Hi all,

I wanted to give an update about the stuff going on with Manatee, but I will try to keep it brief because I am in danger of talking myself out of my own experience, if that makes sense.

Basically yesterday I had a co-therapy session with my husband, Manatee and my husband's former T, and it went pretty disastrously. My husband got fully triggered and came within a hair's breadth of walking out, and ended by saying he was never going back there again. He means this and will stick to it - it is not something I will be able to challenge at any level.

This came about partly because Manatee had been encouraging me to set boundaries, and also responded to me in my individual session the night before in a way that made me feel really abandoned, and really brought up my anger at my H. At the same time H was very reluctant to be in couples therapy at all, so I kind of saw the train wreck coming.

I am concerned and confused about the implications for my marriage with that door now closed. And I feel like Manatee has failed me, and like I can't trust him to know what he is doing. On the flip side, my marriage is a lot better than it was before we began couples work, and the other T did manage to salvage things between me and H somewhat before we left, so he is not now fully triggered, the house is peaceful and we are kind of in alignment, rather than conflict. This has happened before with our first therapist and last time H spent all night driving around the city in tears, calling me constantly, so I guess we have come a long way....

I'm so angry at Manatee. Immediately after the session he left for a trip, with all his luggage in tow, while I was paying for the session and H was out by the lifts. It feels weird. I will see him again on Thursday though. I'm not sure if we can keep working together, or if he has anything to offer me. I don't feel ready to throw it in yet but I know I have to really get my head into it and make sure he is actually doing me good. I need to talk to him about everything and find stuff out and I don't know if I know how to do this. Writing to him isn't possible - there's a no out-of-session contact policy.

Thanks for reading.

Love,
Jones

(((((JONES))))))

I'm sorry that the couples session was so awful and that you won't be able to contact Manatee until Thursday. Can I ask what it is that you need to find out from Manatee that you don't know how to do?

My only comment is that I'd tend to give Manatee the benefit of the doubt here only because I am making a big assumption here this is the first time he met your H? Whereas your H's old T really had the advantage here, having worked with your H and knowing how he would react to your boundary setting. And also knowing how to work with your H. And, so, I can't say off the bat that your H's ex-T is any better than Manatee. At this point, he only has more experience with your H on his side.

It sounds like you also need to focus on what happened in the session the night before the couples session and sort out with Manatee why you felt abandoned by him.

xoxoxo

Liese

Hi Liese,

Thank you sweetie. Manatee's met H a few times in co-therapy sessions and had an individual session once. But the other T does know him better. I guess Manatee was trying to look out for me but it backfired. I tried to warn him beforehand but I was so pissed off with the whole thing by the time we got to the couple session that I had a bit of a crash'n'burn attitude.

There's a lot of stuff that I feel like I need from Manatee at this point that I don't know how to broach or I don't trust myself to broach. What we're doing and how and why. It all seems to evaporate when I get in the room. Now I also need to talk about how angry I am at what happened, and how I felt abandoned on Friday night. I'm going to try writing it down to hold it till then but I'm scared that will just mean I process it on my own.

Love,
Jones

((((Jones))))

I don't have a lot to offer than some hugs and to say that sometimes, things get worse before they get better. I'm guessing that T touched a nerve with your H,but sometimes when this happens, change follows. I know you are mad at T for doing this, but maybe someday you will be able to look back at it as a favor that he did for you and your marriage.

(((((Jones)))) hope it gets better soon.

(((((JONES)))))

I know how awful it feels when the trust gets shaky. You're probably right. He was probably trying to take care of you. He probably feels quite protective of you, which obviously came into the room and wasn't terribly helpful. As they say, working through the transference and the countertransference can be the most productive part of therapy, if you can hang in there and try to be brave and talk to him about all the things on your mind.

I've made it my business to hide my anger towards my T from my T and I don't think that has been very helpful to my therapy. I think I'm just secure enough now to start processing some of my anger towards him with him and he is welcoming it. It's a sign of growth. I hope you find that Manatee will welcome your anger.


For what it's worth, my T and I seem to have the biggest ruptures right before his vacations. I don't know why that is. I don't know if he has anxiety about going away and so just makes a mess of everything. (I just like to blame him for all the ruptures.) I just don't know.

