Hoarding

Over Christmas break I visited my sister, niece and nephew at their house, and I realized that my sister is a boarderline hoarder.  But that's a story for a whole different post.
I also realized recently that I'm an emotional hoarder.  I have trouble letting go of things.  I can't help but hold on to my emotions from the past, reliving them over and over again.  I reread old journal entries just to feel something.  Depression is all I've known for a long time, but it still seems strange that I would hold onto it instead of choosing to move forward when given the chance, even if the choice is subconscious.  I find it interesting that so many people recovering from depression have a hard time giving it up.  It becomes like an addiction.  Sometimes feeling like crap is better than not feeling anything at all.
I'm finally going back to see a therapist, something I should have been doing for a long time.  I'm hoping that it will help me de-hoard my life a little bit and help me better deal with my relationships for other people.  I find it ironic that for someone who wants to be a therapist and talk to people about their problems for a living, I have such a hard time talking to one myself.  Seeing a therapist this summer was the hardest thing I've ever had to do, and I'm still not entirely sure why.  I can talk to other people about their issues, but opening up about myself kills me.  I think the fact that I'm willingly going to see one shows how far I've come though.
I know that the therapist will ask me in our very first meeting why I'm coming to see her and what I hope to accomplish, and I really don't have a nice neat answer for that.  Carl Jung said "Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people."  I think that's a big part of it.  I need to know and be ok with myself in order for me to be able to help other people.  I think that is part of my job as a therapist and I owe it to my clients.  That's not really it though, and I can't exactly tell that to the therapist when she asks.  More concretely, I guess I want to learn how to better deal with my emotions.  I need to learn how to not let them overwhelm me.  I also need to work on not letting other people's emotions influence mine so much.  That's a big one.  I think me being so oversensitive goes hand in hand with the hoarding.  Don't get my wrong, I think me so sensitive to what other people are feeling will make me a great psychologist one day and will really help me identify with patients, but I need to get to the point that it's not hurting me in the process.  Although I've gotten a lot better about getting out of my head since this summer, and the medicine has helped calm my thoughts down a lot, it's still something I need to work on and something I think the therapist can help with.  There are still times when I feel trapped in my head and things get too intense for me up there.
Whew.  Hopefully putting all that into words will help me verbalize them to the therapist.  Here goes nothing.