I only see my T once a week, wish I could see her seven, but she won't go for it (i can't even get 2 out of her!) So, I end up writing to her A LOT. I drop off letters between sessions and bring them to sessions sometimes. Well, she has been out of town (TWO WHOLE WEEKS WITHOUT SEEING HER!) and I am writing furiously to get out everything that I have been thinking. I would like to share a segment of the current letter I am writing with you all and see what you think. I know I am not alone in my feelings, but it's driving me crazy and I need someone to know! ***BE ADVISED--POSSIBLE TRIGGERS***

"I think I know part of the reason why your lack of emotional reaction bothers me so badly. It reminds me of my dad- the way he used to just passively sit there and look at me when I would talk to him. I mean, I understand that where he was useless and tried to justify my mother’s actions, you are empathetic and neutral (VERY BIG DIFFERENCE). But when I’m emotional and you just sit there and look at me, it’s frustrating and reminiscent of my interactions with him. I think that’s why I threw that ball at you that one day (um… yeah… sorry about that) [FYI: YES, I THREW A BALL AT/TO MY T. IT WAS JUST A STRESS BALL AND IT WAS PLAYFULLY PREFACED BY "THINK FAST!"]. That’s what I used to do- throw stuff like socks and stuff- to him when I wanted him to do something, initiate some sort of interaction or pay attention to me. I know you are paying attention to me, but, because of the nature of things, you don’t ever initiate it. It kind of cheapens things, and makes me wonder even more what you REALLY think; like if you are just paying attention because I’m there and paying you to. For all I know, you could be thinking BLAH BLAH BLAH when I’m talking to you, wishing I would shut up and move on already. And I know that you would never take the initiative to seek me out if I just stopped coming or something, and that says to me that you can’t care if I can potentially be so easily dismissed. All of this is very frustrating for me. How can I trust you completely if I don’t even know if you care about me? Then I think, we’re already almost a year into this… should I still be wondering if you care about me or not? Shouldn’t I have figured it out by now? If we’re not even to that point yet, and there is SO much more s*** to work through, is this even worth continuing? But you and I both know that “not continuing” is not an option. You know the way my brain works; this will continue regardless of if I want it to or not (unless I die... hmmmmm....).

I feel like I am my own rock and my own hard place, and I am somehow still managing to be stuck in between them (as for you, you’re just standing there, looking back and forth at the rock, then the hard place, and saying, “yep, that sure is a rock and that sure is a hard place.”). When I started this, I didn’t realize how similar therapy and self-mutilation would feel. F*** razors, this is like a chainsaw."

I know what it feels like to wonder about whether or not your T really truly cares. I know that is a painful place.

After reading your letter I had the impression that you're pretty frustrated and angry at your T. I wonder if you talked to her directly about your anger if that would help. I hear that you are wanting more of a reaction from her. More attentiveness. I can understand that. It may just be her style that she is more distant. I have seen quite a few Ts in my quest for good ones. I have noticed big differences in their styles. Some will hug you and some will not. I had one T who stared at me the entire first session I saw her. Said hardly two words. She was weird. Tried seeing her for a couple of weeks and then realized that our styles clashed. The biggest reason I didn't stick with her was her rather stand offish manner.

But you sound like you are attached to this T. So to simply say to find another would not be very comforting I am sure.

Perhaps you could ask her what her lack of reaction is about. Or maybe you already have. BUt that would be a start.

It's good that you are connecting some of this with your past. To see the patterns of hurt etc. Although it's odd for me to say that because I really resist looking at those in myself.

I hope that what I said was okay. I know this is sensitive territory.

CT, I know what it feels like to wonder what your T really thinks of you. I spent my last session discussing exactly that. I also have a T who is not very demonstrative. He has told me that I am not okay because he says so I am okay because I know it.

My rock and hard place stuck feeling comes from the fact that if T was more feeling and demonstrative then I wouldn't believe it was real. I often think that people who are understanding and attentive just don't know me well enough to judge me and I write off their support as conditional (when I say or do the next thing then they will feel differently).

