Thursday, April 22, 2010

"Communication Breakdown"

On my way to my therapy session today I was thinking about how difficult is to be completely forthright, open, and honest with someone else, even my psychiatrist. I do not mean that it is difficult to try to tell the truth, or to try to open up. I believe I am as open/honest as I can be during each therapy session. I mean how difficult it is to be ACTUALLY completely honest with someone else, or even with myself for that matter.

Today I went in thinking I am going to completely let my guard down, and try to tell Dr. X. some of the things I have been deeply ashamed about doing, about allowing to continue, and about feeling. When I tried to get all the feelings and thoughts out in the open, they just sounded stupid as I heard them come out of my mouth.

Maybe it wasn't that the thoughts sounded stupid, rather that I sounded stupid for not valuing myself enough to put an end to some of the issues I am struggling with. Also, I felt really awkward, because as I blurted out what I needed to say it felt like what I was talking about, (what seemed so shameful), was no big deal. Why then was I so stressed out about what I wanted to say? I guess that "nothing" still seemed/seems, really painful to me.

I do not want to write the details about what is going on, because I need time to figure out my own perspective. It's complicated. It's about my relationship with my boyfriend, our difficulties communicating, the impact both of our mental illnesses have on each of our abilities and desires to communicate in a way that is meaningful to each of us.

It's about how our past experiences with trauma, physical, mental and sexual abuse, depression, drug abuse, and mental illnesses impact and affect our current lives, the way we think, the way we read and translate other people's body language, and how we interpret the actual words coming out of our partner's mouth.

Although I have always recognized the impact all the above have on communication, in my relationship now I am really becoming even more aware how even a simple sentence can mean so many different things depending on the context, the current state of the relationship between speaker and listener, the time of day, previous conversations, mood states, medication, lack of medication, sleep...and the list goes on...

Right now I am hoping I can improve my ability to communicate effectively. Maybe that will help both of us.

1 comment:

Richard Rice said...

Attempting to talk about the things that caused you so much emotional trauma is truly difficult. It's hard because talking about it would mean bringing back the feelings and remembering how it was like to be abused, insulted or taken advantaged of. Sometimes, talking about it can even intensify emotional problems. My sister had been diagnosed with clinical depression and she had a series of therapies with Dr. Robert A Moss. There had been days that were really difficult for her. Especially the sessions where she was asked to talk about the trauma that she had while growing up.I wont go into details because that's her story to tell. But, being the person beside her during her depression, I can say that it had been truly tough for her.

Right now, she had overcome her depression and is helping others as well. I wish you a successful therapy. Right now, might be hard but just hang in there. There will always be a way to solve things.