, it feels like some of the things that are the "worst" memories, in terms of making me feel I will lose control emotionally (so must be avoided) are pretty silly and insignificant?

It is very hard to capture the overall sense of - in this instance - living with a man who was not your father and was confusingly ambivalent towards you, but the odd time chillingly frightening, when you are two or three years old.

The individual incidents that are committed to memory aren't even that frequent or extreme. And then a bit older I got really good at mentally building a force field to shut out the contempt.

This is why I feel faulty, I feel like maybe there is something wrong with me to have absorbed and internalised the regular bouts of contempt from somebody who was just depressed and impatient and not actively trying to hurt me (well except sometimes, I think trying to be a bit mean). But mostly did not mean any harm and paid my school fees and drove me to school.

Other people would have been tougher and stronger and not taken it as personally?

I feel if I am emotionally destroyed remembering these things with a witness the therapist will be like wtf is that it?

My reaction feels wrong, so i must be wrong.

Kind of using the thread as a stream of consciousness now and hope that's ok, it is helpful in thinking how I might broach the issue with the therapist, if I can get up some courage too.

*courage to, ffs.

Honestly OP, I'd print this out and email it ahead of your next session.

You are actually expressing yourself beautifully here :)

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

I apologised to my best friend for being such a selfish, self obsessed misery during our teenage years together. She said “were you? I didn’t notice. I was too obsessed with my own problems”

Most teenagers are selfish, or at least, self obsessed. There’s a lot of hard work in your teens, finding where you fit into the world. No need to feel guilty.

remembering these things with a witness the therapist will be like wtf is that it? You’re a very severe judge of yourself, aren’t you?

The therapist won’t judge you, just as the people on this thread aren’t judging you. I’m just feeling enormous sympathy for you at the enormity of what’s going on inside you.

You are not faulty. Your brain has done a really clever job at helping you to carry on going, by putting some of this stuff away.
It's also ok to know that your mum was a good person, and also that your needs weren't met.
Also if you were really young, you might not have words for what happened to you, because you didn't know the words. Your body has remembered instead. Please talk to your therapist about what you have posted here. It's likely she will be aware of some of what you have said already.
You are really courageous to be carrying on, and to say what you have said here.

Just to add, to some degree I feel uncomfortable all the time: if I don’t talk about these feelings I feel I am somehow letting myself down as, at some level, I want to expose them (or perhaps just feel that’s what therapy is for so I SHOULD). So not talking is Bad, and I feel bad.

But talking is against the rules, my parents behaved as they did because that’s how they were brought up, and didn’t mean harm. Their own flaws mean we can’t talk it through so I get closure. So if I decide TO talk, I’m going against the family norms and being the difficult child I was told I was: so talking is Bad, and I feel bad.

In therapy we talked about that feeling of being ‘bad’ being, in a sense, not comfortable but known, familiar. So you feel you can manage it because you know it. Not sure I am explaining that very well but it was liberating to realise it.

@CrapExplainer Thinking about @Theoscargoesto post above - I do think "rules" about talking apply to a therapist. Just as you are OK, to some degree, talking to us on here, because we're an anonymous forum, no-one knows who you are or who you're talking about, the same applies to a therapist, who is professionally bound not to repeat anything you say or make any attempt to find out who you're talking about. So it's OK to talk. And it's OK not to talk.

I doubt if the therapist is “blaming” anyone. She/he just needs to unravel your thoughts and feelings and how other peoples responses influenced you. Then you can start putting it all back together with a more positive outlook