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And TN, I am sure that your T having surgery would create some intense feelings of insecurity and fear for you as well. It feels like a such a risk and we can't risk losing them. Though I know that we won't, but at least for me that is what my fears are attached to. An impending fear of loss, of losing someone I _love_ and something very bad happening was played over and over in my childhood.

Yes, that's it. That fear is always with me... of losing the people who are important to me, which leads into that fear of abandonment that I can't seem to shake. My T does reassure me and he has been doing it more and more lately as he has come to understand what is behind my need for it. But the whole surgery thing was just an unexpected twist to my fears. And thanks for giving me a chuckle about his taking the cell phone into surgery and waking up to take my call You are right. I can leave a message or send the email and it will be up to him to decide when and whether to answer me. I'm one of those people who is always afraid to "bother" someone because they will be annoyed with me and I will lose them. Irrational...I know.

I think it's awesome that you can tape your sessions. So many times I say to myself... gee I wish I had that session on tape so I can remember everything he told me and maybe have a better chance of it penetrating my stubborn brain. It's like he tells me things and I just can't seem to believe or accept it. Especially if it's something good or nice. Sometimes I convince myself that he "really" didn't say that or that I dreamed it or imagined it. It would be nice to be able to listen to it on tape over and over again. And yes I remember when your T gave you that recording to comfort you while she was gone. That was a wonderful thing to do for you. I hope you know how much she has shown her care for you.

TN

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I'm one of those people who is always afraid to "bother" someone because they will be annoyed with me and I will lose them. Irrational...I know.

No, not irrational at all! Well, I hope it isn't because that is how I feel too. I never realized how fearful I was of losing people or being abandoned until I had some pretty big losses in my family. Now in therapy, it has become very obvious to me that I attach to people because of my fear of losing them. So therefore, I have a HUGE attachment to my T. The thought of bothering her, or disappointing her, or hurting her feelings is almost more than I can stand. She reassures me all the time that this won't happen, but my brain doesn't believe it yet.

I also think that taping your sessions is a great idea JM. Sometimes my T will ask me, "So what did you take away from our last session?" Then I get nervous because I'm thinking, "What did we talk about in our last session? It was only 2 days ago and I can't remember." She then reminds me of something, and it clicks. I just thought my memory was shot to hell! I think if Itaped them though, I would spend every moment of every day listening to them just to hear the softness and compassion in her voice. I'm so obsessed with her already, that I really wouldn't get anything else done! Probably good for me to just stick to the 4 VMs that I have.

TN- I have this image of a man in surgery picking up the cell phone and telling his Dr. "I HAVE to answer it! It's one of my clients!" Then all of the medical people have to stand around twiddling their thumbs while the T reassures the client that all is ok. Even though that wouldn't happen, it kinda gives you a good feeling to realize that our T's give up a lot to take good care of us. I am constantly amazed that people like my T (and all of yours) exist. Lucky for us!

PL

So, I'm wondering. I don't get the "they're gonna leave me" thing, really. I get the "they're gonna think I'm dumb and horrid and just hang out with me/treat me out of pity" thing. And -that's- easy to take care of, you just have to be perfect. All the time. With everything.

Good thing I'm not, I don't know. insecure.

Wynne

So for me, it is that I have told her things that I don't even want to admit to myself. Things that I have a lot of shame and guilt for. And I have trusted her to hear these things and not judge me for them, but to help me understand them and stop feeling the shame and the guilt. The thought that she would leave me (like some people in my life have before), is very real. Then where would I be? She would have validated the insecure feelings that I have about myself and then I probably would not take the risk to trust anyone again. It really is hard to explain. I can't even explain the whole transference thing, except that it is a love unlike any other. I'm still trying to figure it out!

