This thread is all about abstract ranting and chanting and raving. The plan is that this is going to be therapeutic for me (I hope). I just need a place to release whatever is pent-up or doesn't make sense. I invite you all to post your miscellaneous mad chatter here too, if you're poetically brave enough to reveal it. This thread isn't necessarily about finding all the answers, but if someone feels inclined to philosophize about a particular rant, that's OK too. Here goes!

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Trust is always the issue.

Do I trust myself? No. It’s not that I tell outright lies. Not that I’m consciously aware of, at least. But I can’t trust my subconscious motivations. I can’t trust that I won’t repeat the same mistakes I’ve made in the past. I can’t trust that I am basically good inside, because I know better. And I hate myself for that.

Do I trust others? Trust is a thing made of layers. I can trust to varying degrees, but the deeper those layers get, the greater the chances are that I will eventually regret it. To trust is to be vulnerable, so generally I’m somewhat suspicious.

Do I trust God? Not completely. He is, after all, male. How can I trust a Father I have not known when the father I have known has been so cruel? Why trust a God who abandons his children in their hour of need?

Trust is complicated. Sometimes it would seem vital to be able to trust. Other times it is necessary to distrust. How to be wise enough to know the difference, that is key. I don’t think I have the right key.

Do I trust God? I do. God is not male. Although we talk about HIM, that it's a "he", he is not male. That's why I trust him.
Does it make any bit of sense?

Anyway, I'll go on...
Thursday evening, while I was busy doing something "the question" came and stood between me and my therapist. It pissed me off terribly since it separated me from him now, when I was feeling so close to him and trusting him so much. And then the question put itself between me and him.

The question is: "Does he care about me?" or "Do you care about me?"

And what am I supposed to do now? I can't feel whole while having this question in my head, hanging in there.
Will I ask him? What can he say? Could he say "I do care about you"?
I presume he couldn't say "No, I don't" since that would hurt me and that would be pure rejection and he wouldn't do that.
The most probable is that he could dodge the question, turn it around and send back at me. He could use it in therapy, oh, I'm sure he would love to make use of it and probably will. So afterwards if I asked it again, then what? I can try to answer it myself but it wouldn't be the same.
I can logically assume that he does care because if he didn't care he couldn't be my therapist. And he does show that he cares, he does show love and all so why the hell I need any question? He gives me so much love, but it's never enough. He was waiting with his arms open for me to come as close as I wanted, but I didn't want.
So I just answered the question myself, but still need more...

Maybe if you ask him, he'll use the line my T used with me at my last session: "I have unconditional positive regard for you, but the code of ethics says it is harmful to you to have a dual relationship with me." What is that psycho-babble lingo supposed to mean? How often do you hear people spouting that phrase to demonstrate their true feelings? I guess T's have to walk a fine line, and we can't help ourselves from pushing the limits.

Thank you so much for posting, Curious. This is what I was hoping this thread would become - a place where we can express what doesn't make sense, without pressure of having to justify it!

I am really struggling with wanting my T to be more to me than what she can be. I don't know which direction you are feeling it, but for me it is like I want to be her daughter. I want her to love me like how a mother should love her child - endlessly, with no strings attached, watching out for my every need, etc. I want to genuinely be that special to her. (And to think I am a grown woman!) I know it isn't logical, but I can't help feeling it. I don't want to think that she has unconditional positive regard for me (whatever that is!) only because I pay her to have it!

My T tried to break my fantasy gently, I think, by saying that these boundaries can be hard for therapists too. Sometimes she would like to give more support to clients than she does, but she holds back because she could lose her license over it. She gave an example of a client who recently tried to suicide by hypothermia method in the cemetery. (We've had some frigid minus 15 degree nights lately.) T said what she really wants to do is to have that client come stay/live with her for awhile, because that is the level of support that client really needs right now. But she knows she can't do that, and she struggles with how to best help her.

I don't know if her disclosure about the suicidal client helped or hurt me more. On the one hand, it helped me believe she was capable of feeling strong, genuine concern for at least some of her clients. On the other hand, my T never came out and said she felt that deep struggle towards me. It also subtly conveyed the message that she would not overstep the boundaries even to save a client's life.

So sorry you are also hurting right now about this issue, but glad you could share it here.

my mad rant.... I was really, really close to someone and I had to move away from them, and it's been many months and I still hurt every single day. Sometimes it feels like it's getting worse instead of better, like every month that goes by I realize more fully what it was that I really had and how totally it is gone. I share about it with my T but I don't feel anywhere near as close to her as that relationship felt, so it seems almost pointless. There is no replacement, anywhere, for what I had and it just hurts so awfully.

I hope that as time goes on I can feel closer to my T - there are things I really want from *someone* - but I don't know what she can really offer, if it actually matches with my not-quite-impossible needs. She has gone on a conference for a week and it all just feels so far away at the moment - like we hardly know each other at all, and I'm going to stay forever on this miserable iceberg! or fall off it into the raging sea!

thanks for this thread, MH, and for everyone contributing to it. I know it feels so uncomfortable sometimes to put this stuff out there but I always feel so comforted and strengthened and enlightened by reading others' honest accounts of their experiences.

quote:

Originally posted by Hummingbird:
I am possibly just terribly manipulative, somewhat spoilt and used to getting my own way and i have an uncanny ability to trick T's into giving me what i want, but how i would ask that question is to ask him how i would know whether he cared for me or not?

Hey HB, can you share more tricks to help us get what we want out of our T's? I'm not very good at that yet! I am learning to do what my T does when she is avoiding a direct answer - turn it around with a question like, "Is that important for you to know?"

quote:

Originally posted by Jones:
I share about it with my T but I don't feel anywhere near as close to her as that relationship felt, so it seems almost pointless.