It makes my T relationship very difficult and I'm not sure a different T with a different style would help.

Good luck with this letter. I think whenever you can tell T how you feel, you open the door to some understanding.

It never ceases to amaze me how one of us is feeling strongly about something and lo and behold another one signs into forum and someone else has already posted what you were feeling. I can't help but wonder about the idiosynchronicty of it all or is it suggestablity? Are we feeding off of one another so much that we begin to adopt similar cycle s and patterns of emotions? It really makes me curious.

Anyway, CT, I don't know what to say other than I truly feel your pain rightnow. I just got off a heated phone call with my T who expressed that she is feeling frustrated with me right now because as she put it "There is nothing she can seem to do to prove that she cares for me and she finds that frutrating when she spends so much time trying to help me see that she does." So after sobbbing profusely after haging up I started wondering, maybe this is as far as she can take me. Maybe I need another T to help me from here. Then I hear her words, "No matter what I say or do you are always looking for me to reject you." So I suppose I shouldn't believe I'd feel any different with another T.

And HB, what you said is very interesting. There is only so much we can gain from therapy. So is this the end of the line for me? I mean what sort of hellish place have I been dropped into? Is something finally going to just click and I recognize ok, this is what I need and it does not revolve around my T anymore. It now revolves around me and I pick myself up and give her one last hug and say "Thank you for all you've done. I'll take it from here." And just in case I sound infuriated, I am not. At least not with you or anything you or anybody else said. My frustration comes from the feelings that nothing is ever good enough. I have been waiting for this relationship to fulfill a certain connection in the brain that would be a much less painful realization that I am done with therapy. I suspected all along that when i am done with therapy it would be a good feeling. A sense of accomplishment and a new found meaning and comfortable shift in my relationship withmy T. Not that it wouldn't be bitter sweet, but that it wouldn't still hurt this damn much!

I am sorry if I hijacked you post CT. But again I am amazed at the synchronicty of it all. And I am not in a good place at all right now to offer any advice, but I would like to offer my heart of support. Then I wish I could take a couple xanax and go to bed and hope for a better day tomorrow. Because today sucks the big one!

Incognito I just wanted to tell you that I replied a nice long reply to your other post last night and when I went to hit send I somewhow deleted or reset the message box and lost it all. I was so frutstraed because it meant a lot for me to reply to you and I just couldn't bring myslef to try again. SO all I can say right now is I'm sorry. ANd (((hug)))
JM

JM, thank for letting me know. I was looking for your reply. I am also struck with the synchronicity of these threads. I am sorry that you are in such pain. I think that HB's reply to my thread is very interesting because while it acknowledges that our T can be what we need perhaps they can show how to be what we need for ourselves. At least that was my take on it and I am nowhere near knowing how that would look but it did give me some hope.

Awww (((JM))) (((incognito)))

All you guys! I don't think it's coincidence that so many of us are struggling with our relationships with our Ts. I think it is the way of therapy for many people. It's the way it unravels. I am still trying to figure out how it helps me and or hinders me.

I had a huge wake up call when my T of 16 years ended her practice. She told me it was hard to leave me. She told me that she thinks of me every day. She told me that she loves me and cares about me. But bottom line she is GONE. No contact. NOTHING. Now I see this new T and she tells me she cares. She tells me that she thinks of me etc. And guess what? I refuse to swallow it hook line and sinker this time. I know for a fact that this relationship no matter how close I feel to her is very limitted.

Here's an email I just sent my T today.

"Hello (new T),

I guess since I realize that I can not replace what I lost in childhood I feel sort of dead. I felt even more depressed. I mean severely so. I guess that is lingering.

