Monte,

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MTF

I'm smiling cos I know you'll be happy to hear from me.

I'm smiling because you know me a little too well! LOL!

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Gosh, despite her insufficiencies in some areas (I mean that nicely, as in we all have them - even Ts), this lady cares about you and is really wanting you to see that.

You may both continue to struggle with the attachment stuff and it's impact but it won't be because she doesn't care or isn't interested...clearly. Glad to see you have had positive movement in your relationship with her.

Thanks. It's nice to have another's perspective on all of this rather than just my own.

It's been so good to not be spinning on my fears and on the relationship these past couple of weeks. Now I just have to make it past this next session next Wednesday. I've got to get those feelings out there that I couldn't last time, and it's scaring me just thinking about it. But I think it will be okay. Thanks for taking the time to make me smile!


STRM,

Thanks, I think things will keep moving positively. At least it is my hope that they will.


UV,

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By the way, I am extremely fearful of my upcoming session with T...because he touched on one of my core issues last week.

But I am actually relieved that he did this as it makes me feel like he is being a 'good parent'...trying to help me overcome my fears.

Funny how we can be both fearful and relieved at the same time, huh? Good luck!

MTF

Just another update. Saw my T again Wednesday. She wanted to get into the book, which I've been dreading. It's called "Reinventing Your Life". I had to read it by specific chapter when I first started therapy with her last September based on scores calculated from a questionnaire I had to fill out. It's based on schemas or what the authors call 'lifetraps'. It's very CBT based, and I don't like it. Bawled my eyes out reading it to her the first time around. I had to highlight all the stuff that applied to me and read that stuff to her. It sucked. So this time around since we're now working on attachment stuff, she wanted me to go back through the 3 chapters we had done previously and use a different color highlighter and highlight the stuff that applies to me within my attachment to her, what relates to my relationship with my husband, and that that I had with my physical therapist neighbor. This is awful and quite uncomfortable. The titles of the chapters are "Emotional Deprivation", "Abandonment", & "Mistrust & Abuse".

I didn't get a whole lot of stuff read. She kept interrupting here and there to talk to me about the different things I would read. Unfortunately I don't remember a whole lot of what she talked about. I think I was sort of in a frozen state, due to the fact that I was having to talk to her about stuff that kind of had to do with her and it was freaking me out a little. She has her theories about where my attachment issues stem from, so she talked a little about that. She told me about her own childhood emotional deprivation which was pretty bad. Obviously she's worked through it and healed that stuff, so I can too. She had an attachment to a teacher in Jr. High that kind of 'saved' her in a lot of ways. He served as a sort of surrogate parent when hers were unavailable and unnattentive. This went on for a year and a half until he moved to another state, which she said broke her heart. He had encouraged her to go out for different things at school, supported her in them, was her 'cheerleader' or sorts. She said he was newly married and had a young baby plus was a full time teacher, so for him to do what he did for her she considered to be pretty phenomenal. It's sort of weird having a T who has had similar issues in her own past. She normalizes my attachments pretty well for me, which is so nice. She doesn't let me use the words 'screwed up', or even 'messed up', as she views attachments as our way of getting needs met that weren't, and that it's healthy that we're trying to get those needs met, not sick and abnormal. We're just going about it the wrong way or oftentimes with the wrong people, or people that simply can't meet those needs for whatever reason.

Things are still feeling good. At the end she asked me if she had said anything that had made me mad, just to be sure I wasn't going to leave and then start spinning on something. I told her no, as she seems to be more attuned to me lately and really trying hard to connect every session. She gets up close to me in her chair and does the eye-contact thing, since I think she has noticed that I am much more open and more willing to talk when she is in closer proximity to me. She asked if there was anything else and I told her no, since we were already about 10-15 minutes over time. I did however pull out a handmade card for her that I had worked on during the week before my session. I handed it to her and told her it contained the answers to the question about what made her different from other people in my life. She seemed sort of pleased that she was going to get the answers. She started to open the envelope but I told her it was kind of long, but then said it wasn't 5 pages and wouldn't take her 45 minutes to read. We both laughed at that, as that was what my last letter to her was like.

So I went home and stewed over the card. What would she think? It was basically my way of telling her all of the good stuff I see in her, what I think about her. Not really my feelings, like "I love you", "I wish you could be my adopted mother", or anything like that. More like my perceptions. Like "I see you as a female ideal with this trait, this characteristic, this gift, and this talent, etc." I just put her admirable qualities out there and told her all the things I admire about her and see in her. Then I told her the few things that make her extra special to me, the things that are totally unique to her and stand out to me, as she told me she is just ordinary, put herself on par with her colleagues, and made herself seem like she could be easily replaced with someone else just like her. Grrrrr! I made sure to emphasize that she's the one-and-only her, that God doesn't have a mold of each of us so he can make more if he wants to! We're each unique and one-of-a-kind. Anyway, I wanted to make my feelings about her known in a sort of non-direct, non-threatening way (for both of us), and also get my last word in on her beliefs about herself that came up from the dime-a-dozen comment.

I was pretty sure she wouldn't say anything about the card, as she hadn't ever mentioned the thank you card I had given her in the past. I just worried about how awkward I would feel the next time I have a session with her, which isn't for almost 3 weeks. My cell phone rang at a little after 9 this morning and it was my T. She said she wanted to thank me for the card, that it was beautiful and that she appreciated it. She sounded like she was getting choked up at one point and was kind of fumbling around for what to say. I don't even remember exactly what she said or what else was said, but the feelings evoked in me during that 30 second phone call were priceless and so worth the risk I felt I was taking in sharing those things with my T. I felt overall like she was very touched and moved to know that as difficult as it was for me to share that with her, I value her enough to do it. I also felt like she was very touched by the things I wrote about her, that she must not get that sort of thing very often and that it meant a great deal to her. I've been enjoying those feelings all day and feeling grateful for the knowledge that my T accepts my feelings and me both. It makes me happy.

MTF

MTF it was a pleasure to read your post - after all the pain and confusion you’ve been going through, and sticking with it no matter what - your struggles have paid off. And now you’re both ready to go into the ‘sticky places’ as Monte says.

Good one MTF, big smiles for you.

LL