When you feel like your therapy sessions are watched, it’s hard to have therapy

I am a paranoid schizophrenic. I have weekly therapy. In my weekly therapy, I hear people commenting on what I’m saying (auditory hallucinations?). I’m dead sure that if I say something that the people watching don’t like, they’ll make sure I pay.

This fear started a while back. A few years ago, the Voiceland (land of my voices) organization was obsessed with what had happened to me a decade prior. I talked about it in therapy. I gave what I thought was an even-handed account of what happened from my perspective, in part to tell the voices what was what and in part because my old emotions had resurfaced during a sexual harassment training.

That night, on the Daily Show, I was sure that the correspondent’s segment was all about how my therapy was wrong, about how I was really the bully and calling someone else a bully. I am a paranoid schizophrenic, so I could have been wrong about that, but that’s how it felt.

It’s hard to feel like you can say whatever you want in therapy when you feel like you can be made fun of what you say that night or the next day or at any other time.

Therapy is supposed to be sacred. If you have “crazy” thoughts in therapy, that’s supposed to be okay. I’ve had therapy sessions where I am honestly psychotic, deranged-sounding, obsessed for no reason, whatever. I don’t want everyone staring at me for things that I’m working through.