I do not know how to get the energy for life back. You said I could borrow your hope for me. Thank you but I have no idea how that would work. Plus I learned from (my old T) that I am just your client. In the long run I won't know you. You won't be there next to me while I struggle to survive in this world. I know this intimately because of my relationship with (my old T). I learned that no matter how close I feel to you there will always be severe limitations and that it is in my best interest not to get too invested in the emotional side of our relationship. While I appreciate your gestures to support me I am all too aware that some day soon you and I will not even be talking or thinking of one another. I know this for a fact.

I feel like crap. I feel like I can not even get a enough traction under me to get enough of a grip to help myself. It started when I learned that my past was worse than I thought initially. Then when (my old T) told me that our relationship was over, just like that, it became by far worse. I am out of my body. I am not present in my own life. That's the best I can describe it. In a removed way I am very concerned about myself and how I am going to start to care again.

Thanks for taking the time to read this."

The pain in everybody posts here is palpable. Some of it seems unavoidable and some of it seems unnecessary but all of it is real but hopefully not insurmountable. I wish I could hand out hope to each of us and soothing and peace. I wish that our relationships with our T's could be more of what we want and have to be just what we really need. I have been under a great big mound of grief and sometimes depression for the last few weeks trying to accept the discrepancy between what I want from T and what I will get, between what I think I need from her and what I might really need. I've been angry and in despair because of the unfairness that I have to work so hard and invest so much in an unequally reciprocating temporary relationship. Being told that in order to heal the atrocities of my past that have made me this miserable person I am today, I have to reveal all of myself even the most hidden tender parts, examine them and rework it all with someone whose loyalty and concern I have to take mostly on faith (and pay for) seems to be a really asinine way to do things. Who came up with this system?!?!?

However, this week I finally had a chance to quiet down the craziness in my head and I heard that little voice crying in the dark. That little girl who is too young to have experienced the pain of betrayal or abandonment consciously yet and still has hope and faith that things can get better and that T can and will help. In my session Monday night, I was in a very dark, sad, lonely place but towards the very end I felt a very strong presence of this little girl (I call her "Little sister") who didn't know what to say but had to reach out. Since T and I sit together on the couch, Little Sister reached out and touched T's arm and just simply said how soft her sweater was. I don't think T knew what was going on and since time was up I was sad I couldn't tell her. I cried a lot because I was mad about the time limit thing being so impersonal, limiting and smacking of rejection.

Fortunately, Little Sister didn't recede into the background like usual and I felt very much like my younger self for most of the week. Little Sister is so much more trusting of people and is not afraid to like them or love them or even let them know that. She is much more optimistic and hopeful about things and tries hard to see the benefits of things even sad or frustrating things. When I saw T again on Friday I told her all about Little Sister and even some other things that had been going on that last week I swore I'd never fess up to. T has told me before that Little Sister holds the key to my healing. So I decided to try to trust Little Sister's instincts and I've had a much better week for it. I guess I am asking myself "What would Little Sister do?" And since she lives in the moment and isn't so afraid to ask for things this has helped stifle a lot of fears for what the future holds.... for now.

River,
I am glad you were able to get in touch with "Little Sister" that way. Iknow that is where you (WE) need to go. It is very touching when that little girl comes out because as you aptly describe she is far more accepting and willing than we are.

That is where I have been these last few months giving complete exposure to my little girl self and other selves, and in that I was so hoping for more good and positive feelings to come between me and my T, but it seems so remote and my T feels more aloof I am sure in its affect and not in her reality at all. But it hurts very deep. It i apinful and tormenting to which she is sort of forced to stand on the sideline to some degree and I can't help but to resent that. My mommy shold have come to me to soothe me when i was a baby. My T should come to me to soothe me now.

It is habitual to want to intellectualise this and I should resist, becaue who really gives a crap about the intellectualism of it all anyway. It doesn't matter. By becoming "little" again there seems to be a sense of danger and desire to run from it.

Oh I don't even know what I just typed and I don't even care. I may as well stop here before I find myslef somplace I can't explain. Its a mess, a real mess. Sorry that this is all resonating around the forum so much and that such wonderful people are hurting like this.

