Therapy and 'Letting Go'

"The capacity to express feelings spontaneously is essential for mental health, and to develop this capacity, and to benefit from therapy, we need to learn to 'let go' in the sessions; to relinquish conscious control of what we say and allow thoughts and feelings to emerge freely from inside us. Learning to let go is therapeutic in itself because it is part of the process of learning to be ourselves in the company of others"

just wanted to share an informative article i found. it's ironic in a sense, because AvPD is the very definition of not being able to 'let go' and be ourselves with others, but as i've just started therapy it's given me a little more insight into the ways i myself can't let go (in therapy AND my day-to-day life), and hopefully can recognise when i employ these tactics:

"Some manifestations of resistance to letting go:

Silence. Resistance to letting go can show itself in many ways. Perhaps the simplest is to find that our minds are blank and we have nothing to say. Quite long periods of silence can ensure, sometimes taking up most of a session, or even carrying across several sessions.

Self-censorship. Another kind of resistance is when we discard some of our spontaneous thoughts with counter-thoughts such as, 'That is too trivial to be worth saying,' or, 'I couldn't possibly say that!'

Clinging to reason. Another manifestation of resistance can be to persist in engaging the therapist in intellectual discussion.

Evasion. There can also be a kind of pseudo-letting go, when we launch into a stream of thoughts and feelings which seems genuinely important but is really, if we are honest with ourselves, a way of diverting attention away from the real issues."

i'm all about 'clinging to reason' personally, but i didn't really realise i was doing it until recently. i might just be utterly stupid in not noticing it, but the info was/is useful to me, so i thought it may be useful to others and i'd share.

happy new year to everyone too =)

full article:
http://insidetherapy.blogspot.com/2006/ ... ng-go.html

I engage in all four manifestations.

Silence is what happens when 'chit chatting' with certain people makes me nervous the most. In my case usually people of the opposite sex. My mind is simply blank and even when someone tries initiating some kind of communication i often don't go beyond just responding to the thing they said.

Self-censorship happens at all times with everyone. I censor anything that may reveal something personal or may be even slightly prone to causing conflict.

Clinging to reason is what i do with "professionals" a.k.a. therapists, psychologists etc. People that actually know i have issues but where i still can't "let go".

Evasion, like self-censorship, can manifest itself at any given time when someone may be leading a conversation into a direction i don't like.