I am going for hypnoanalyst counselling this week.

[FourFortyFour]

Thats great FFF, hope it works for you, tell us how you get on
I listen to anxiety hypnosis CDs sometimes and find they help me but would love to try hypnosis but there is no one in my area, good luck.

I will, I am scared whether she will like me or not, if I will feel comfortable with her, whether she will judge me.

444 - to start with, she won't judge you. She is a professional counsellor - she is there to help you.
Whether or not you will "click" with her is another matter - but if you don't, then you are at liberty to find another counsellor.
She is unlikely to let you know whether or not she "likes" you as that is slightly against the professional code - but she will let you know if she thinks you two are incompatible as a therapeutic "team". But that goes both ways - if you think you are incompatible, then you should tell her as well.

Remember this is a service for which you are paying - you deserve to get the right person for it.

As for feeling comfortable - most counsellors aim to have a relaxed and safe environment in their rooms so that clients do feel comfortable - but if anything makes you ill at ease, speak up about it.

Good luck - and relax! If you hype yourself up too much before you get there, you run the risk of jeopardising a good outcome - stay calm and positive about this step and wait and see how it goes. :)

I have highlighted two things that I really want resolving and I hope she can help me. One is massive and one is stupid.

Hypno-therapy is AMAZING in my opinion. You'll be fine. Relax and enjoy!

I wasn't really thinking that I would enjoy it .

Perhaps hypno-counselling is different, more involved, than hypnotherapy. I just meant that the feeling of being under hypnosis is actually very relaxing and calming. I hope it goes well for you :) I'm having my second CBT session tomorrow and I must admit I share your worries about 'do they like me?', 'does he think my problems are silly?' etc. But ho hum. These things are good for us and these people are trained to help.

I am still scared of being cured .

444 - that's a very valid fear - your reaction to whatever it is that happened to you makes you the person you are now - it's understandable to be a bit afraid of finding out who you are if you "fix" the reactionary stuff, iyswim.

But remember that this is hypnotherapy - it's not "You are going to bark like a dog every time you hear the ice cream van bell" hypnosis - it will only help you to fix the things that your mind wants to be fixed. Your mind shouldn't allow you to do anything that will cause itself harm.

Talk to your therapist about your fear - they will help you to work through whether or not it is actually better for you to "fix" your situation.

I am scared that I don't want to get over this problem and therefore it won't work. And if I don't want to get over it what does that mean? If I do get over it I am going to hate the time wasted not being over it. I feel forced to live.

OK, well you need to start by discussing that with your therapist.
But I would say this - regretting the time you spent not being over it is futile.
I do think that sometimes people only decide to find a way to try and get over something when they're ready - and if they had tried to force themselves before this time, then they wouldn't have been ready then and it definitely wouldn't have worked.

But when you do decide to take that step, chances are that you are ready to make the change - and so you will.

I am making notes as I think about things I want to talk about with her. One thing has been nearly 20 years and I haven't even come close to getting over it. Another thing is 25 years and I doubt I ever will.

That's a very good idea, to make notes. But you will find that things take their own natural order. And you might not ever get over these things, that's true - but you might find a different way to deal with them so that you can move on better from them, who knows.
Good luck with it anyway - if it's helping you to get your head round it for me to keep answering, I'm happy to do so. :)

Your kindness has made me cry. I am so messed up and so damn angry with myself.

hey, no need to be angry. Things happen in their own time - this is your time.
Make the most of it - and stay strong, things could get hairy but if you put your "stuff" back in the box now, when it's obviously fighting to get out and be sorted, then you probably will be cross with yourself.

So it isn't a lost cause when it has been so long and still not resolved? I know I am in denial about a lot of things.

I don't want to talk about my mother in counselling as I - well currently can't put that in to words.

I am in denial that that little girl that had things happen to her was actually me. I will fight for her but won't acknowledge it was me.

I emailed the samaritans once but they couldn't understand me. I feel no one will. DH does but he can't help me.

no, definitely not a lost cause.
When did you become a parent yourself, am I right in remembering it was quite recent? That might have sparked the need to "re-parent" your child self, who you have separated from your adult self. I can understand why you have done that.
This therapy you have will hopefully allow you to re-integrate your child self but there will probably be a lot of forgiveness required along the way, even to yourself. Even though you know intellectually that none of it was your fault, there may be some emotional residue that believes it was your child self's fault.

But I am surmising an awful lot here.

