Chair Amnesia

I would love to say that the reason I go blank during sessions is that I don't prepare and it catches me unawares.

Ha, if only that were true.

The fact is that I think about therapy too often, too much, and too intensely.

During the week, there are always several things that I flag and think to myself: I'm gonna discuss this with my therapist. Sometimes it feels so important that I'll write it down to remember. And, in fact, sometimes I have so much to hash out that I start planning what I do NOT have to discuss so we can touch what's important.

So on most weeks, we can't really call me unprepared.

Then Tuesday comes and rears its anxious head.

And then I take my anxious self that's quaking on the inside to the office, and...

Chair amnesia.

It's a real thing. It's this blankness that comes over me when I settle into that chair. It's the way every thought that felt important, purposeful and like it makes tons of sense either takes wing and disappears into the far-off horizon, or suddenly is stupid for me to allow through my throat and out into the air where someone is carefully listening. It means even if I have a list in my bag, I'm either too paralyzed to take it out, or every bit of importance gets snuffed out of every topic that loomed so big just the day before.

And I look at my therapist as if I'm seeing her for the first time and wonder:

Why am I sitting here? What am I supposed to talk about?

There are just some leftover bits and pieces stupidly banging around in my mind that I try to express. But the clock moves forward and I'm grappling for words, operating a quiet brain.