Dealing with shame in therapy

It took a year for me to feel comfortable enough to tell my therapist I was gay, and it was from that point on that progress really started to be made (prior to that we had been talking about family issues and my general sense of dissatisfaction with my life). I had gone to that session with the intention of telling her, and was feeling incredibly anxious, but knew it just had to be done if I was to get anywhere. I felt it was important to tell her face to face, but I did text her before my session to let her know that I would be arriving in a highly agitated state of mind and needed to talk about something I would find very difficult. It was my way of saying I would need her to treat me extra gently, and also committing myself to doing it, so that I wouldn't just get there and then back out.

I remember feeling very embarrassed having my parents aware I was dating. I think it was because I had always kept my feelings very closely guarded, and it felt like by seeing me with my boyfriend I was telling them my feelings via my actions, and it made me feel uncomfortably exposed.

 

I get feeling shame for having sexual feelings towards anyone, especially towards women. I think it depends on how you were raised. I was taught "lust" was bad and so was homosexuality. So these things were taught as something very shameful that bad people did and it didn't help that my own family never spoke of sex. I was not set up for a healthy relationship with sex or communication about sex. It took time to accept it was okay to feel what I felt. How about you, what were you taught?

Talking about somethings in person is a lot harder than writing it in text especially anonymously. It's more real and evokes all the feelings when spoken in person. When mixed with anxiety it can feel like we could die from saying it aloud. It's not true though and overcoming the anxiety involves doing it to show our brains nothing bad will happen or that we can handle the feelings.

Dose the mean you have to be brave and face your fears and talk? Is that the only way? No. It's okay to take it one step at a time or use other methods.

It is 100% okay to write a note or email to tell your therapist something. A therapist will also read it aloud for you if it helps. It's all a matter of what helps you start a conversation. If it's too hard to talk about it in person, talk about how hard it is and talk about the shame. Your therapist will be able to help you work that out.

I pushed myself and told my first therapist in person after the 3rd session and it was extremely anxiety provoking. Sexuality conversations got easier after that, but at the sane time I jumped into hard conversations I couldn't handle. I personally needed coping skills first. I later made a bisexual friend and we'd talk about our attractions casually over the phone which helped normalize it in speech as well as talking about my feelings on these very forums. Talking about how you feel in casual, fun, playful ways with others helps to take the shame away in my experience. You find out everyone else feels similar to you. When I told my 2nd therapist about relationships issues it was easy to casually mention I was gay. Though talking about sex/attractions isn't always easy, because I still feel shame about certain things.

The more you talk about it, the easier it gets. Shame breeds in darkness, but dies when exposed to light by sharing with others who are non judgemental.

 

This is a bold statement that glosses over the limitations of psychotherapy. Just bringing something up in therapy is not a cure, based on my personal experience. So OP go ahead and bring it up if you feel like it but keep in mind that simply doing that may not effect any significant change in your feelings; it may take a lot of time (or never change at all).

 

Yes, I brought it up initially but it's still hard and not something we talk about often. I also am uncomfortable having my sexual feelings for anyone exposed or discussed (my good catholic upbringing, perhaps). I was so afraid to get it all out in therapy, even telling her about my crushes felt so shameful. But her response was "geez, the way you were building that up I thought you were gonna tell me you cheated on your husband!" So if you have an understanding therapist, it's a bigger deal to you than it is to them (of all people, it's literally a therapist's job to be understanding, and most of them are drawn to the field by feelings of empathy and desire to help others). That's not to say your feelings aren't valid, and you shouldn't force yourself to talk about it if you don't feel comfortable doing so. You've been conditioned by society to have shame about this, it will take time to undo. I agree with @Cinnamon Bunny that notes are very helpful to get conversations rolling!