My children are 10, 7 and 5 and it was only when I had my first child that I was diagnosed with PND but I am sure I had depression before that. I had PND after every child and AND with one of them.

I used to still do? - feel it was my fault I was a girl when my mother wanted a boy.

Ah 444 - the therapist will be able to help you with that, I'm sure. It certainly was NOT your fault you were a girl - if anyone were to "blame" it would be your dad but of course it's not his fault either - it's a random 50% chance. The only person to blame is your mother for refusing to accept a daughter in place of a son.

Whatever followed as a result of her "disappointment" is also entirely down to her. She made her choice to be dissatisfied and she made, IMO, the wrong one.

Anyway - not trying to "therapise" you on here - I should leave it to the paid professional! But I hope it is helping you to clarify some stuff ready for when you see her/him.

My mother made her decision and left me on the doorstep when I was a baby.

When I started my therapy last year I felt like it was my last chance but while it helped short term I am still having the same difficulties now. Admittedly some are of my own doing as I am pathetic but I just want to be well. I want to feel happy.

Sweetheart, you are not pathetic. Start off by giving yourself a break here - you had a rotten start in life by having a mother abandon you because you were the wrong sex or whatever. Her failing.

Sometimes counselling itself isn't enough, and deeper therapies are needed - hypnotherapy is a good option, because it accesses the unconscious mind; NLP therapy (as opposed to life coaching) can be another for the same reason and because it can access your belief system and change it, if that's what you really want and need. You do appear to want and need to change things - but just need help to make the changes work for you.

I would also say that I had counselling for a few years - and I didn't really make any progress until I was 2y in, when suddenly things started to shift. I have a friend who had the same experience, and my counsellor (also my tutor) said that it can easily take that long before the shift starts, because of all the walls we build up to protect ourselves/ keep us strong despite the damage.

But the real making of change for me came when I trained in NLP - it really cuts through the surface thoughts and protections and gets down to the nitty gritty of what we believe about ourselves, and how we can change that. I don't know so much about hypnoanalysis but the trance state is used in NLP as well to help get to the unconscious mind and I know from experience that the unconscious mind is aMAZing in what it can do.

You have lived with your feelings and situation for a very long time now - it's not going to change overnight - it's kind of like peeling the layers off an onion, you have to peel them all off to get to the kernel of the matter and deal with it and sometimes that can take a while.

I definitely think I have been scared of opening the box but my way hasn't worked so far.

Most people who have boxes are scared of opening them. One of the most powerful things I did in NLP had me shaking and crying before doing it - and that was only while we were discussing the process! But of course, as part of the training, we were supposed to then practise the exercise and that was what had me going. But my teacher saw me, ended the class a little early, sent everyone else off and basically cornered me and made me do it.
I had some kind of barrier well in place against the feelings that were coming up - but he was a very skilled NLP therapist as well as teacher and he managed to get me past the barrier where I found the "feeling" that I'd suppressed for so long. And then the exercise took me through that and out the other side to the most fantastic place. Well worth it, one of the most amazing experiences of my life and very liberating. It also made me damn certain that I would never inflict that feeling on my DS (not that I had him then, but I remember it so well, when he came along I made sure he wouldn't get the same).

I had one client who had been put through terrible times with her mother. She had dreadful issues herself because of it, but the box lid kept fighting to be removed - and every time it did, she would sink into the most dreadful depression, rage at everyone and everything, to the point where she had to be admitted to a psych unit for everyone's safety. But she could not, would not, dare not ever let the lid off the box - every time it came loose, she clamped it down hard - and it made her so unwell.

If you like to think of it another way, it's like a festering pus-filled wound. You can keep covering it up, hoping that it will go away, but until it's exposed to the air, cleaned and allowed to heal, it's going to go on chewing away at your flesh, even if you can't see it - and it's going to hurt you all the more while it's not healing. Could even go gangrenous, or give you septicaemia - physical wounds need to be healed so they don't inflict more damage, and the same goes for mental wounds.

thumbwitch - I have a really bad headache and can't concentrate on your last post but I will read it when I get back.

I think I have been scared to really open up and face my demons for want of a better word because I haven't had any faith that the counsellor understood me.

One gave me the creeps, one tried to bully me, one said I was annoying her and one wouldn't answer questions or make any suggestions so I was lost.

thumbwitch - what you said makes perfect sense and describes me well. I am scared as I know I will have wasted so much time being ill.