Personal question, (don't feel obligated to answer), but wondering if it seems to you like your T isn't "getting" your pain. Have you ever felt deeply understood by your T when you talk about this? Because it sounds like you haven't really connected yet.

I did feel at first that she wasn't getting it... but she had me write out everything that I had lost in that relationship, and has been making heaps of time for us to go through that bit by bit and talk about it. She is really good at staying with me through that process and acknowledging everything - I guess it's just that she will never be that person, and this will always be therapy, so I don't know how close to me she can really come. And then maybe I feel a bit colder because of the imposed break, too. Another part of me just wants her to come BACK already, but I feel like it won't help when she does because it's just an hour anyway.

I guess in a way this is a version of what other people are going through - she'll never be truly personally invested in me, so why should I care? and what could she really give me even if she did?

The thing about your T's other client would feel weird for me too. I think it would be something I'd want to talk about a lot more... maybe it could give you an opening to discuss the feelings of need you have for her, and what is possible within the boundaries.

Yeah, grieving sucks, and more so when we realize we can't get out of it! This is what I want to say to my T:

"I don’t know how to take what you can rightfully offer me and be satisfied with it, but that is the task before me. I don’t think I can grow up all the way. I don’t want to mourn what I can‘t have. It feels…well, I don’t want to feel it enough to even describe it. Let’s just say it seems disastrous to go there. What reward is there in it? I’d rather remain in denial. But that isn’t working all the way now either. Everything hurts no matter what! I am not strong enough to do this!"

And then after I say it she is supposed to make it all better somehow. Except it won't happen that way. And I hate that I am even admitting it on this forum because that makes it even more true. I'm starting to feel like I wish I could at least have a good cry.

quote:

Originally posted by Hummingbird:
I am possibly just terribly manipulative, somewhat spoilt and used to getting my own way and i have an uncanny ability to trick T's into giving me what i want, but how i would ask that question is to ask him how i would know whether he cared for me or not? Somehow it feels a bit less personal and painful like that and i am more able to hear and learn without too much dramatic emotion getting in the way.

HB

Hihihi, I smiled and giggled when I read this. That sounds like a good trick to have the answer. I know it's not about the answer but about the questions rather. But still...

Curious,
The thing with getting the answer for this bloody question is, (and I know that), it will satisfy us just for a while. We would jump up with joy, but then we would fall down on the ground and we would ask again "Does he/she REALLY care about me?" So I know if he said "Yes I care about you" (I don't know, maybe he would say that), I would want him to say that again, and again, and again... and never trully belive. I think there must be some other way to find out and to believe.

quote:

Originally posted by echo:
How can we believe our Ts are offering us unconditional positive regard, unconditional acceptance or "love", etc., when their whole profession exists to change us?? Isn't that the point? To help us become different, better, people who can finally cope with what the world throws at us?

I think I know what my T would say if I posed this question to her. She would probably claim she isn't trying, or doesn't need, to change me because she accepts me as I am, but also that she wants to support me in any changes I want to make to enrich my life. She would put the responsibility squarely on me with how I choose to live and the goals I create. But I can imagine she would still be making professional judgments about my wisdom or lack thereof.

Thanks for the great thread MH!

I think the Ps feelings towards me matter so much because I have no way to accept myself for being me so I need him to do it for now until I can learn how to do it for myself. Also he knows the very worst of me and if he can accept me maybe I CAN learnt to also.

Halo, you just said so much in only 2 1/2 lines that rang true to me. Thank you.

New Rant. Same trust issue.

How ethical is it to teach our children to believe in fairytale lies like Santa Claus? We tell ourselves we are only providing magical memories. But when the day comes that they figure out how many years we've been deceiving them, how can they know whether to believe the truth of anything else we've told them?

Will this therapy of mine turn out like when I was my daughter's age and insisted against all reason to my wiser 3rd grade friends that SANTA CLAUS IS REAL BECAUSE I ASKED MY MOM AND SHE WOULDN’T LIE TO ME! Am I a fool for swallowing another deception?

I don't understand this whole Anglo-saxon Santa Claus ceremony around Christmas.
Where I am from Santa Claus is called Saint Nicholas and I was tought that he was a bishop that became saint. There was still some magic around presents and Saint Nicholas bringing them, there was some magic but we werent told that this magic is real. A lot of children is brought up to belive that Santa Claus magic is reality and Christmas is all about it.


P.S. Sorry, I really don't like Santa Claus...
I hope I didn't kill posting here..

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Amazon,

quote:

How can we believe our Ts are offering us unconditional positive regard, unconditional acceptance or "love", etc., when their whole profession exists to change us?? Isn't that the point? To help us become different, better, people who can finally cope with what the world throws at us?

I don't believe that our Ts are trying to change us into different people, they're teaching us to see who we REALLY are, to understand and accept our own worth and strength to face what we need to, so that our choices and options and possibilities open up. If you shut up a person in a small cramped dark cell, and then release them into light and freedom, the person is NO different but what they can accomplish and how they live is dramatically changed.

So many of us are imprisoned by not having received what we needed to live in freedom and therefore live in a cell created by our own fears. Our Ts aren't changing us, they're teaching us to see the truth about ourselves. Then we CAN choose to live differently. But there's nothing wrong with us. We're just using old solutions that no longer work for our problems in the here and now. So the unconditional positive regard is just that. An ability to see us and understand why we do what we do and that it makes sense that we do it. We can only move from a place AFTER we acknowledge that we're standing in it. And that we have the ability to do so.

AG