It doesn't sound like it was a good idea to have a session on one evening and then a couples session the next day just as he was stepping out to go on a vacation. From the sounds of the session, I'm sure he is not having a good time. He probably knows he screwed the whole thing up and that the other T saved the day. Maybe he was anxious about the other T being in the room? Maybe he decided to be more aggressive with your H than usual because the other T was in the room and felt your H would have an ally? Maybe he wanted the other T to hear and experience your side of the story? Who knows what was going on unconscioulsy in his head. But, I bet he's beating himself up now about it all.

I read your other post on the say anything thread about your concerns about your T being materialistic. I had similar fears about my T. In my head, if he valued money, that meant he wasn't caring. My T lives far from me but one day I was on business near his house and I drove by. He didn't live in a mansion and I was so relieved. Just a nice, normal house. In other ways, too, I have come to learn that he is not driven by making money, all of which I find comforting in a T. I know he doesn't charge for certain things that other T's charge for. He's also told me that if money becomes an issue for me, that it's not for him and that he wants me to continue coming in even if I can't pay him and we'll work it all out later. It's the little things that tell me that he cares about me and about what he does for a living.

By contrast, I went on a consult to a T in the village near my house. The village is affluent. The sense I got from that T was completely different. He didn't even take insurance. And I don't think I could ever go to him. Is it fair to believe that T's shouldn't be concerned about making a decent amount of money? I just know for me that my T seems to be on the same page as me in that he cares about being comfortable and having enough money to travel a bit, go out to dinner and a movie and hopefully enough to retire. But he's not driven to make money for the sake of making money. I actually think he's driven to help people. His basic values, his caring values are in place and that comes through loud and clear.

So I hope you can somehow find a way to sort this through with Manatee. Of course, I didn't. I just drove by his house. But the answers have come over time as well from comments like the one above that let me know who he is at his core. I hope you will find that Manatee does care about you. And I hope Thursday comes really fast.

xoxoxo

Liese

P.S. I hope things with you and H have calmed down and everything is okay.

Hi Jonesy

So sorry to hear of your session and the rupture with Manatee, aw that must have really thrown you. Couples work is so hard (((Jonesy))), loyalties get stretched and boundaries waver sometimes.

How hard too that he is off on a trip, even thoug it is a short one, this is when you need to talk to him, I understand that. I would also echo Liese's observation that breaks seem to throw up all sorts of problems. I really hope your might be resolved and Manatee can go back to being the steady support that he has been for you.

starfishy

(((Jones))) I'm short on wisdom, but still thinking of you and hoping Manatee is able to understand your feelings and frustrations to work through this rupture with you. I'm sorry it has so negatively impacted your H's feelings about therapy. That is really hard.

(((Jones)))

I'm short on words and wisdom right now, but I wanted you to know that I hope that everything can be worked out and I'm sorry you are going through this.

Hi Jones,

I'm not sure I understand what happened except that you somehow lost faith and trust in Manatee and you are left feeling sort of abandoned by him. You say you feel he is a shallow, empty materialistic life-styler and although I have no idea what he did to make you see him that way, I do hope you can repair this with him. Sometimes huge progress is made after a bad disruption. In any event, I hope you can journal some of your feelings to share with him when he gets back from his trip. I am sorry this has impacted your couples therapy in such a negative way. Wish I could offer some wise words to you but I am short on them these days.

Sending you lots of warm hugs.


TN

Dearest Jones, I am so sorry to hear how totally crummy the couples session ended up, and that Manatee has disappointed and failed you. I'm so sorry to hear that your H will no longer be willing to come to couples sessions because of his screw-up. And I'm sorry that you are left holding the bag, on your own, feeling abandoned while Manatee waltzes off on vacation, on his merry way. Please give yourself a big hug from me, and know how much I am thinking of you and sending you love and care as you navigate this painfully difficult situation. I think it sucks that there is a no out-of-session contact policy for stuff like this. When things are fresh and in the moment- that is the time to discuss them, not days later when so much has happened, been resolved or processed already. It is one of the biggest weaknesses of therapy, I believe, that inevitably things cannot be talked through at the time and the moment that they need to be talked through. So I hope that you don't put undue pressure on yourself to "save it" until Thursday, since processing it by then is somewhat inevitable anyway. I'm not saying, take a defeatest approach about it, but I am saying that you might not be able to control that anyway, even if you try really hard. It's always that way with therapy. I find it (at times) useless unless something *just* happened- and I happen to be able to talk about it right then. To my mind, the no out of session contact policy, shows a lack of commitment on the part of the firm, or the T if it is his personal policy across the board, because of the neccessity to be able to get that reassurance until you can process it with the T in session. But I also understand the necessity to accept it, the way it is. still. it sucks.

