How much should you tell your therapist?
This is a question which seems to have a fairly simple answer: everything.
That's what I figured anyway. The whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help me god, where's my Bible, I'll swear on it right now.
But maybe we should hold the Bible for the moment, because the real answer is more complicated. (As real answers tend to be, with their infinite shades of gray.)
Even if we wanted to share absolutely everything, that's not how life works. For starters, most of us can't remember even a fraction of everything even if we tried. The brain doesn't work that way. I can get mentally overloaded reading a fast food menu, so expecting to be able to share everything about events which happened years in the past is ambitious to the point of impossibility.
I've often found myself realizing days or even weeks after a session that I've omitted a fairly important piece of a story, simply because it didn't rise to consciousness while I was talking about it. In hindsight, that skews the angle of the story, often in ways which are a little more forgiving to myself than would otherwise be. I'm not aware of doing this in any way intentionally, in fact, my confessional urge forbids it.
Half the time therapy feels to me as if it should be conducted inside a partitioned wood box with a fun little window between me and the therapist. Saying however many Hail Mary's would probably be easier than actually doing therapy, which ends up with me sniveling like a three year old who broke her favorite toy more often than I'd like.
Unfortunately, therapy doesn't have absolution built in the way Catholicism does. It has all of the guilt and existential sadness, but none of the ritual to remove it. (And none of the sweet robes either.) This is particularly true for me, but even if you don't have a past so checkered you may as well have been a chess board factory, everyone has aspects of themselves and their lives they'd rather keep hidden in the shadows. It's just a matter of degree.
Therapy is often billed as a place where you can talk about anything you want, because it's a space outside your personal life, with someone ethically bound to keep your secrets. That sounds like a super sweet deal until you realize that within a matter of sessions you've come to not only care what your therapists thinks, but care deeply, and then you're back to square one all over again. Therapy is deeply personal, and at least for me, the connection with the therapist is profound and important. It would probably feel less risky to just pull some random passerby off the street and tell them some obscure terrible fact from my past than tell my therapist.
The truth of the truth of the matter is that there are plenty of things I want to share (for some bizarre reason which I really can't put down to any urge besides a confessional one,) but just kind of … can't. I rehearse it in my head, saying the thing - but even imagining it is too much to bear. Some of my reluctance is because I know that revealing some things will forever change how he sees me. In my mind, it's not that he might judge me, it's that he absolutely definitely will. And if he doesn't, then I'll have to judge him for failing to judge me and we'd be locked in a never ending cycle of judgment and non judgment until the end of days.
We've somewhat addressed this concern in therapy, where I have written long, dramatic spiels comparing myself to various underworld creatures (because why address something directly, when you can create an overly florid metaphor) and he has made comments about guilt and a sense of deserving punishment, which have completely derailed my thought processes. Do I feel guilty? Do I feel I deserve punishment? I am sure some people do punish themselves, but that's never really been my style. I'm more the unrepentant type, which is what makes the desire to say anything in the first place fairly odd. Or maybe I do feel I deserve punishment, what then? Do I just forgive myself? If I can just do that, then why do I need to say anything in the first place?
But maybe, it's not about confessions and guilt. Maybe it's about a desire to be known. Maybe it's about one place where I don't have to lock bits of myself up behind great iron walls with slavering, mentally unbalanced metaphorical hounds guarding them. Maybe there's some freedom and perhaps even redemption in being open and honest about the parts of oneself one most wants to hide. Maybe. I guess we'll see.
That's what I figured anyway. The whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help me god, where's my Bible, I'll swear on it right now.
But maybe we should hold the Bible for the moment, because the real answer is more complicated. (As real answers tend to be, with their infinite shades of gray.)
Even if we wanted to share absolutely everything, that's not how life works. For starters, most of us can't remember even a fraction of everything even if we tried. The brain doesn't work that way. I can get mentally overloaded reading a fast food menu, so expecting to be able to share everything about events which happened years in the past is ambitious to the point of impossibility.
I've often found myself realizing days or even weeks after a session that I've omitted a fairly important piece of a story, simply because it didn't rise to consciousness while I was talking about it. In hindsight, that skews the angle of the story, often in ways which are a little more forgiving to myself than would otherwise be. I'm not aware of doing this in any way intentionally, in fact, my confessional urge forbids it.
Half the time therapy feels to me as if it should be conducted inside a partitioned wood box with a fun little window between me and the therapist. Saying however many Hail Mary's would probably be easier than actually doing therapy, which ends up with me sniveling like a three year old who broke her favorite toy more often than I'd like.
Unfortunately, therapy doesn't have absolution built in the way Catholicism does. It has all of the guilt and existential sadness, but none of the ritual to remove it. (And none of the sweet robes either.) This is particularly true for me, but even if you don't have a past so checkered you may as well have been a chess board factory, everyone has aspects of themselves and their lives they'd rather keep hidden in the shadows. It's just a matter of degree.
Therapy is often billed as a place where you can talk about anything you want, because it's a space outside your personal life, with someone ethically bound to keep your secrets. That sounds like a super sweet deal until you realize that within a matter of sessions you've come to not only care what your therapists thinks, but care deeply, and then you're back to square one all over again. Therapy is deeply personal, and at least for me, the connection with the therapist is profound and important. It would probably feel less risky to just pull some random passerby off the street and tell them some obscure terrible fact from my past than tell my therapist.
The truth of the truth of the matter is that there are plenty of things I want to share (for some bizarre reason which I really can't put down to any urge besides a confessional one,) but just kind of … can't. I rehearse it in my head, saying the thing - but even imagining it is too much to bear. Some of my reluctance is because I know that revealing some things will forever change how he sees me. In my mind, it's not that he might judge me, it's that he absolutely definitely will. And if he doesn't, then I'll have to judge him for failing to judge me and we'd be locked in a never ending cycle of judgment and non judgment until the end of days.
We've somewhat addressed this concern in therapy, where I have written long, dramatic spiels comparing myself to various underworld creatures (because why address something directly, when you can create an overly florid metaphor) and he has made comments about guilt and a sense of deserving punishment, which have completely derailed my thought processes. Do I feel guilty? Do I feel I deserve punishment? I am sure some people do punish themselves, but that's never really been my style. I'm more the unrepentant type, which is what makes the desire to say anything in the first place fairly odd. Or maybe I do feel I deserve punishment, what then? Do I just forgive myself? If I can just do that, then why do I need to say anything in the first place?
But maybe, it's not about confessions and guilt. Maybe it's about a desire to be known. Maybe it's about one place where I don't have to lock bits of myself up behind great iron walls with slavering, mentally unbalanced metaphorical hounds guarding them. Maybe there's some freedom and perhaps even redemption in being open and honest about the parts of oneself one most wants to hide. Maybe. I guess we'll see.