((((DF))))

My guess that everyone on the forum can relate. I often think that way about parenting, that it's better if my emotions stay out of it, and I only give my children what they need in order to grow, pay attention to them, take an interest in their lives and their interests. My needs come secondarily. I mean, if it's all about what they feel and if I can manufacture their feelings just by paying attention to them and crossing this i and dotting that t and it doesn't necessarily have to be a two way street. Aaacck. It's such a hard thing to wrap my mind around. Because I sometimes just FEEL like a robot, on autopilot. And sometimes I'm not sure how I FEEL about anything.

And I get scared when I think that T is just doling out the goods just because I need it to heal, that there isn't that bond between us. Because I want to matter to him. It's so hard to be this vulnerable and think that I don't matter to him.

Maybe all of this thinking is just more fear, fear of getting close, fear of the imbalance in the relationship and the power that they could have over us.

I try to imagine sometimes if I were a T how I would feel about my clients. But my emotions are so screwed up now, I can't even go there.

I'm sorry I can't be of much help, DF.

Liese

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and suddenly all the unicorns, and bunnies in the rolling hills of my therapy room, amid the sunshine and rainbows and sweet music of angles, hung their heads and promptly walked out... leaving me with reality. That I've contracted my T to assist me in healing and that she does a wonderful job (just like a firefighter rescuing me from a building, or police arresting a bad guy, or a nurse attending to my wounds, or, like I do in my job, someone showing me a way to be successful at something I want to do well) but it's literally a manufactured attempt at the things I need to develop and I so desperately wish my emotions didn't have to be involved for it to work.

(((DF))) Oh how I can relate to this and I've (once again) recently come face to face with this reality and I hate it. At times I will feel as though I'm experiencing a real relationship and I can feel it and then something happens that slaps me upside my head and makes it painfully obvious that I'm M@2:30, and W,F@10:30 and nothing more and never will be anything more. My T is very methodically doing exactly what she is supposed to do (and sometimes things that she really isn't supposed to do....human errors) and what I pay her to do. It is both necessary and hated.

I don't know the solution, but I feel your frustration and anger. I'm there right now.

(((hugs)))

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my other T told me she'd tell me if I was annoying, and I know how she meant it contextually but my very literal brain felt the urge to point out that technically, if she is doing her job appropriately telling me outright 'You are annoying' or even saying 'What you are doing right now is annoying' would be ineffective and she'd be a less than satisfactory therapist to say something in a hurtful manner.

DF... this is a very thought provoking thread. I had to smile at what you wrote above because my T did exactly that... he told me what I do that is annoying. He sweetly told me that when I worry all the time about being annoying to him....well THAT is very annoying! He said otherwise I was a very good patient LOL.

He also tells me that he REALLY does not work with patients he does not like and feels he cannot develop a deep relationship with. I asked him how he knows this and he told me that he is experienced enough to know within the first 3 sessions if he can work with someone and his book is full enough that he does not need to take on patients that are not a good fit for him. So... I guess I made the cut since it's almost a year now. Aside from that he tells me that we ARE in a relationship and that he is invested in my healing and he welcomes my attachment which keeps me safe because it would hurt him to hurt me. This is where things got screwey with oldT. He obviously was more invested in himself and in his own feelings with relation to my therapy and felt no compunction about abandoning me.

Now of course, we both realize that the relationship is not balanced in that I will feel what I feel more intensely than he does and that is as it should be. Someone needs to be in charge of the therapy. Unfortunately for me, last time I was in charge with oldT and that worked out really badly. And so I am really trying to accept that what I have with my T is real and not because I pay him to make up this relationship. We often talk about how he see me and I keep accusing him of just seeing me as patient 2,750 and not as TN. For me, just knowing that he has been doing this and seeing people just like me for over 20 years is a bit daunting. I feel like I'm so boring that I put him to sleep. I'm no different than anyone he has seen before and that really irks me on some level. I guess it all goes back to wanting to be "special" to him and how can I be "special" when I'm so ho hum? Then I remember back to oldT and I know I WAS special or I should say unique to him because he had never really been in such a deep attachment relationship before ... and especially as he mostly treats kids and men I was a bit of an unusual case. I LIKED this. I liked knowing that I was so different for him and that I was his "first" such patient because then it made me special. What it really made me was threatening to him. What it made me was a patient willing to do deep psychotherapy with an inexperienced unsupervised (unsafe) T who when he felt out of his depth just abandoned me.

So.... trying to get back on track here...I work with clients too but in a totally unrelated field. I've known some of these people for over 15 years. I DO care about them and some of my clients have died on me. They are elderly and they die and I get so sad and feel their loss and I miss them. They are not just account number 5678 they are Maryann and Charlotte and Ed and Bill. They are people who I have come to know well and some of them I have never even met in person. Then there are other clients that I help and work with but that don't mean all that much to me. So it IS different. You can and do get attached to clients, especially if you have known them for a long time. The relationship is real. I can only imagine it gets more real when you are doing psychotherapy.