PL

For me it takes in a multiplicity of traumatic events and unmet needs. I often feel myself as an infant crying for my mother just to feel held and loved and to not get that need fulfilled enough is painful abandonment. To fear the chaos and violence of everything going on around me with no one stepping in to protect me also leaves me with a sense of abandonment. All I knew was that no one would or could stick around enough. love me enough to protect me from the circumstances I was faced with from a very young age. As hard as I know my mother tried to love me enough she was not capable of it. Why would my T be any better than my mother, the one person in this world who is supposed to love me enough and even made me think she loved me enough when in reality she failed me greatly. of course I fear that my T will abandon me. My mother couldn't contain my pain, I had to do that on my own and carry hers simultaneously. That is what I learned and that is the filter I placed over all of my relationships. Some of which in turn validated my negative beliefs too. However the T realtionship is different, but it's a long long learning process to realize that and to finally believe that.

I hope that helps esplain things a little.

Wynne,
For me that fear was really strong for two reasons; my father actually did abandon me. I didn't see him from the age of 11 until I went to his deathbed when I was 40 years old.

But the other reason, and I believe the much stronger one, was that my father told me over and over that I was responsible for the abuse, that I was evil and if I told anyone about it, they would have nothing to do with me. OK, now its obvious that it was a ploy to get me to keep my mouth shut, but it was a huge amount of hard work to dig out my belief that I was genuinely in my essence evil and repulsive, so that if I let anyone REALLY know me, of course they would leave, because who wouldn't have been repelled by me? So there I was opening up to my T and letting him know more about me and at a deeper level than I had ever let anyone know. And the whole time my limbic system SCREAMED at me that what I was doing was really dangerous and of course, in the end, I would be left. There is a reason that I am so grateful to my T for his patience with my fear and his constant superhuman stream of reassurance. He kept saying it until I could hear it.

And I just had the most amazing realization. I started this post by saying "the fear was strong," instead of is strong. I mean, how cool is that.

AG

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And I just had the most amazing realization. I started this post by saying "the fear was strong, instead of is strong. I mean, how cool is that.

An epiphany everyone. I stand and proudly applaud.

Darn, I should have waited until January 6th!

h/t to True North.

(Thanks JM! I always appreciate your encouragement!)

PL, Your trust in your T sounds really strong, and I certainly can understand why you'd worry about losing something that important. It's so great that Ts are there for us in this, too.

AG, that's awesome. I only just realized that I go all present-tense when I'm talking about living with my dad and being scared and all that. I can imagine a past-tense way of being, and it's really cool that you're there.

HB, I feel like more like a need to perform, and less a worry of being a nuisance. But I can see it being really similar.

Wynne

I have had that talk with my T about wanting to "perform" in therapy. I feel a strong need to "do it right." She just gave me a book to read - Perfect Women (sorry if I am repeating myself) which talks about the need to perform. And, BTW the fact that the book belongs to her, makes me love reading it all the more. Every time I turn a page, I can imagine that she touched the book. Am I cracked or what? I guess it is sort of like having her here with me.

PL

Hummingbird,
I know that for me the fear of being a nuisance was because it was always about my father's needs, and to a certain extent my mother's, my needs weren't important. When that is true, you get treated in such a way that when you make a need known, you will get some form of negative feedback. But the attachment is necessary to your survival and as a child you will protect it at all costs. So if something you do invokes a negative response, you learn to avoid it pronto.

So, your needs become something you must ignore in order to preserve your attachment. But how do you learn to ignore something so natural and insistent as your own needs? You get really scared of them. Nothing makes us avoid like fear. After doing that for years, even asking for the simplest things will invoke that response and make us feel like we're being a nuisance.

Essentially, we learned a lie long ago, that our needs were not legitimate, and we didn't deserve to have them attended to. Of course, it feels like we're going to get in trouble for expressing them. We probably did.

There's also an element of control involved in terms of the wanting to perform. If we're just good enough, maybe we can get what we need. Maybe if I could just fulfill all my parents needs (impossible though it may have been for the child that I was), maybe, just maybe, they would actually attend to mine. We believe we can only keep a relationship is we attend to the other person's needs and don't bug them.

It's an insidious lie but one that many people believe and have to fight hard to break. And then it still sneaks up on you.

