My meditation journal

[Thittato]

8th and 9th session in therapy

So 8th and 9th session in therapy has also been completed. This was a big rupture in a way. Up until class 8th I have really liked this therapy and this therapist, and everything in my life has seemed to become so much better, and this is what I was telling my therapist about and which she was supportive about while simultaneously finding relevant gestalt therapy exercises and ways of focusing our sessions related to tensions and stuff I had collected during my up-bringing. 

But this time (8th session) while she was listening to how happy I was about the therapy, she seemed to be saying to in her eyes it seemed like I needed something more, and she was very specific about what I needed, and that was, from another therapist education she has, they have this exercise about writing a long and detailed letter to one of your parents you have a difficult relationship with, and in my case my father. So I was supposed to do this as homework, and I really didn't like this exercise but my therapist has a somewhat bit of an authoritarian energy sometimes, and it kind of felt that I didn't really have a choice (which of course I did). But anyways, I went home reluctant about this but decided to go about it, so I wrote 4 A4-pages about all the things I wanted to ask about forgiveness for from my dad, all the negative stuff he had done, all the positive stuff he had done, and all the things I was grateful about. The 1 week in between session 8th and 9th, I was so extremely consumed by this material, and I was really frustrated because this wasn't where I wanted to bring my focus, and it didn't feel like this was where my energy was naturally flowing, and I felt I had been somewhat forced into this stupid exercise. So anyways,  when we met again, I was so out of myself and so much in process, and I told her all about how I felt, and I was met in a pretty nice and understanding way - she didn't become defensive. So we projected my father into a chair in front of me and I read this letter for him while she was there witnessing and being supportive and commenting when necessary, and I felt a little bit better after we finished that session, but still after this I've been really floundering in this material, and I'm feeling really angry at this therapist. We didn't schedule a new session since I'm going to go on a meditation retreat from Wednesday over the weekend, so I'm certainly going to use some time to decompress and sort out what happened, but I might not go back to her at all, and I think maybe I should seek out some type of life-coaching instead. I've spent a lot of time working on my parents before in therapy, and at those times we followed my focus where it naturally wanted to go and there was a real need to process my experiences with my parents, but this time it felt forced upon me from the outside, and I really didn't appreciate it all. But maybe I can see it in a positive way as a last attempt to really wring out some charged therapeutic stuff, and then I can rather continue with bringing my focus into focusing on the life I want to build for myself, and not wallowing around in my childhood for forever.

Yeah, so it really, really sucked.