Hi incognito.... Your post is not too long and I'm glad that you were able to write about this here. I think it was good for you to express this.

When I project things onto my T he does not like it and he tells me that I should not tell him how HE feels and if I want to know what he is thinking or feeling, I should just ask him. That feels pretty daunting to do in those times when I'm convinced he hates me or is sick of me or that I'm not important to him. BUT when I have dared to try this it has always worked out well.

Aside from this, my T's personality is being chatty. Sometimes I think he talks TOO MUCH and it's hard for me to talk at length or to have some silence so I can collect my thoughts and fight my way through the pain to talk to him. But what he says is often helping and I learn a lot from listening to him.

It has been written in a number of places (books, research papers) that those with abuse and trauma histories, benefit greatly from a more open T and from knowing more about what the T is thinking. Self disclosure helps too. Maybe your T does not know this? Maybe you could find some research on this and give him a copy (it usually appears in treatment for complex trauma reports) so he can read it. he may not change drastically but it's worth the try because you are attached to him (and this is really a good thing) and you have a long working history. Maybe he will loosen up a little more and even this will help you.

Thanks for sharing this. I'm glad you posted and please let us know how you are doing.

Hugs
TN

Hello Cogs, thanks for the update on your therapy. It’s good to hear that sometimes at least you have the occasional good session (actually I for one would be interested to hear about them, but if you find it too difficult to write about, that’s ok.)

quote:

saying he was surprised by how difficult it was for me and that he thought I was resilient

Cogs you know what this makes me think, is that he has little idea of how you are affected by things, of how you are feeling. Which sort of tells me that you are not showing him what’s actually going on inside you even though it might seem to you that you’ve eviscerated yourself on the carpet in his room. I’m quite surprised by his being surprised, if he knew you well enough I’d have thought he shouldn’t be overly surprised by your reactions to things, so maybe there is some sort of communication issue at work here. Perhaps you need to try and be more open about your feelings (you don’t have to ‘emote’ all over the place, just talk about them, describe them, tell him in words what’s going on?)

quote:

I need to know what he thinks not because I will believe him as an expert but because I need another way to see myself than my own harsh judgements. I told him he was the first person who told me that I had experienced trauma and my painful reactions were reasonable and I hadn't believed him for a long time. It is like I need him to reflect something beside my pain back to me

Did he understand this? Because it’s very clear to me what you are saying and makes perfect sense. It’s so easy for us to get caught inside the circular vacuum of our own internal mirror maze (sorry about all the mixed metaphors there) where no matter where we look all that gets reflected back to us is our own negatively distorted self image. I know I need someone else’s realistic and positive reflection of me to break the circle of negative self awareness and I’d have hoped your T understood this and realized that in the beginning at least, genuine positive mirroring does infinitely more good than all the mature ‘I don’t want to be the one to determine how you see yourself’ type rationalizing.

quote:

he thought it was a valuable part of therapy. He said that when he could tell by my reaction that I was confused or upset by something he would try and clarify his response or non-response usually but that I often hid my reaction so I needed to talk about my reactions and ask him what he thought.

I see you’ve answered both my questions/comments of above two paras in this quote! But I’ll leave what I said because I want to validate and support what you’ve been saying even if T does seem to have understood after all.

Hm reading further on I see that he seems to have gotten half of what you are needing (that he tell you what he thinks) but that what you’re really needing is not to have to be totally responsible for everything in your therapy, but for him to spontaneously volunteer his thoughts and feelings without your having to ask first. Which I completely understand (it being my own preference) and also agree with TN that in many cases (not just trauma by the way) a more human, self disclosing and relational approach by the T is more effective and helpful than the blank screen ‘this is YOUR therapy’ approach.

TN has some good suggestions about maybe bringing in some ‘official’ literature on trauma and the optimal way to relate to traumatized clients. Sometimes Ts simply aren’t familiar with it and having it explained to them can make them think about altering their approach. Liese springs to mind as someone who has done this with her T and it’s worked out really well (hope you don’t mind my referring to you in this way Liese.)