 

On further reflection, I should've probably said your feelings are real (instead of valid). Valid suggests that it's somehow right to feel shameful, and I was not trying to say that lol

 

For counselling to work you literally have to let go of everything. I had counselling 15 yrs ago or so. It didn't work because i wasnt honest enough .
I've recently started counselling again, had 8 sessions, the counselor is incredible but I literally had to empty out everything from me, literally stripped down from the inside out.
I'm a happy gay man now, I have never been this happy in 43 yrs, the age I am now!!
The counselor should also help you come to terms with your sexuality and THEN you work on loving yourself, THEN eventually a new partner. I know it's extremely difficult but you, like the rest of us only get one life...mines just started at 43....

 

Well said.

 

I have the same challenge... I have been out to my therapist for a year and there were many times after I first told her when I hoped she would initiate the conversation to help me work through any challenges but at the same time when she would ask questions it’s so hard for me to be fully honest and articulate what I am feeling... I often would not be able to make eye contact and begin just answering with one word responses or nodding and saying yes.. it’s still difficult for me to talk to her about my sexuality because maybe I feel vulnerable in that she knows all my challenges in general but I have found when I finally met a few people who were also going through similar experiences (being married to men and now realizing they were gay).. talking with them was much easier and I was more comfortable and at ease sharing my feelings. Maybe it was because we have similar experiences and it was those experiences that brought us together. We met in an online support group.

 

I don't think this is necessarily something that is strictly confined to therapy either. When I was first coming out, I did the first few comings out via text message or email as I am hopeless face to face. These all went well but however well the text exchange went there was always the next meet up which I found ridiculously uncomfortable. I never knew whether I wanted to bring it up, wanted them to bring it up, not talk about it at all. I didn't want conversation to become solely based around my sexuality but equally I didn't want it to become a thing that people knew but never spoke about.
When you have something like sexuality that you are only just figuring out or have been suppressing for a while, its going to feel strange and uncomfortable to start talking about it often but the only way to change that is to push yourself to do it. It will get easier.

 

Interestingly enough, my therapist recently revealed to me that she has worked with other people in the same position as me - coming out later in life. Somehow that helped me relax a lot more about the topic. That I'm not this oddity of a case that she didn't know what to do with. So I take her silence on the topic as more her waiting for me to talk about it when I'm ready.

 

Can you tackle both at the same time? I'm not sure what kind of psychotherapy you're receiving (and I don't know much about DA), but most approaches can be adapted to a variety of needs (anxiety, depression, trauma; which can all be elements of being closeted, incidentally). My therapist has been using Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) with a whole variety of incidents across my lifespan-some related to my sexuality, some not. Perhaps you could express to your therapist that the sexuality aspect is also important, even if it isn't as obvious an issue as the DA?

 

It sounds like your therapy is already starting to work

Your sexuality is a big part of you. Getting in touch with that sexuality, what you REALLY like, not just what you ended up with or settled on or was expected to do, takes a huge amount of courage. What kind of person you're attracted to, what turns you on, what you want to do to someone or have done to you - all of that stuff is kind of trial and error. The person/people and scenarios an inexperienced mind produces are often very different in real life. Sometimes people find what satisfies them right away with somebody, sometimes ya gotta date a few fish lol. And sometimes people's interests just shift over time and they become incompatible in a formerly happy partnership. Anyway, it IS hard to talk about being 'queer' (insert label lol). Especially when you aren't certain what you like! For me the hardest part was getting past the sex itself. When coming out to family in particular, it was like ew, I don't want my parents or worse, my grandparents, thinking about what I like in the bedroom! And really I don't want to talk about my sexual life with anyone but my partner and maybe a couple of friends. But after a time, my paranoia about the sexual part of my sexuality faded. Being gay is about way more than sex! It's about love, relationships, culture, gender, gender roles, being 'different,' etc... ♡

Anyway, if this resonates with you maybe you could briefly mention to the therapist that you aren't comfortable talking about sex in particular right now. You could ease into the topic by focusing on other aspects of your life that you envision changing. Perhaps once you get talking it may be easier to introduce the idea of a woman at your side, such as with co-parenting or concerts/events you want to go to, etc