How many times in therapy before there is a break through?

Have you ever went to Therapy for your Mind and or Emotions before?

I have.  Three different times now.

Once when I was in my early twenties and a young mom of a baby daughter.   I knew even then that I did not want my child carrying on my patterns or the patterns of my parents.  So I decided to get counselling for my childhood abuse right away before it ever became a problem for me in my later years.

That didn't work.

I seen my counselor for two years and we never got past a timeline assessment.  Thats a chart they draw out with you outlining ever single attack and experience you had from birth to now.  Dreadfully painful and personally to me a waste of energy.   But, She was a social worker for Catholic family services.  Nice lady.  I liked her.

The second time I hit the counselling button.

 Was just after I came into drug abuse recovery.   Again,  another two years and we never got past teaching me about my feelings and proper use of them.   Great lessons,  Still grateful today.

 Yet still nothing was discovered in my patterns repeating problem. A problem that was now plaguing my life.  The life I didn't want at twenty and tried to fix then.          ....... And now!    I have two daughters and a son to live the patterns with me.   Great.

So I quit my second counselor.

Then last summer.   Holy shit balls hit the fan,  and my world was smothered in shit.

Thats when I met my new counselor.  After a deeply sobbing phone conversation with her, she agreed to take me on as her client.  This past year she has watched me.  I recognize when she is observing me and when she is having light fun and truly friendly conversations with me.  (If I met her outside the psychology realm I am certain we would be great friends.  She is close to my age and similar life situations.  Thats a plus in a counselor I think.)

While I have been observing her, observing me.  She has been tracking my patterns.

Finally!   After all these years of wanting an issue I knew was there but didn't have the vocabulary or understanding to know how to identify it, is going to be resolved.   Twenty years later!!

I have blogged lots in this last year about mental illness.  I have seen a psychiatrist that was so bloody quick to prescribe me bi-polar love.  I get he probably seen a pattern and was sure to fix that through a couple of pills.  But he didn't look deeper.

Another,  walk in mental health counselor showed me a diagram once.  Of normal ranges of feelings and the range of feeling in a person with ADD.   My body LIT up when she explained it to me.  Its the same as bi-polar but a person with ADD gets stuck in the high or low.  Once they cross the boundary line they are trapped there until the crash.

That seems more fitting of me.  But waite.

Yesterdays session with my now deeply respected and completely trusted therapist, was all about addictive personalities.  No secret I have some addictions, two for sure.  I remember a very respected guy I tried to latch on too just after I left my ex, who was a non practicing psychologist, used that label with me a couple times.  His exact words were..."your gonna to exhaust your kids with that addictive personality".

I wasn't just LIT up as she showed me a picture of a wheel on the addiction cycle,  I was off my seat too.  This was it, that was my life.  It was like looking at my time line with new eyes, phases and stages of not the substance or action i was addicted to.... but the Dopamine spikes and drops that spun my cycles for the past thirty years of my life.

She was laughing.   I was laughing.   This was it.  Or if its not what it is then its the next level of my understanding.   Because let me tell you, my patterns over the past year have changed my therapists belief that sex addiction can and will destroy your life if you get to,.... High.