[Celyn]

I think it's worth mentioning the fact that you shut down after the session. I definitely understand your concerns of bringing up how you feel, in hope that a therapist agrees, as I understand that when a therapist disagrees it can feel quite heart-breaking when you have been vulnerable opening up. While therapy can feel difficult at times, I personally don't believe it should leave you feeling shut down/spacey for a few days. When I was in therapy, my counsellor had a way of making sure I was okay at the end of the session and focusing on what to do afterwards to look after myself.

You didn't waste your time talking about work. Though it seems like you were so busy trying to explain things that you didn't have enough time to talk through how you felt. It's also understandable needing extra time to think about how you actually feel. I think this is worth bringing up with your therapist. It can help talking about things, but I wonder if your therapist can perhaps try to help guide you through the session so that you aren't left with only a few minutes to talk about how you feel?

I, too, have been told by therapists that I am insightful. I can provide a lot of personal insight into my thought processes, feelings, actions, and theories about the world around me. But I understand that perhaps because of coming across as insightful, your real struggles are being missed. Do you think it might help to let your therapist know that you realise you are able to talk factually about things, but when it comes to emotions, you struggles to identify your own? Though I can't diagnose as I'm not a professional, it might be possible that you may be experiencing alexithymia- and your therapist might be able to help you with this.

There isn't really a wrong way to do therapy. It's okay if you realise that you don't experience emotions to certain things, but then experience them at other times or that it takes you a while to process what you want to say or that you don't know what to say when asked how you feel about something. Ideally, therapy should take your needs into consideration.

It's good that you are blogging and writing during the week- especially when it's a stream of consciousness. I do this too and have found it quite helpful. I do understand that the topics you want to talk about and the topics you do end up talking about can be quite different. Especially if it's about the past and you feel your defences going up. I'm wondering if your therapist is aware of your defences- making jokes, getting distracted? Perhaps you can ask her to point it out to you when this is happening so that you can stay on track? And if you feel shut down, let her know that you are feeling this way, so that she can work with you to help you recover from being shut down. Is it at all possible to include writing things down during a session, when you are struggling a bit? It seems like writing is a strength to you and perhaps being able to focus by writing when talking about a difficult topic might help a bit? It's also perfectly okay to not refer to something as abuse and instead just say 'hurtful things'. What happened was hurtful towards you, so it doesn't matter whether you use the word 'abuse' or not. Maybe you can try describing what happened rather than using phrases? Of course, if you don't feel ready to talk about things or feel scared/vulnerable for whatever reason, then I understand not wanting to talk about the experiences directly and instead using phrases.

Since you feel it would be helpful, I'm wondering if maybe you could ask your therapist, perhaps at the end of the session, for questions or topic points to talk about in advance of the next session so that you have time to think and prepare? I, too, prefer knowing what to talk about in advance, so I don't believe it's an unreasonable request.

It's good that you have an email opportunity, but I understand that 1 email per week may feel quite limiting. Do you think it might help to email the day/night before your next session? You could use your blogs/writing, and think about what you really want to say and edit it so that's precisely what you want to talk about and not topics that you might get distracted with. You could write in depth about what you want to cover, and then perhaps highlight key words/phrases for specific areas to focus on?

I understand that you've not been with this therapist very long and I don't want to dissuade you, but if you ever consider a new therapist, might it be worth thinking about one that offers email counselling? This might help you as you'll have time to think about what you want to say and time to respond and maybe stay focused on the topic a bit more allowing you to reach the deeper things as opposed to the surface stuff? I know for me, my ideal therapist, would be one that offers such a thing and preferably responds equally in depth

Hope this helps a bit