Dear Cali Chica:

In regard to seeing a psychotherapist, I suggest that you make a list of questions to ask a psychotherapist in a process of interviewing her or him for the job. Questions about her values, her beliefs. For example, she may be a person who believes a person needs to remain in contact with a parent no matter what or in most circumstances except the most extreme (blood and broken bones kind of extreme). This may be what she, the therapist, is doing in her life.

A therapist with such a belief can be intelligent and helpful in many ways, you can have many good sessions with her, but then a lot of it will go down the drain at one point on. So better ask questions first, questions that are put together in such a way as to bring about honest, clear answers (and if there is no clarity, well, there is information right there).

Regarding the rest of your recent post, you wrote: “I am at a road block, plateau… the next step is to possibly one day feel better… I have tremendous emotional pain that is repressed, and extreme difficulty releasing it… it has become my baseline state.. numbing… Her words… I say out loud, well that’s nothing… the baseline is anxious, and fearful… It is stuck like concrete.. I no longer know how to just ‘feel’… I do not recall true joy… (People) can be excited and happy.. I can not ”

I repeat what you wrote, typing it, because you express yourself so well and because it helps me process what you expressed.

Yes, this kind of work requires the context of therapy with a capable therapist, take its first steps in the context of that much needed professional relationship. It takes being present with a person you highly value and trust, to ease that baseline state, to release the strong hold fear has on multitude of neuropathways in one’s brain. It takes a substitute mother, really,  in psychotherapy. This is why it is so important to adequately interview that person first.

It takes the very experience of safety, in that professional relationship, for your brain, bit by bit, let go of the belief that you are still in danger.

Frozen in fear is a term people use. Fear does freeze our ability to feel anything much. The most accessible feeling for the very anxious is anger. Seems like every other feeling, maybe even anger, will simply destroy us, that we can not endure it. There is a felt belief that a feeling in itself is dangerous.

The ultimate purpose after all is to feel good. Pay attention to your breathing, right now, if you will. Is it constricted? Relax it. How does it feel?

anita