Alright, so upon completing blogs about my first 3 sessions, I realized that I have left out a couple of important to me details about the series of events.
The first of these is the personality of my therapist. While working to get a referral, my friend offered up a couple of different people. I asked her if she thought it mattered one way or the other. She said something like well, so and so is really nurturing and I’m not so sure about the other one. I then said to her, well I am not very nurturing so I am not sure if that means I need a nurture or not. LOL. She too didn’t really know, because she is a nurturer and wants a nurturer.
Anyhow, my therapist is NOT what I would call a nurturer and that is a good thing. My sister said if I was given a therapist that was a nurturer, after our first session, that therapist would have been left thinking “what the hell just happened here?” My therapist is good for me, she is bold and strong. She is loud, direct and that is exactly what I need.
Fast forward to sometime during my third therapy session, she gave me homework. One of my first goals in therapy is to be able to have a conversation with my ex about our communication. She gave me a sheet with four questions on it, she asked me to answer them honestly as if I was going to read the answers to my ex (which I will NOT actually be doing) then we would go over them at our next session. Well, I dropped the ball and lost my homework sheet.
I had to admit that at the beginning of my session, which wasn’t very easy for me to do. She told me no worries, gave me another sheet and told me we will discuss it at the next session instead.
So, instead we ended up spending a lot of that fourth session talking about the events of the previous week. The events of the previous weekend, that I had told her that I was having anxiety about. I told her how I navigated through the days.
What I remember most about that conversation with her was saying, “and then I felt like this, but I know that is my problem.” “My problem” being, I make plans and I stick to them or I make a schedule and I stick to it. So, when other people don’t, then I get anxious and can become visibly frustrated. My therapist said, I don’t think that you need to keep referring to this as a problem. It isn’t a problem that you like to stick to schedules and plans.
No, it certainly isn’t. Most of the time, my ability to stay on track with things keeps our crazy family manageable. It means that we are on time for things and usually have every last thing we need, plus some. “My problem” is how angry and frustrated I get. My reaction is what I have to learn to control. Not everyone has a need to stay on a schedule like I do and that is OK.
During this particular series of events, I paced around, but I don’t believe that I took out my frustration on anyone. Not until Paul and I were alone and I cried a few tears. At that point, he reached over grabbed me and said “you did really good.” Maybe someday I will be able to get to the point where I am not so emotional about it. I need to remember that day and time in future situations. I did better with it during that weekend of events because of therapy and hopefully it will continue to improve.
Making Time For Me 
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