Therapy 03.11.19 // cautious

T said that she has definitely thought for a long time that some of the things that happened in my childhood were wrong, but she couldn’t say anything because she needed me to be ready to see it too.

She asked me how I would have felt if we’d had this conversation a year ago. I think that must be one of her stupidest questions ever! How do I know how I would have felt a year ago? I threw my hands up at her and said “How can I answer that??” Then T said that she couldn’t put words into my mouth and she had to let me come to my own conclusions.

“I didn’t want to damage your family relationships by pushing you into thinking about things before you were ready. And I had to be careful not to put words in your mouth, and to let you come to your own conclusions.

I feel like she has been too cautious. I have felt that she doesn’t think anything very bad happened because she hasn’t picked up on any of the little things I mentioned, so I’ve concluded she can’t think they’re really that bad and I think I’ve felt shame that even though they weren’t really that bad I wasn’t able to cope with them better, and that has made it harder to fully talk about them which has kept me stuck in just dropping little mentions here and there and generally downplaying them.

I suppose a lifetime habit of keeping myself emotionally safe by microanalysing other people’s reactions and adjusting my own words and actions accordingly doesn’t disappear easily.