This last week has been a very difficult one. In my last session with my T on Tuesday, we did some really difficult work surrounding my anger and grief about my mother. When I am dealing with these buried emotions, especially anger, it tends to really color my perceptions of my therapist. Although he really isn't behaving any differently from usual, he feels stern and remote and somewhat frustrated with me. And actually its me being frustrated with myself. We hit the end of the session and I was in a difficult place, We did a lot of good work but there's a lot left to be done and for the first time in a long time, I was feeling insecure and scared to leave. My T let me run a few minutes over to give me a chance to calm down. When we went to make my next appt, my T told me he couldn't schedule me for the following week, because I already had an couples session with my husband, and he's going on vacation the following week, so he couldn't schedule me for two appts that week. So he ended up scheduling me for three weeks later. He apologized and said it wasn't a good time, but then it never really is. He also mentioned me possibly coming in alone for the couples appt (which I'm going to do, my husband very graciously offered to bow out knowing I'm having a hard time.) I ended up crying in the parking lot for 10 minutes before I was able to leave.
I'm really struggling with anger and grief over what I didn't have and how little I felt I mattered. Not being able to get an appt for that long out especially when I wasn't in a good place wasn't helping. I ended up emailing my T a few hours later to tell him that I was coming in alone next Tuesday, and that I wanted to schedule another couples appt for when he got back from vacation. I also explained that he had felt very distant and I wanted reassurance that we were ok.
I didn't hear back from him. Which at first didn't bother me because he tends to take a little longer by email. But I still hadn't heard back from him by Thursday evening and by then I was getting really angry. We've been around the block a couple of times about appts, and him knowing I was in bad shape but telling me I couldn't get an appt was making me really angry (which honestly, he's been encouraging me to get angry at him, that its important for me to be able to experience getting angry in a relationship and not being punished, ignored or rejected.) and then not getting a response to my email was angering me even more. I finally made an emergency call to him on Thursday evening. He called back (which he always does within an hour of an emergency call). I have NEVER felt this angry with him and when I answered the phone, I asked him if he had gotten my email. He told me he couldn't remember. And I said, well, gosh, that makes me feel better. I wasn't saying much but I did let him know I was really angry that he hadn't answered. He told me he understood me being angry and that we would be fine. and then he said he didn't think it was helping. I told him I was really very angry but we would talk on Tuesday at my next appt, then I got off the phone. He did tell me to call again if I needed to. I was feeling so angry that I was almost refusing to talk to him.
When I got off the phone it felt like someone had ripped my heart out. And I was furious that I was angry and he just went on his way to his next client and I would keep until tuesday. I went to a really bad place. When I thought about the fact that he told me he couldn't remember, I suddenly felt like client #37 and that all of the talk about our relationship being real, about connecting, about his being secure suddenly felt like a total crock. That the relationship isn't real, he doesn't care, I was just another person rotating through his office. That I had been a total moron to believe that I could actually trust someone again. I KNEW better. That what had happened with my parents was the whole story and I could never expect anything else and it had been supremely naive to believe anything else. In other words, I went to a really bad place. It felt like the floor had collapsed out from under me. I ended up in a ball sobbing. Then I shut completely down. But every once in a while the pain would break through and I'd be a basket case again. I finally realized that I needed to call my T again, so around 9 I left another mesage with his service around 9:15.
When he called back, I told him that telling me that he didn't remember whether or not he had read my email made me feel like client #37 and I needed to know if our relationship was real, was I imagining the connection and the care and how deep the relationship felt. He was very clear about reassuring me that the relationship within therapy was real. He told me that he wouldn't lie to me, so he was honest about the email and he understood why I would be angry and feel the way I did. I told him about feeling like I shouldn't have trusted this and he told me it depended which this I was talking about. That I had trusted it as a child and been failed. And that I could trust it now but what I got in therapy isn't enough, it couldn't be and it was very understandable that I would be angry, and that when there was a disruption, it would evoke how bad all the failures had felt before.
He asked me how I was feeling and I told him that the worst part was that it felt like I didn't have a connection with my parents because something was actually missing from me, and that when I felt like our connection wasn't real, it just proved that something really was missing. He very vehemently (and thinking back on it later, I think he even sounded a little angry) told me that something was missing, but it wasn't missing from me. What was missing was what I was supposed to be getting.
He told me that he understood why I suddenly felt like I couldn't trust the relationahip but I had done exactly the right thing to call him. Then he stayed on the phone until I felt calm enough to get off.
I felt a lot better after the second phone call. I know I need to talk to him about everything that I'm angry about but I also felt that my trust in the relationship was restored so I stopped feeling like I was in free fall.
I am really struggling once again with the boundaries. One hour a week just isn't cutting it. Telling me you care and then sending me out to cope for a week at a time is making me angry. I didn't get what I needed then, and the boundaries are preventing me from getting what I need now. And my therapist keeps telling me that therapy isn't enough. And I think part of the reason it isn't enough is so that I have to grapple with the fact that I didn't get what I needed as a child and I can't go back and change that. So the frustration I feel with the boundaries makes me angry, but it also brings me face to face with my loss and the necessity to grieve it.
That the truth is that I am one of my therapists clients, that what he does for me is what he would do for anyone in his care. The relaitonship is real, he really cares for me, but I'm not special, I never will be. I was supposed to be special with my parents, but I wasn't. I am desparately trying to figure this out, but I think that the only way I'm going to get through the longing for something more with my T is to mourn what I didn't have. That the attempt to have something beyond the theraputic boundaries from my T is an attempt to get now what I didn't get then. But it's impossible. I need to mourn the loss and when I do that, I can let go of the relentless hope that I can get now what I didn't get then. Once I let go of that relentless hope, I can also let go of the hope that there will be more outside of therapy. But as painful as the longing can get, it's also painful to think of letting go of any hope of it being fulfilled.
I really need to talk to my T about this, I'm not sure if I'm thinking straight. And I think I want to explore what he means by therapy not being enough. Kind of a what's the point? Then why am I doing this?
I'm not sure if I'm making any sense but it feels like I'm trying to break through to something. There's so much anger to get out but I think there's a huge amount of grief under the anger.
AG
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