CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

WEDNESDAY MORNING'S EMAIL TO THE THERAPIST:



I guess this will be my last attempt to communicate my current problem to you. I will be as plain and clear as I possibly can and maybe then you will understand.

I am afraid to talk to you. I still seem to have a problem from that old incident of ours that created so much trouble. The problem is mostly that I am worried that it might happen again if I remember something very, very upsetting. If you finally read the depression post I linked you to in the last email, maybe you saw how triggers can encourage me to avoid you. There's more to it than that, though. If I think something is going on with you (personal things or upcoming vacations) that might cause you to behave that way toward my possible distress, it makes me even more avoidant. I am trapped in a place where I cannot talk to anyone about how I feel because I am afraid of what will happen if I do that.

I have tried and failed to communicate this to you via email, but I am too afraid to talk to you. Having failed to get the point across has also made the anger about the old incident come back. I have tried to reread what I wrote to you in order to determine if I communicated clearly, but I don't have the ability to read it objectively anymore. Confusion abounds. I AM STUCK. I am stuck thinking I should talk to you, yet I am unable to until I get unstuck. I don't know how to get unstuck. I have been emailing you hoping that you can somehow help me get unstuck, but you have not seemed to understand what it is that I am saying.

Furthermore, I have been obsessed with thoughts of disease. Strangely, that doesn't prevent me from smoking, but sometimes I am convinced that I will develop a deadly disease if I talk to you. Sometimes I think that it is the other way around and I might become deathly ill if I stay trapped in myself and that that's what will happen if I don't talk to you. I know I won't talk to anyone else, either. I don't trust anyone. People suck. I am not so naive as to think that there is anything stopping anyone else from behaving exactly the same way to me that you did that day. I know better. You are not that special. Society is very widely afflicted by the same attitude that gained control of your behavior the day of our old incident.

I sincerely hope this is clear and understandable.

If for some reason you are unable to offer up anything that could help me out of this mess, then just cancel all of our appointments because there is nowhere to go from here. If you can help me, write whatever you have and charge me for the time it takes you to do that. Please include the amount somewhere in your reply. Being nuts is no reason for sloppy finances.