Soon

So I am leaving for my session in twenty minutes. It is at 2.45. I am a nervous wreck. Shaking and have hardly managed any work. I am going to have to work Saturday. That is okay though. What is not okay is for this to happen again. I have things I need and want to get done at work for the sake of my future career. My career is important to me, it grounds and steadies me, gives me a sense of purpose and fulfillment, it gives me financial stability, and in my work I am making small (and quite big sometimes) differences in the world. I want to be able to focus more on it. I am sick of spending so many days in survival. I am good at getting it together enough to get done what I absolutely need to even when in crisis, but over the summer I have to be more driven due to less externally set goals. I want to be able to do this. I don’t want someone else to have this much power over me. I am on 5 year probation in my job and I have targets and also things I want to do. I don’t want to be an anxious wreck because of someone else. I grew up with that. I don’t want it anymore.

So these are the things I want to hold in mind as I prepare for my session:

1. A break from therapy may be a good idea so I can take a break from being triggered and can focus on work and my daughter and summer-time stuff and getting my immune system under control. So if K suggests that (based on her health needs) then I will be triggered for a few days but I will be okay.
2. I am good (brilliant in fact) at taking responsibility for my part in things and in the past have gone to session fully prepared to apologise and acknowledge my mistakes, but this time I genuinely feel she was in the wrong to call me in that state and I am not going to let go of that just to ‘save’ our relationship.
3. I NEED to learn it is okay (aka safe) to tell people when I am hurt by them and when I feel they’ve let me down without them getting angry, upset or going away. This has to be part of the work I do in therapy and if K can’t provide that then this is a deal-breaker for me (and as Amber says – knowing I need this is in therapy shows how much I’ve grown!). She has not shown me so far, consistently at least, that she is able to do this (hence why I emailed in the first place I guess) so my concerns here are definitely legitimate. We’ve had some ruptures where she has let me down and seen this and apologised, but me telling her (twice, I think) have been definite sticking points.
4. I was BRAVE to tell her how I felt that day, and to do it in a non-triggered and non-ranting way was a huge sign of progress.
5. If K and I stop working together it may take months, even years, of grieving, but one day I will look back on all the wonderful work we’ve done together and remember her as the first person who noticed the parts and provided them with safety. It will not all be lost, even if it feels that way at the time.

I’m not getting ahead of myself and assuming any of the above will happen, a large part of me thinks we will be fine and young parts will learn to trust her again, but it is important for me to remember and hold on to my truth and what I need from therapy at this time,and to remember I am paying a lot of money and putting in a lot of energy and I need to get out of it what I need long-term, even if that means a choice that hurts like hell in the medium term. And also that my worst case scenario is something I can handle, even though if and when it happens it will feel like I can’t.