Today's Therapy - If I was an Orange, I'd be Orange Juice about now.

Actor Crush of the Day:Tom Welling

Today's appointment got off to an awkward start . . . . Lots of "ums", and silence. I finally spit it out, though. After a bit of interchange, and some more silence, and starting to freak out in a panic attack, then came the Question. If anyone outside the office had heard it, you wouldn't even think it that odd or deep, even for two friends discussing the subject. But in the context of therapy, and the relationship between him and I (nothing inappropriate, just the unique depth of interaction that is inherent in the therapeutic relationship), and the absolute horror I felt inside at this question, something New in my psychological experience occurred.

I felt a tightening, in my chest. As though a purse-string was being tightened up. And I shifted around a bit, and breathed, although I couldn't expand my lungs fully due to the tightening. It rapidly progressed to a hard squeezing. Everything was squeezing so hard inside my upper torso; it was getting tighter, and more and more difficult to breathe. The squeezing restricted, further and further, my ability to draw a breath. I expressed my difficulties to the ologist; he could see I was enduring something, and I, in short bursts as I was rather . . . in distress by this time, let him know what was going on. It became extremely uncomfortable, in a painful way, but the pain is difficult to describe. And of course further panic at not feeling able to breathe didn't help any, either . . . . I shifted my lower body forward on the couch, and sunk my upper body lower down into the couch, and tilted my head back, in an effort to mitigate the restriction on my lungs. And of course there was alot of grimacing and a few gutteral noises of effort in relation to the squeezing and breathing difficulties. All this happening within the space of, say, 30 seconds or so, from the first tightening.

My ologist then said, in about the most safe, nurturing, confident voice that one could imagine, "Let's get you back to a safe place." He talked, for a minute or two, with me answering a few short answers here and there, and fought the squeezing, in my mind. Really, really hard. I finally came to a place where the squeezing all of a sudden quickly eased over about 10 seconds, and I was in that safer place; he had helped me get there; he had not abandoned me to the scary "attack" of whatever was going on; he calmly, confidently, caringly, knowledgeably, and skillfully applied himself towards helping me get out of the very real physical distress I was in.

The rest of the appointment went well. I was scared at what I had experienced; that had never happened to me before. But afterwords, there also was a reassurance inside that scary as I thought therapy would be, that I now know he won't abandon me to the scary stuff. That he will HELP ME THROUGH IT. That is such a NEW concept for me, it's hard to even wrap my mind around it. I will NOT be alone in experiencing the difficulties. True, he was not not having the difficulty himself, but he was RIGHT THERE with me, in the trenches. As much as anyone outside my head COULD be. That is very comforting, and I felt very taken care of, and comforted, afterwards. Actually, that feeling of comfort and care, is what helped the squeezing go away.

I had never thought to feel such a physically intense reaction to psychological stuff. Or at least that kind of feeling.

In one way, it scares me because I feel like now I'm just at the beginning of starting into stuff like went on today, and who the heck knows what other kind of strange, scary, painful, and even debilitating physical and emotional reactions, ie, monsters, could rear their ugly heads . . . . . In another way, though, my confidence and trust in him is so much deeper, for the experience we went through today.