Hiya,

From my perspective, I suspect rupture is a very necessary part of the therapeutic relationship.

Permanent perfect attunement is not a reality in human relationships.

We move in and out of synch with the people around us all the time. When we are robust inside, have good relationship skills and/or don't have a lot at stake in a relationship what happens is we get out of attunement, can notice it, and use our skills to get back into attunement with the other and ourselves - such as checking out our perceptions against reality, distinguishing new hurts from old hurts, communicating our feelings, hearing and accepting the communications of others, assessing danger, making choices to move closer or further away, letting go of hurt.

But when we have a really vulnerable sense of self, are not strong at some of those skills and/or we have lots and lots at stake, little ruptures quickly become big ruptures. And when we're living in that place, letting someone know us at all is a huge risk, because we don't know how to fix things when they go wrong. We only know that when things start to go wrong they get worse.

So I think a lot of therapy is about learning how to extend our skills at feeling, hurting, surviving and repairing the misattunements at higher levels of risk than we are used to. If our repair skills outstrip the risk, the ruptures are not catastrophic, might even be enjoyable as 'spark' in a relationship. If the risk outstrips our repair skills, the ruptures feel terrible - and can be traumatic when the T isn't capable of containing the situation and providing the missing repair skills.

2c, for what it's worth!

Jones