I too bounce between really feeling the relationship and feeling all the emotions and the attachment and affection for my T ... to that other left brain stuff which tries to reason intellectually this "relationship". I start to get into difficulty when I try to left brain the connection between me and my T, instead of just accepting what I really DO feel when I'm with him. I sometimes can actually feel myself reject what he is freely offering me. And maybe that is fear of having something good taken away or feeling like I don't deserve it, or just not knowing what to do with unconditional affection and positive regard.

I do project a lot of stuff onto my T which is undeserved. I know this. I also know that a lot of the pain of what I can't get from him is the childhood deprivation. But knowing this just really does not help.

I feel for you DF. Hugs.

TN

(((DF))) I guess...it's a good and important talk to have, but every time I have it with my T, I feel tangled between my real feelings, T's insistence that we are truly, deeply connected, despite the obviously inorganic structure of the relationship. It's like coming across a beautiful plant or flower growing wild vs cultivating that same plant in a greenhouse. It's still a beautiful flower, but maybe it feels less special, less right somehow, because it grew in a box, within this purposefully controlled and constrained environment. That is the feeling I got when reading everyone's comments. So, I guess I'm saying that all of us and our Ts still have something beautiful in the connections we're forming, but it's never going to be what it would have been if that connection had happened where and when and with whom it was designed to "in nature." That's not something which is very pleasant to reconcile, but it's central, I guess.

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So, I guess I'm saying that all of us and our Ts still have something beautiful in the connections we're forming, but it's never going to be what it would have been if that connection had happened where and when and with whom it was designed to "in nature."

Yaku, that was beautifully said and gives me something to ponder over and maybe discuss in session tomorrow.

Thank you
TN

DF,

I've missed you too and everyone here. I've just been in a really odd place which began a few months ago and doesn't seem to be quickly resolving. Hard to explain, but thanks for the warm welcome back!

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Thankfully both my Ts have experience working with kids because I'm a 5 year old with like 25 years of experience.

This made me LOL and it's because I can so relate to it!! It's just that I'm a 5 year old with a few more years experience than you.

Yaku: That was a beautiful way to express the nature of the relationship. Something to think about for sure.

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he tells me that we ARE in a relationship and that he is invested in my healing and he welcomes my attachment which keeps me safe because it would hurt him to hurt me.

Thank you for that, TN.
And Yaku, your quote was beautiful and so true.

Thanks everybody for this great conversation.

I think DF you have described the feeling I usually have about therapy. Only recently have I started having moments when that isn't all I feel. Like after my session on thursday I was connected and unconcerned about these kinds of worries all the way until Saturday night. Then it switched. So now I get to go to my session and be cut off and unsure again. It is frustrating that this is their job, they do it well, they care within and up to the boundaries and it still feels like WTF I have to go through this when if someone had done a better job when I was a kid and didn't know what I needed I wouldn't struggle with this. I also wonder what it would be like to just assume that you belonged in the world and were entitled to other people's time, friendship, attention instead of always stressing it. Relationships of all kinds exhaust me with worry and fear.

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Relationships are totally exhausting!

Yup- I agree.

Thanks DF. Siblings- sheesh!

((((((DF))))))

I am late to the thread and you have already resolved it, but I am going to respond to your initial post anyway....just in case this issue comes up again, or if someone else has a similar concern and reads this thread looking for some input...

I just wanted to say that even in relationships where money isn't exchanged to keep it going, people make calculations in how they are going to interact with people. It doesn't make the relationship less real in doing so. I know it may seem clinical on the surface that one would spend time making very calculated plans on how they will interact with you, but if you stop and think about it, I think you will be able to think of many relationships in your life where you do this as well, even in close personal relationships where the emotions and feelings are quite strong.

I spent a great deal of energy and thought into calculating what I wanted to say to my exhusband when we were dating, what I didnt want to say because it might hurt his feelings or be misinterpreted, etc. and even after we split, I continued to calculate how I should best interact with him for the best possible outcome.

I could go on to list many more examples of types of relationships where I've calculated and analyzed how I will interact with that person, but I think it is probably much easier and more efficient to simply say that I really cannot think of any relationship where I haven't done this, aside from perfect strangers who I have a 30 second conversation with at the gas station or Starbucks.

I am glad that you have brought this up with your T and that she seems to get it and has been able to address it in a way that leaves you feeling warm and fuzzy. I think you are wise to not spend too much time reading about the clinical side of therapy because it really does have a way of making us feel small and insignificant, especially when they are talking about a "case" rather than a "client". And even when they are talking about a client, it can be upsetting to realize that is indeed what we are...a person, in a file, in a desk, who comes out once or twice a week, has a problem to be solved, is a temporary part of our T's life, etc. These articles don't really capture the enormity of the relationship. There just aren't words that can adequately describe what takes place in those four walls with our Ts....and reading about it, no matter how well written an article is, is simply not satisfying. Articles written on the subject always come up short in some way, even the good ones.