JM

Yes - your mother should have soothed you. You shouldn't have had to do it yourself. It sucks big time now that no one else can really do it for you - even if they tried. That is the hard, shitty truth of it. I have been bashing my head against this truth myself and the pain is unbearable. It is heartbreaking that our T's can't ultimately do what we want them to so desperately to do. And in trying to help us as much as they can without hurting us they walk a tricky thin path strewn with the cracks and boulders of miscommunication, tugging emotions, and pure humaness - on both sides. Two days ago I wouldn't have been this understanding or generous considering the pain I felt but Little Sister has an amazing ability to take things on faith, like that the way things work in therapy is really probably the best system we can have right now with what we know.

I am so sorry you are in so much pain. Wouldn't it be fun to let our "little girls" just go out and play while the old tired "older selves" take a nice peaceful nap? It is raining here so let's go jump in the puddles!

I've been thinking about posting about my last session all week but just couldn't seem to get to it and now I know why.

I'm sorry, so sorry, for the incredible pain everyone is in. I really do understand the agony and just how endless it feels, but I want to tell you that there is hope, and healing and you are closer than you know.

I don't want to seem insensitive to what everyone is dealing with, or especially to make things worse, so I write what I do in the hope that it will help. And if you need to use the HTML slapper on me I'll completely understand.

I posted about emailing my T and when I called him having him tell me that he couldn't remember if he had read it. I was already struggling with so much anger about the boundaries. I am trying to come to grips with all the pain of what I didn't get from my mother and being told I can only come an hour a week and not even that the following week, that I have to leave at the end of an hour no matter how I'm feeling and i can't be held or treated affectionately invoked all those feelings of never having enough, of having to cope on my own. That once again I was being failed by the very person I was supposed to be able to depend on.

I was so angry with my T about the email I could barely talk to him but when I got off the phone, the feeling came sweeping in that I didn't matter. That I hadn't gotten what I needed from my mother because something was missing from me, that I was just inherently incapable of having a real connection and being loved by another human being. That's when I called my T back. He assured me that our relationship is real (which I believe it is, its just that it only occurs within the boundaries) and was extremely strong about explaining that something was missing but it wasn't missing from me but from what I was given. But he also told me that he understood my anger. That therapy wasn't enough and I had every right to feel angry about that. Thinking about it later, I thought "what the #$%^? if it's not enough, what the hell am I going through this for?"

I went to see him on Tuesday and was struggling to express how I was feeling and he told me to just start with our last appointment and describe what happened. As I related what happened I was able to talk about how I was feeling and realized that I had been engaged in a struggle that felt like giving birth. The reason our Ts won't tell us what we want to hear, won't promise to give us the love we rightfully long for is because they can't. It won't fit within the bounds of therapy and even if it did it wouldn't be enough to satisfy those needs that were never met.

The boundaries aren't really painful because we cannot get what we need, they're painful because they evoke what it felt like to not get what we need. Once I came back from the edge of despair of believing that my relationship with my T wasn't real and I wasn't capable of a real relationship, I was still left with the fact that boundaries are real. I am a client (although not "just") of my T. And that although I have what I believe is a very deep and significant relationship, he does not offer to me anything different from what he would offer anyone who came through his door. Which brings me face to face with the fact that no matter how much I want it or feel like I need it, I will get NOTHING beyond those boundaries. I have to give up the hope of it. But that hope is an integral part of my lifelong relentless hope that if I just searched long enough and hard enough I would finally find what was missing as a child.

And as I told my T, to give up the hope of relationship beyond therapy with him where there would be restrictions on what he could be to me, is to give up the hope of finally fixing what happened with my parents. But the very difficult and almost intolerable reality is that I can't. I can't fix it. And part of what makes my life so difficult is that until I give up on finding it, I spend so much time and energy, including getting fixated in destructive relationship patterns trying to accomplish it.

