how to open up?

[Sarita]

i hate talking about myself (believe it or not, lol!) i hate how every sentence starts with an I or a ME ...it makes me feel selfish and stupid, like i'm always talking about myself which in reality i suppose i am...but if i get put into therapy which i might be soon, i have to talk and i really don't want to because i feel really ashamed when i talk about my Siing even though on the inside, i'm not ashamed at all, i want everyone to know, not for attention, but because i'm proud of it. i love my scars, they're beautiful and i wish everyone could feel the the same beauty i feel when i look at them...and because when i talk about things that embarrass me or that i don't want to talk about, i smile really stupidly, like everything's a joke and i'm trying to take it seriously but it comes out wrong and it makes it seem worse...does anyone else have a problem talking about it? why? how do you react?

[BlackTara]

I went to a therapist for a while, but never once mentioned my s.i. It was at my university’s medical center. I had heard stories that made me very reluctant to tell about my s.i. to someone who works for my university. Along with that it felt odd to be going on about myself. Maybe because being the focus of others’ attention makes me uneasy. But that is what therapists are for. Going to one is part of the effort to live a more pleasant life eventually. So I made myself go every week and talk about myself. Over time I got more used to it and began to feel that it’s okay to go do something for my own benefit. We went over various ways to better handle stress, which was the only problem I let on about. I already knew a lot of them and the rest were not much help.

The only thing that really helped was towards the last session when she said something about how if I know I’m not happy with the way things are I’ve it’s about time to do something about it. I thought, ‘well isn’t that what I’ve been doing?’ And maybe that was the first time I realized that it was what I had been doing. I realized that I must have gotten somewhere because I have enough compassion for myself to go do something about my troubles, relatively ineffective as it was. In the end it at least helped me improved my self-esteem a bit and become more comfortable with talking about myself in general. So I think it can be good to just go for it and trust that it will get easier over time.

[Hammy]

Opening up and talking about yourself is part of therapy, it wont work very well without it. But remember that it doesn't all just happen in a day. You don't just walk into you T's office for the first time, shake their hand, and then spill your guts. You just take it a little bit at a time, start by talking about the things you're most comfortable with and slowly move out of your safety zone. Don't be afraid of saying something the wrong way to your T, you can always go back and explain what you mean.