Dear Annie: I’ve been seeing a therapist for around five years, and I find myself unsure what to say. My wife first encouraged me to speak with a professional to help me better understand myself and deal with some buried anger. One of my major realizations in therapy has been that I have difficulty sharing my thoughts and emotions, and this can make therapy difficult. I’ve realized this is a common theme throughout my life, as nobody in my childhood ever tried to engage emotionally with me. My therapist will encourage me to discuss what I’m thinking; yet, I struggle to articulate it.

I do understand that the therapist is there to help me and that I should open up to her, but I can’t. I tend to work through thoughts in my head and find it difficult to articulate what I’m thinking to my therapist. She believes that I never learned to express my anger, so I suppress it and move on. I can understand this, and yet I can’t seem to change.

You frequently encourage your readers to seek professional help. How does one maximize the value of this help when they can’t seem to open up? — Unable to Open Up

Dear Unable to Open Up: Therapy is a process to better understand ourselves: what built us and how we can learn to improve our lives. Just by seeing a therapist, you must be interested in improving yourself, and that is commendable. Based on the realization you’ve had about yourself and how you were raised, it seems that you’ve been making progress. Recognize these little steps, celebrate them and focus on building off of them. Each session, try discussing a thought or action that you from the last week and how it made you feel. These insights into your thoughts will help a therapist better understand you and will likely lead to insightful conversations. Like a Lego set, each brick adds to the finished product.

Dear Annie: I’m responding to “Confused” who is frustrated with her mother’s constant plea to call when she arrives home. I could have written that letter. When I was leaving my mother’s house, she would ask me several times to call her to let her know I arrived home safely. I know it annoyed my husband, but I called nonetheless, even when it wasn’t convenient. I could hear the relief in her voice when she picked up the phone. It was a brief exchange with reassurances that all was well, so I guess I got something out of it as well. As annoying as it can be sometimes, there is comfort in knowing that there is someone out there who cares that deeply for you. My mother is gone now, and I miss that sweet request. — Missing My Mom

Dear Missing Mom: I am so sorry for your loss. Thank you for offering a beautiful perspective.

Dear Annie: This is regard to listening to audiobooks to relieve stress. I am a retired mail carrier, and I listened to audiobooks for years to relieve the stress that my job could give me. Now that I am retired, I still listen to audiobooks while doing housework, yardwork and gardening, etc.

I discovered that libraries now carry Playaways, which are full audiobooks on small media player devices that are smaller than a flip phone. I have listened to thousands of books this way. The one thing I truly love about these Playaways is that I have listened to books that I would never have picked to read on my own. — Retired and Happy Carrier

Dear Happy Carrier: That’s a great reminder for readers to check out their local libraries for Playaways and other helpful devices. And thank you for working hard delivering our mail for so many years.

Dear readers: Annie is on vacation this week. Today’s column originally ran in 2020.

View prior ‘Dear Annie’ columns

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