But the reason it is so hard to let go of hope is that the only thing left, and the place I came to on Tuesday, was a horrible grief. I finally went there, and let myself feel it. I think it was one of the, if not the, most painful things I've ever done (later in the session my T told me it waa probably the hardest thing I would ever have to face.) I broke down and sobbed with what felt like a broken heart for a while.

But this was the difference and why our therapists are important and why we put ourselves through this hell. Instead of being utterly alone in the midst of that terrible grief as I was in the past, my T came with me every step of the way. He witnessed my grief, he affirmed how terrible it was but he also told me that there was another side, that I could live through it. In the middle of it, when I could barely breathe, with my eyes closed, I heard him say in a tear-choked voice, that he was so sorry that I had to experience this pain. And I knew that I wasn't alone anymore.

Therapy isn't enough to go back and provide me with what I didn't have. But it is enough to provide me a place to see myself clearly, to feel my grief, to not be alone, to be understood. To teach me to let go of the relentless hope and realize that in spite of it all I have what I need to go forward.

There is nothing fair about what happened to all of us. And it is a gross injustice that we must work so hard to heal problems not of our making. But the only choice we have is to do the work, endure the pain and heal, or to live a life only half alive, to only endure our existance. We are all better than that and deserve so much more.

I know you, probably better in some ways than many of the people in your "real" life, and I see such brave, incredible, wise, and loving people who deserve to know their own worth and to walk in freedom. I know it feels hopeless, I know it feels like the pain could kill you. I know you're angry and want someone to pay for what happened to you. And you have every right to feel all those things. Just don't give up. Do not think that the end point is to be in pain and confusion and want. That is not the end. It will be ok in the end. If it's not ok, it's not the end. So this isn't the end.

AG

Thanks, AG, for posting all of your experience. And no need for the HTML slapper Your T was wonderful and it's obvious that the care is there for you. I'm glad you found that you were not alone during your journey to the most painful place. And the outcome gives all of us hope that we can journey there and back in one piece when our time comes.

It is just so hard to exist with that empty place inside. The place that was never filled with what we should have had as children and can't have even now with our Ts. I think we just have to find the way to grieve it and then leave it and go on to find what can now make us happy and fulfilled. Now just because I say we should do that does not mean I have any @##@%$%*$%$#@ idea how to do that or if it's even really possible. It's just that sitting with the pain of loss becomes intolerable sometimes. That endless ache that cannot be filled even though we all try. The closest I come to dulling that ache or being able to ignore it is when I'm sitting with my T and quietly talking about what hurts and why and hearing him reassure me that it will be okay.

I appreciate all that you have told us because it does give us hope.

TN

Hey Everybody. Thanks for all of your responses and support. Regardless of how empty I feel, it is at least nice to know that other people out there know what this feels like (not that I would wish it on anyone). It's so easy to think that we are crazy, dillusional and overreacting when we are out there in the real world.

I've been rereading some of the old things that I have written to my T, in search of a time when I had more understanding, I guess. I ran across a few things that I thought you all might be interested in reading... or maybe not. Just thought I'd post 'em, maybe so you all won't feel alone, maybe to help give you some words to an ache you can't name, or maybe just to make myself feel better. Here goes:


"I actually heard myself say, “I feel like someone has died” and that stopped me in my tracks. I mean, the obvious answer is that my mother died; however, that notion did not quell the feeling of gloom and grief inside of me. No, someone else died. Intuitively, I knew it was a more recent, intimate friend who has never before left me. Puzzled due to lack of answers, I began to close down my computer and head for bed. I sat quietly for a moment, though, gathering the strength to get up, and that is when I heard it.

Hope.

It was no louder than a whisper, but I heard it. It took me a moment to realize what it was, but then it clicked.

Hope died, and it is her loss that I am mourning.