And PL, I don't think you're cracked at all. My T gives me his business card with my next appt time on the back at the end of each session and sometimes I pick it up and run my fingers over where he wrote because I know he touched it. I feel like such a lovesick idiot sometimes. But this is primitive intense stuff. So if you are cracked you're hanging with the right crackpots.

AG

I tried anything and everything to avoid having to ask my parents for something. It seemed like such a burden to them to give it to me or at least inconvenient. So I always felt guilty for needing things and for making my parents miserable when I had to get it from them. This is the root of my fear of bugging my T too much and why it is so hard for me to ask for anything from anyone. Especially attention, that was the hardest thing to get from either of my parents, so I grew up believing it was wrong to want it. My core self still believes these things even though my higher brain functions know this isn't the truth. Like AG mentioned it takes an awful lot of repetition of a positive experience before it completely sinks in and changes you. Problem is, it is so hard for me to even ask for the repetition.

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Every time I turn a page, I can imagine that she touched the book. Am I cracked or what? I guess it is sort of like having her here with me.

Oh my THAt is cracked PL! I never heard of anything like that.(She says with her fingers crossed behind her back. Of course I am kidding. I borrowed one of my T's books and felt the same way. She borrowed my General Theory of Love book and I had to touch every page again just due to the thought of it having been in her hands and haviing been all the way to Israel and back was pretty cool to think about too.

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My T gives me his business card with my next appt time on the back at the end of each session and sometimes I pick it up and run my fingers over where he wrote because I know he touched it. I feel like such a lovesick idiot sometimes. But this is primitive intense stuff. So if you are cracked you're hanging with the right crackpots.

Yeah, I never do that either. And I do not keep every one of her business cards either. Lovesick, never heard of it. (picks up T's used coffee mug and slips it into her pocket as she leaves session) Not me no way no how. (insert insane looking emoticon here)

Awesome. Not the only one.

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I tried anything and everything to avoid having to ask my parents for something. It seemed like such a burden to them to give it to me or at least inconvenient. So I always felt guilty for needing things and for making my parents miserable when I had to get it from them. This is the root of my fear of bugging my T too much and why it is so hard for me to ask for anything from anyone. Especially attention, that was the hardest thing to get from either of my parents, so I grew up believing it was wrong to want it.

River, I feel like I get this, though a little different - I was just like, b'd*mned if I'm gonna ask for something and thus show weakness and thus let them/him get power over me.

...which I just realized is A Bit Off.

Wynne

I can soo........ understand that. Ever since I was a little kid, I always have done things myself because I didn't want to ask for help. That would be a weakness, and then someone would have power over me. That is also why I don't show my emotions to anyone. That is why I don't let someone whom I respect, know that they have hurt me. (If I don't like or respect them,I have no problem telling them off!) I couldn't let anyone "get" to me. That would mean that I would have to let down my shield, let someone in, let someone be stronger than me. I can't stand being needy. So I just don't ask. I have a really hard time asking my T for anything, but I know she is trying to get me to ask her. Maybe, little by little.

AG - Thanks for letting me join the "crackpot" club! It is nice to be in good company.

PL

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Originally posted by Attachment Girl:
Essentially, we learned a lie long ago, that our needs were not legitimate, and we didn't deserve to have them attended to. Of course, it feels like we're going to get in trouble for expressing them. We probably did.
AG

I was trying to post and explain how I feel about asking for what I need, but this says it better than I could.

I never ask for what I need. I worry too much about how the other person will respond. What if they say no? What if they think I'm helpless and hopeless for having to ask? What if they get sick of me and just go away?

JM - you crack me up! (Or maybe I am already cracked.)

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Or maybe I am already cracked.

YeeHaa! OW Another member of the "crackpot" club! Glad you are joining us.

Asking for what we need sure is difficult, isn't it? I'm having trouble seeing the "end of the tunnel," but apparently there is one. I hope that the more I let my T "in," and the more I believe that she won't leave me, the closer I will come to that peaceful place. Sometimes I think I'll never get there, but many of the things people have posted here gives me hope.

PL

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Another member of the "crackpot" club! Glad you are joining us.

PL, Does this mean we get more t-shirts?