I hope you will be able to navigate through this without too many road blocks, and that you will find out that Manatee has more to offer than it feels like he does right now after the sucky session. I'm glad you are going to talk to him about all of this. Good for you. I admire your resolve.

xoxoxoxox,

baby bird

Thank you so much everyone. Liese, Starfish, Monte, STRM, TN, BB. ((((((hugs))))))

The thing about him being materialistic is just a combination of subtle things about the way he presents himself, and stuff I know from googling. Nothing major. I guess it sort of supports this idea of him as fundamentally not too interested in the moment-to-moment deeper experience, more attracted to the surface. For ages I have been in a state of just feeling trusting of him and the work we have been doing, so it seemed different (like, ok, he's efficient and goal-oriented). Now I feel untrusting and I am kind of reconstructing that other narrative. I'm not sure whether to try to work it out and reinvest the trust or whether to try to pull out.

If I were to say what is most honest it's that I am not sure if we should keep working together but I would like to talk it through with him.

TN, my trust is really shaken because on Friday he asked me about various angles of my relationship - could I live with things the way they are and be happy if they never changed? I said basically things are *ok*, I guess, I can live with it.... I was ambivalent but also feeling hopeless about the possibility of changing anything. Rather than challenging me he said 'well, if things are ok then I guess you can live with it the way they are and be contented." and that was pretty much the end of the session. I felt this real backlash of anger about that, the other side of my ambivalence, felt abandoned by him (like why don't you care if it's only ok? what about the rest of me?) but also know that it's my job to care, not his. Before that in my ambivalence he had been suggesting I needed more boundaries/consequences with my husband. So the next day H copped the boundaries/consequences all wrapped up with the anger and abandonment too.

In fact when I did start talking consequences on Saturday H's T told me (very gently and sweetly, she gets away with this stuff) that that was childish and unconstructive. She knows I can hear stuff like that without freaking out (i.e. anyone can get childish and unconstructive under pressure, so I don't take it personally), but it still left me feeling confused about what is the appropriate way. Yeah, too many cooks spoiling the broth perhaps.

Anyway, the upshot is no more therapy of any kind for H. But actually I knew he was heading in that direction anyway and had kind of already decided that. So I sort of had a crash and burn attitude too.

Part of me, though, feels like Manatee just should have been able to do something about all this. And I do feel like he wasn't on form in some important ways, and I do have big, big doubts about whether he could really work the way I'd need to get anything out of going forward with our individual work.

Love to all,
Jones

(((((JONES)))))

Was wondering how manatee felt when that other T suggested that the consequences and boundaries were childish and unconstructive. Not that it should matter but the four of you were in the room together and it might have had an impact on him keeping or losing his equilibrium.

I'm sure you know the expression, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. That's exactly what I was thinking when you described your Friday night session. It sounds to me like he does care whether or not you are happy but was using reverse psychology on you. It also sounds like you are really starting to care about manatee but you are scared.

My T and I stayed surface for a long time until I was able to get into the transference issues. It was a wall we couldn't get passed until all that stuff was out in the open. I worried too that he wouldn't be able to go as deep as I wanted. The truth is that I was afraid to go deeper.

But some T's just aren't capable of doing the deep work. And that you need to know before you invest any more time and money into the relationship. Remember when manatee told you that some people come to therapy for help for one problem and others stay in therapy for quality of life? My guess from that statement is that he does the deep work. But only he can tell you. Sometimes the hardest conversations turn out to be the best and might bring you closer to him.

Only 2 more days!

(((JONES))))

Liese

((((((Liese))))) Thank you for this lovely message - it's really kind of comforting. Also not, because I know I still need to do the hard work of that conversation! And to face the possibility that really he may not be able to help me.

The other part of that conversation we had about how long I could stay in therapy was that he said he knew of a woman who stayed in therapy with another therapist for 15 years. He said it like that was some kind of marvel or oddity. But it's not odd to me, because I know lots of lovely people who have been in therapy for that long, including my own mum. So I ended up feeling after that conversation like - he can say it's up to me but he still has his preferred style of working and his own assessment of my needs and my 'vibe' of both of those is short-term.