Not all hope is gone; it was a very specific hope who lost her life that night. Unfortunately, it just so happened to be my favorite hope; the comfortable, reliable hope that I will one day find someone who will be able to fill in all of the gaps my mother missed.

In truth, she has been dying for a while now (hope, that is). Cause of death appears to be suffocation from the relentless chokehold I have had on her for the past few years. I didn’t even know I was squeezing, but all of the sudden, she was gone. Now, all that’s left in my hands is the pain of reality. It’s hollow, empty, gut-wrenching and nauseating. It’s grief.

I no longer look forward to the day that I will finally find the missing piece to my maternal puzzle. I know that no amount of effort will yield me a functional, loving, beautiful mother. No amount of pleading or begging or wishing will change the fact that my mother sucked and that I didn’t get what I needed from her. No amount of good behavior, good grades, good deeds or manipulation will ever change the past. I can try to please, impress and flatter all of the attractive, sensitive and comforting older women in the world, but it will do me no good because I cannot transplant them back to my formative years and recreate my childhood with them. Nope, my childhood is over. There is no going back and replacing my inadequate mother.

That being said however, I still don’t know how to get rid of the rubble and debris that remains from my years of hoping I could one day convince someone to fill her position. There is this insatiable desire left over in me to be wanted, to be mentored, and to be loved. More than anything, though, I want to be held. I want to be comforted and held. I crave it. I long for it. I want it more than money, sex, relationships and food. I just want to be still and lay my head in a mother’s lap while she strokes my hair. I don’t even want to talk or anything. Is that really too much to ask? Apparently so.

So, if I have not stopped wanting all of these things, and I am still hurting, what does the death of hope mean? It just means that I no longer believe the lie that finding a replacement mother will make all this pain go away."


"Why does it feel like you are rejecting me when I know, in my head, that you aren’t? I know you aren’t, but I’m hurt and sad because something, somewhere inside of me tells me you are. And that part won’t shut up. It keeps talking, telling me that you would violate your boundaries if only I were worth it, that there is no sense in wishing I were part of your family because you wouldn’t have me, and that I was born to dysfunctional parents because it is what I deserved."

-CT

quote:

"Why does it feel like you are rejecting me when I know, in my head, that you aren’t? I know you aren’t, but I’m hurt and sad because something, somewhere inside of me tells me you are. And that part won’t shut up. It keeps talking, telling me that you would violate your boundaries if only I were worth it, that there is no sense in wishing I were part of your family because you wouldn’t have me, and that I was born to dysfunctional parents because it is what I deserved."

CT.. I could have written that but you already have.. and quite beautifully. You express what I so strongly feel about my life and about my T. My T is a male so it takes on a little different connotation but it's mostly a similar feeling. When he tells me he won't reject me or abandon me my ears hear it and my brain registers it but I can't feel it and believe it. I think it's because my mom also said positive things to me and then abused me too. So it became confusing to me and I learned not to believe what I heard. I still have a really hard time trusting my perceptions of any situation.

None of us, no one deserves to be born to a dysfunctional family but somehow we struggle with this. Our self-esteem has been beaten or choked out of us and we think we deserve all the bad things that happened to us and we can't possibly entertain the thought that we deserve all good things.

As for hope, I guess we can endure the loss of a lot of things in life but the loss of hope seems to be the hardest to deal with.

I'm sorry for your pain. Thank you for sharing what you did.

TN

I think everyone has said it most eloquently. I'm posting these links for your perusal...perhaps they will resonate.
These links describe the essence of the existential crisis....which is what I am seeing in this thread. I think it applies to all of us...and is why we are here. And why we keep seeking, and asking the hard questions. We are all experiencing "The Dark Night of the Soul."

"The main thing a seeker must do is hang in there! Neither ecstasy nor agony are as important as persisting."


http://www.themystic.org/print/threshold.htm

"The truth I fear...Is my only hope."


http://www.themystic.org/print/dark-
night.htm

"What must the caterpillar do? That it may one day fly?


......may we all find peace.

SD