Singing in tune of old Dr. Pepper commercial "I'm A Pepper" (this seriously dates me):

"I'm a crackpot, she's a crackpot, he's a crackpot, we're all crakpots, wouldn't you like to be a crackpot too?"

HB,
I am not in my best state of mind latley but I am going to try to answer. I know I have an answer, I am just not sure how well I can articulate lately. So let me see if my brain will cooperate.

Basically we do this as second nature and it is hard for us to realize when we are doing it, but we learn to become attuned to it by noticing the feelings we have when doing it. For instance when we are trying to perform there is often a performance anxiety that comes with that or maybe some other feeling that we push aside like "if I don't do this then(enter negative feeling/belief here), but it's there and you have to allow yourslef to notice that and that is how you will be able to tell the difference. You learn when it feels good for you to do for others and when it doesn't. I think it will become less and less about your fear of rejection and abandonment as you work through those seperately. But we all have little issues and some of these will not disappear completely. That is when our awareness allows us to manage them.

I hope this makes more sense than what it seems to. But to be honest it is a little confusing and it is not as simplistic as I may have made it sound. Like you just become aware. It takes effort to notice and it is not always easy and it gets better with practice. Its about being attuned to your feelings and body and listening to what it tells you. Your T can help you do that.

Anyway, I better stop now before I have everybody saying "huh??"

Hopefully someone else can come and explain better. I'm going back into my little corner again.
JM

JM,
I think that was a really good explanation for something that is really difficult to explain. I think your advice to pay attention to your emotions and body are really good ones.

Hummingbird,
I agree with JM, this is one of those tricky things. This behavior is so pervasive that it takes a lot of time, and growth in a lot of areas to start to get a handle on it.

I love the way that you said that in taking care of others' needs you are taking care of your needs. Which is true because right now, it may be that the only way you can feel secure is by feeling like you're performing correctly.

This issue has a LOT to do with boundaries. I was complaining to my T once in a session how sick to death I was of working on my issues and how much time and energy it was sucking up. Then I said, I sometimes wonder what I could be doing if I had that time and energy for other things. I think my T had been waiting for that one for a long time. He said that was a really good question. What could I be doing with my family, with my friends, for myself?

Where it got interesting was my reaction. What I heard was "you've been here long enough, and it's really time you were better and left. Stop whining and just get on with it. (That last sentence is pure mom.)" I told my T it felt like that's what I heard and he told me that I was so scared to think of my own needs that when he tried to be encouraging I heard it as condemnation. I spent a number of terrified weeks trying to think about what I wanted. Everytime I tried to think of it I got scared. Much later when I was in a much better place, I went in for a session and told my T I had actually felt a little lost that week because I WASN'T dealing with a crisis. He told me that for so long there had been so many people within my boundaries that there was no room to figure out what I wanted. But now that I had boundaries in place, it was ok to take my time and figure that out. We tend to approach that as trying to think about what we want and then going to do it But in reality, you have to try things and then pay attention to how you're feeling about doing them.

One of the biggest problems to overcome is that we often feel guilty when we think of our own needs. I know I struggled with a very deep sense of "how can I trust that I'm not being selfish?" I think that's where the relationship with our T is SO important. By living out loud in front of them, you have someone to give you feedback and to validate when your needs are reasonable and proper. Part of the re-wiring that takes place in forming a secure attachment is what should have been done when we were kids. Learning that your needs were legitimate, that you mattered enough that your needs would be met, and there was nothing unreasonable about getting your needs met.

I hope this was coherent. There was so much to say, because again, I think this is an issue that is very interwoven throughout all the issues that its like picking out a single thread from a tapestry. Its also not something you solve by understanding it, you learn it by experiencing it in the relationship with your T. Which tends to be really confusing while you're going through it. I really think one of the secrets of successful therapy is the ability to tolerate feeling confused and staying with the confusion until it clears up. Once you understand it, it feels like "wow, how did I ever not get that?" To quote my T, "just because it's simple, doesn't mean it's easy." Hope some of this helps.

AG