My insurance doesn’t cover therapy, so I have to pay $150 per session.

I don’t have trouble talking about most things with people. I don’t bombard people with trauma and insecurities, but when I’m feeling bad I select one person for one night to unload on. If they’re responsive, I continue to talk. If they’re not, I give them space. I try to also catch up with this person about how their life is going also. I usually pick them because they’re the least likely to have an impact on anyone else I mention.

For instance, when I was dating my ex, I used to tell my best girl friend the stuff he was doing because I didn’t want to tell my family because I didn’t want them to hate him if things were resolved. I didn’t want to tell my guy best friend because I didn’t want to put him in a position where he would be encouraging me to leave my ex because that’s a weird position for a guy friend to be in. But then she got resentful of me complaining about my ex and then saying he was fine to everyone else.

Now this was the first time someone has gotten upset at me for coming to them with my problems, so I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if secretly anyone I was coming to with a problem actually did think I was being a burden on them. And it just sucks because when I open up to people I do feel closer to them.

I have some trauma that has resurfaced because I’ve been trying to explain to my current partner why I react (or honestly don’t react) to different things. I think it would be good for me to talk to a therapist about it, but I already feel I’ve done so much self reflection and talked to people about it and journaled and read about the topics that I don’t know if there’s anything new or useful a therapist is going to tell me. But I do also know that I tend to laugh react to distressing topics in in-person conversations, and I think this could be a problem that I don’t know how to stop. I’ve laughed a couple of times when my boyfriend has brought up serious situations that have happened to him and instantly felt terrible and “sobered up” really quickly after recognizing it. I never thought of it as a problem when talking about my own trauma but now that I’m sometimes laughing when other people bring up trauma I now see it as a real problem. Also I was explaining my psychotic episode to a curious friend on Friday night and I could not stop laughing while talking about it. It does seem funny to me what I believed, but I realized in the car that it’s not funny at all. Will a therapist be able to help with this, or is it just a reaction that I’m basically stuck with at this point, being 33?