can you be a failure as a client?

honestly, can you?

this is a post that isn't going to be as funny as the title might indicate...of course if you aren't laughing then either you don't find me funny (it's ok, some people don't) or maybe it's a little too close to home...

so today i head back to my therapist, seems that for the duration i am going weekly...which is one of my many 'plans' in the period between now and when (and if) the big job becomes a reality (not that i won't have time for therapy then but i will be limited to weekends rather than mid week session)...and the reason for going weekly is that the events of the weekend before last, driven by the seemingly immovable fantasy of one young Sarah, were so difficult for me that i have decided i need to confront them head on and really work through them...

and now, during my very own 'holding pattern', seems like as good a time as any...so today was supposed to be the day we 'talked' to my 13 year old self, the one who was hurt and the one who still holds this 'boy' (and i say boy, coz when i formed this fantasy, he was a boy) out as someone she wants in her life, someone she thinks she loves, and someone she wants to be loved by....

but of course i had different plans...almost as soon as my bum hit the chair, i started off by recounting a phone call with my mother...and i made this little thing last for almost half of the session and even though i know i need to focus on the 'other stuff' i just wasn't that keen to go there...

but my therapist wasn't fooled - some time into my recounting of said phone call with the female parent, she says to me 'are you sure you want to be talking about this?' and honestly, i'm not...i tell her i'm not...she then asks about the 'suggestion' from last week (her suggestion to do some empty chair work with my 13 year old self...the suggestion that even as she is saying it, she knows will test me, and which she quickly follows with 'i'm sure you'll consider not coming back'...)....

so she asks me if i want our therapy to be a place where i can talk about Chris, about the fantasy, about the hold it has over me, about the compulsion it seems to feed somewhere in me...and i say yes, wholeheartedly i do because i do want to be able to feel better about it...not have the derailing kind of events, and one day to not see a black 4WD Mercedes that makes my heart skip a beat...:-( when i'm feeling sad and lonely (not too often) i don't want to walk into the street, and fantasise that he's there waiting for me, to tell me that he loves me...

i just don't want that crap in my life anymore...i am done! but of course i'm not really, so the therapy is my way of getting there...

so eventually i get comfortable enough to tell her the reason that i have babbled on today in the hope that she would have forgotten about the empty chair...i tell her that the reason i don't want to do it, is because i don't think i'll be good at it...

there, it's out! a weight feels lifted off my shoulders and as always, she is a little surprised - seems that i am a client with multiple layers (i have some of these myself, clients that is) and whilst our therapeutic relationship has come a long long way, it seems there is still something i haven't shared with her...and this is it...

fuck, when i write it, it's kinda sad! who is afraid of not being good at something in therapy? afraid of being a failure as a client....

sooo it's out...i really don't like failing, or looking like failing or even there being a hint that i haven't got my shit together...and no wonder really, old habits die hard...

sooo my homework this week is simply to observe just how hard i work in relationships (even when i may not want to) and just how available i am (case in point re Chris)....

gonna be a lot of observing goin' on this week!

and now to bed...

ps dream last night was bloody weird, not enough time to do it justice but essentially it was a conversation between me and Chris, i was asking him for something for me, he agreed, but it wasn't him physically...it was AL (a guy i had a crush on years ago)....