When I didn't hear from him in the morning I started to get hopeful that maybe he was working something out. He finally emailed me at 9:00 that night to tell me he didn't have anything but he would contact me if a cancellation came up.
To say I reacted badly would be like saying the Artic is a little on the cool side.
I was hurt and angry in a I wanted to throw a tantrum kind of way, stamp my feet, scream, throw things. Caught me off guard, because by then I was feeling pretty stable and I had also expected that the answer would be no. It was also that sickening feeling of one minute feeling like a competent, intelligent adult (stop laughing!) to a needy, overwhelmed child in a heartbeat.
So I decided to take some time alone and try to figure out what was going on. What followed was very different. I tried to step back and just let how I was feeling come without trying to judge it or decide if it was ok, (my usual style) and I realized that I was angry with my T. Angry that he couldn't schedule his appointments better, angry that it took him so long to get back to me and angry he wouldn't give me an appointment. But the angry had a little kid quality of just being mad because I didn't get what I wanted. Kind of "how dare he tell me no" with a stand up and spit in your eye quality my anger never has. With a shock (or in Shrinklady's parlance, an "aha!") I realized I was just angry but it was a clean, fresh anger. I realized that this anger was on my side of the boundary between my T and I. It didn't mean he did anything wrong or even that he should have done something different, it just meant I was angry about what happened. It was like finding the person underneath all the layers of crap that had come to surround getting angry and just experiencing it in a pure form. There was almost a sense of joyousness about it; a conviction that I had a right to my anger. I actually burst out laughing when I realized that I was just plain old mad. It felt like I was running down that grassy hill again. And what was even better was realizing that even though I felt really angry at my T, I also still really knew I still felt all the good stuff about him also. That I realized it was one person having both of those emotions. Did I mention how different this felt?
When I thought about it, I realized that when I get angry, I actually do this thing where I think through whether its "ok" to get angry. That I only give myself permission to get angry if I can determine that the other person actually did something wrong. I think I'm coming to understand that process is backwards. You get angry, then think your way through the situation and decide how you want to handle that anger. Sometimes it can be a spur to needed action and sometimes you can just recognize that you feel angry but you really don't think the other person is doing anything wrong. My T has been trying to explain this to me for LOOOONNNNNGGGGG time, but I think that's the first time I've viscerally experienced it. I can't wait to talk to him about it. (OK, the down side is that I also need to talk to him about appts and why he's driving me nuts about them.)
And I'm still six days away from my next appointment and I'm fighting a feeling of "homesickness." I know my T is there, but I really miss him. Which sounds a little silly to say about someone you saw a week ago, but its how I feel.
Does this make sense to anyone? Its hard to put the feelings into words.
AG