I also like what TN says about pushing herself to get past the fear and doubt and suspicion and just come out and ask what she needs to ask, and finding that actually T is ok with it and it works out well. That old truism about facing the fear and doing it anyway...

Like you I also wanted more direct interventions and a concrete structure and context to my therapy within which specific issues and problems would get addressed, rather than the usual rambly let’s see where your talking takes you attitude. (For me, to infinity and beyond without ever achieving anything!) But there are not many humanistic and especially not psychodynamic Ts who favour structured therapy, you tend to get that with the more CBT oriented therapists. I know you are really attached to this T and you really want to heal and make it work, so I think it’s well worth your while to bring to your T a concrete list of things you would like him to consider doing in therapy that you think would help you. You have nothing to lose (he’s not going to reject you for bringing your needs to therapy, he just might not take any of them seriously, that’s the main risk) and a lot to gain. I hate to see how much pain you are constantly in because of a therapy that should be helping you and making you feel better about yourself, at least progressively if not after every single session.

Ack I've done nothing but dispense advice and suggestions as if I actually know what I'm talking about. Sorry, just take for granted that everything I'm saying relates only from my own thoughts and experience and is intended to be helpful, not dictatorial.

LOL you were worried that your post was too long for people to read (it wasn't!), I’m now thinking my reply is way too long to be of any use. Oh well, looks like I’m back to mega-post normal.

I’m so sorry Cogs that you have to keep struggling like this and really hope that one day very soon you’ll suddenly find yourself in a much more positive place regarding your therapy (that magical background stuff that’s supposed to go on without our knowing about it.)

Lots of hugs to you ((((((( Incognito ))))))

LL

Thanks for the reply TN. My T has never said he didn't like my projecting. My T is not chatty but he does self-disclose and I know a reasonable amount about his life. He is careful to not talk about how he feels about me unless I ask explicitly about something. If I say something like I know this is not necessarily true but I feel like you are frustrated with me or tired of me he often just sits there. When I've asked him later why he didn't respond to that statement he has said he didn't realize I was asking because I said I knew it was a feeling and not a fact. I don't know if I could ask him to read about trauma treatment or read a paper. I feel like that is asking him to do too much. I'm very impressed when people talk about giving their T something to read.

LL, thanks for understanding how I feel. I rarely express myself clearly in a session. I am usually a mess of feelings and fear and then I spend hours to days processing what happened. I certainly haven't been able to say something like I need some feedback at the moment which has been suggested to me. I also haven't been able to ask him for help at the moment I feel so stuck. I am surprised that you and others have mentioned that I am constantly in pain and that therapy doesn't seem to help. It is really important feedback for me because while I struggle constantly with therapy, depending and needing T, wanting his approval, fighting attachment, wanting him to do something more or different or magical I do think therapy has helped me immensely. After I respond I'm going to search some of my old posts to see if I can link to a good session post.

Now I'm going to describe how much "magical change" has occurred as a result of therapy even though it has been agonizingly painful.

When I started with T I was angry at myself that I couldn't do everything (work, parent, lose weight, etc). I blamed myself constantly for my failings. Whenever I told T about my childhood or parents and he said that was terrible I would respond with "it wasn't ideal and was probably neglectful but they aren't perfect and the real problem is that I can't forgive and forget these things and I let them ruin my life". Basically I was in a lot of denial about how much I had been hurt as a child and the effects it had on me. Later when I would tell him the stories that I knew were painful he would respond with something along the lines of "that is an incredible difficult thing to endure" basically a I'm sorry your life sucked so much response and I would get frustrated that he didn't have any advice for me or any solutions for all that pain.