Regardless, I have thought about you and your T a few times in relation to this. I used to think your T wasn't into long-term work too, and it's really nice that he is. It makes me think that maybe what I'm assuming about Manatee isn't so certain.

love,
Jones

(((((JONES)))))

Yes you are right. Things HAVE been rocky with my T and I for the past year but we've really worked through some difficult stuff. (IT WAS REALLY HARD!) I now know that he believes that the relationship IS the therapy. I had so many fears of intimacy that caused me NOT to open up to him, he was having a hard time reading me and so many wires got crossed. He knows I love him deeply (I'm with him now almost 4 years) and our relationship actually only deepened since I revealed that. I was so afraid to tell him, so afraid of the rejection. Instead, he's just been amazingly caring and open and warm. But I suppose it could have turned out the other way as well. (Thank god it didn't!!!) However, even though it has been hard and there were times that I wanted to leave, he always told me there was more work to do - which encouraged me to stay.

But he took my cues. When I wanted distance, he gave me distance. When I wanted closeness, he gave me closeness. He just didn't give me closeness. (I probably would have run if he had.) But I also have to say that I feel as though my T "hid" his caring side from me for a long time. This is a conversation I still need to have with him. But I can see only now just how caring and dedicated he is. Instead of asking, do you care about me and I need you to care about me, I was taking cues from the way he dressed (very nice dresser) and other things and coming to conclusions about him based on preconceived notions. I had an idea in my head that he basically had to neglect himself in order to prove that he was a caring person. If he takes such good care of himself, surely he has to be self-absorbed and materialistic and selfish and narcissistic and all the rest. It's laughable now to see how far that is from the truth of who he is.



I've been reading Attachment in Psychotherapy by David Wallin. It's fascinating because it talks a lot about the therapists attachment style, something I hadn't given thought to before. And how the attachment styles of the therapist interact with the different attachment styles of the client. And the countertransference to pay attention to, depending upon the different attachment styles. Something like that could be going on between you and manatee. You just don't know. Of course, the therapist is supposed to be on top of it but according to Wallin, it's often extremely hard for therapists to be on top of their own unconscious crap. But that the countertransference often helps the client grow when the T becomes aware of it and can break the cycle of the "enactment".

And, so, yes, it is possible you could be reading manatee wrong. And you haven't even been with him for a year yet, have you? There is a huge difference between say being in therapy for 1 year vs. being in therapy for 15 years. You may not need or want 15 years of therapy. Maybe you'll want 4 years or 10 years. Maybe you just need to know that you can stay as long as you want and that it will be your choice when you leave. And maybe you have to find out just who manatee is vs. who you think he is. I haven't known you that long but since I've been on the forum, it seems as though you and manatee have been working really well together. It's worth putting in the time and effort (read - scary) to find out if your fears are justified or if they are just that, fears.

When I read your whole scenario, it reminded me of an episode of In Treatment that I just watched. Paul and his wife were talking to his therapist and his therapist apparently put words into his wife's mouth. Paul got really upset and said to his wife, while scolding his therapist, "you know what she's doing don't you? She's putting thoughts in your head that could take years to get to in therapy." And then he turned to the therapist and said something like, "you're not respecting the process." I thought of that in relation to how your session ended Friday night and perhaps you wanting manatee to say something more, give you something me and you feeling abandoned. Maybe he was pulling back to let you come to the conclusion on your own???

Sorry if this is so convoluted and disorganized. Hope things get better for you.

xoxo

Liese

Liese, I really appreciate this message. Thank you. Curse those snappy dressers. I totally take 'messages' from that too. Like - how can I relate to you when you own really stylish sunglasses? What kind of person ARE you? :P

Yeah, I'm not sure how long I've been with Manatee. Less than a year I think but I'm not sure. Actually it was after Christmas so must be only 8 months or so. A lot of it has been good but I'm convinced he prefers short term and is basically done with me. And to be honest I'm not sure what I have left to do - I don't have a store of traumas waiting to be explored at this stage. I just feel like I want him there.

Anyway, I will try to ask him tonight. And I will try to explain how I felt Friday and Saturday. Once again, though, I feel ok now and it is hard to know what to say. I will try.

It's weird thinking of them having their own attachment/counter-transference stuff. Sometimes I really see him react - usually he has a strong opinion about some social stuff that I do (where I have to make ethical decisions in my job etc) and then he pulls himself back. Or he gets sheepish about something, not knowing some general knowledge thing or having to fill his coffee cup up before the session and I think what? Why do you care what I think? And why would I have an opinion about that?

I'll let you know how it goes.

Love,
jones