Unrelated (to me) I would tell him what a terrible parent I was and use the fact that I couldn't fix my children's pain (of any kind or cause). My mother believes that the only acceptable emotion is happiness and she got angry and punitive whenever I wasn't happy or didn't fit her image of her daughter. I was a better parent because I was willing to acknowledge my children’s feelings but then when I couldn’t fix them immediately I would get angry and frustrated (usually with myself but sometimes with them). My T tried to tell me many times that as parents we can’t fix our children’s pain (or really as people we can’t fix anyone’s pain) That what we could do was accept it and be with our children and their feelings. I once even wrote my T an email about a year into therapy saying that I thought he and I had very different ideas of what our responsibilities were as parents and the role we were supposed to play in our children’s pain, basically accused him of being a lazy, disinterested, dismissive parents like I had.

Eventually I realized that he was being with me in my pain and it made a difference. He wasn’t dismissing it or me when he didn’t try to fix it. He was acknowledging that it couldn’t’ be fixed by anyone, that it was real and valid (I still got frustrated sometimes but you know how it is). I started to try and do the same with my own children. I would listen to their stories of how they were hurt by their friends or felt like people were laughing at them and I would fight my urge to tell them what they did wrong in the situation and what they should do to stop these things from happening. At this point I used to tell people that as a parent I knew that my first instinct in every problem was wrong because it was the one that my parents did and I had to calm myself and think of the appropriate way to respond. Recently I realized that my first instinct isn’t always wrong now. Often my first reaction isn’t that they made a mistake, or are being too sensitive or childish (which is crazy considering they are children). Often now I don’t have to think about acknowledging their feelings and instead I see their pain, sadness, anger, frustration much more clearly and I see that some of their most difficult behaviours aren’t bad (or designed to drive me crazy) but are the way they act out those feelings. Learning to be with my own feelings has helped me learn to be with my children’s, and my husband’s, and my sister’s, and my friends.

Last June I finally told both my parents that they couldn't verbally abuse me or my children anymore (they like to point out your flaws so you know what to change). The final straw was when my mother told me at my daughter's graduation ceremony (elementary school) that I had gotten so fat that I looked so big in my dress and did I realize that etc. They also make comments about her size and she isn't at all overweight although I will admit I am. They pulled their usually denials: I misunderstood what they said, I don't understand how they talk because they are from a different generation, I am too sensitive, I always take things to personally, they love me and why can't I take what they say in the spirit it is intended to help me, that they aren't responsible for how I take their comments and I'm the only one in the family who feels the way I do etc. and on and on and on. I disagreed. I didn't lose my temper which usually results in me saying something horrible and then the fight switches to what I did and I end up apologizing. I didn't get caught up in my mother's incredibly pointless apology "I am sorry for anything I have ever done that upset you and I'm sorry for loving you so much."


****Triggering for mention of SA*****
In separate follow up conversations with each of my parents I agreed I was sensitive and I was angry for things they had done or failed to do as a child. I was abused by my eldest brother and an older cousin (separately) as a child. When I was 14 I was having a lot of trouble dealing with being a teenager and my cousing moving near to my family and being inappropriate. I told my parents about the abuse. My mother said nothing. My father was upset, hugged me and told me we would get help with it. Then neither of them ever mentioned it again. I told them that I had spent 27 years being angry that they did nothing and I felt like they didn't believe me because everything continued like I hadn't said a word. Both of them separately told me that it was very hard for them to hear what I told them then and they didn't know what to do so they did nothing. I told them I understood how difficult it would be to hear that because I am a parent and an adult now. Then I said they should remember that when they were the adults and didn't know what to do about it, I had dealt with it alone as a child (they both said they would have done if they had found out when it was happening) and then I had to deal with the aftermath alone at 14 after I asked for help. I pointed out how very young 14 was and they had taken the easy way out and left me to deal with it alone and I was tired of hearing about how I wasn't doing a good job in my life. I'd like to say it made a difference to my parents but it hasn't except now they avoid talking to me alone or except superficially. I think they are afraid of what I will say next and they have no intention of trying to make amends or checking in with how I am doing. BUT it is a conversation I couldn't have imagined having at any other time of my life. I should write my own Dear T letter.