Heather, I am so sorry this is such a difficult time. Please hang in there. I kno that it must seem like your t is being cold but it does sound lime he became worried about you. I want to write more but cannot right now. I wanted you to know that i am thinking about you.

Whereami

quote:

Originally posted by Z:

[QUOTE] My not-so-logical half is still throwing a fit. My anxiety is sky high and I can't get it to calm down and let me eat or sleep or concentrate. The fact that he can't respond to e-mails (due to the highly emotional nature of things right now) is sending my imagination flying in all sorts of unpleasant directions. I feel completely worn out. I want to curl up in a ball and cry, or cut, or call him up and yell at him, or tell him I'm not going to talk to him anymore. Why can't I find the middle ground? Do I always have to go to the extremes?

It seems like your T needs to know much this huge shift has affected you. If he won't respond to long emails, can you talk to him on the phone and convey any of this between sessions? It makes total sense that everything feels so extreme when you are under such stress--it is where our minds and bodies take us

You did not screw anything up. You are doing the best you can to take care of yourself. It seems that maybe your T has really made a bit shift but didn't make sure you were there with him, or that he could be there for you. That is not about you screwing up, it is about your T missing the boat, IMO. I think the most important thing is to really let him know where you are at right now.

I have had a number of occasions where I have done something that I thought has irreparably damaged/changed my relationship with my T. It felt incredibly fragmenting to me, but I will tell you in each instance, the best thing I learned is that relationships can be repaired, even after something really hard and hurtful. I hope tonight is a little better.

whereamI



I

Hi Heather ...

I read your story and could certainly feel the pain and confusion you must be experiencing. It's quite frightening when someone you have counted on to be there (in certain ways) for you decides to put new boundaries up (not accepting your e-mails). Did he just take the e-mailing option out of the equation, or phone calls too? You should maybe talk to him about how this change has been affecting you.

quote:

I'm so frustrated. I feel like I'm flying apart in 15 different directions and scrambling to keep enough pieces together to keep functioning. I feel like I've really screwed something up and lost something with my T. I think our relationship has probably changed permanently, but I think it will return more to what it was before, over time, if I can pull myself together.

My guess would be that your T is afraid for you Heather. So right now he needs to make you see that he's serious and that he wants to help you. I know my P gets tough on me when things get crazy in me, that's the only way she can get through to get me to see what I'm doing to myself. You haven't done anything wrong .. just remember that your t has your best interests at heart and is only doing what he think is going to help. Your relationship will fall back into place when you come back to a safe place within yourself (if that makes sense).

Keep posting Heather .. it helps!

Holz

Thanks for the kind words everyone.

quote:

Originally posted by Hummingbird:
Is that maybe where your T is coming from? If i think of it like that, all i can see is how much he cares and how kind and brave he is to march right in and do whatever it takes to help you help yourself.

I feel like I just keep screwing up and screwing up.

On Monday, I admitted to wanting to be submissive to him and how a lot of the things I say and do have something to do with that. Now I don't trust myself or my desires or anything and I feel like I need to be quiet before I screw something else up.

Its not helping that I'm so anxious and wired that I havn't been able to eat or sleep well in the last several days.

*frustrated*

HB,
No HTML slapper! You got it right and here's the link: The fun continues If you read this post and the two following, it's a good description.

We often see boundaries as imposing something on us or making negative statements about ourselves, when often they provide safety and say so much more about the person setting them. Because a lot of us had such a bad experience with boundaries, such as there not being any or for being severely punished for running into one, we've learned to see them very negatively. My T has been teaching me that running into a boundary is only that, reaching a boundary. There's nothing wrong with it, you're NOT supposed to know where it is beforehand. I had noticed that my T had entered his name incorrectly on his email account on his Iphone and the typo was driving me bonkers (I'm a technical writer and its my JOB to fix typos) so when I replied I asked if I could fix it for him. I got a very nice reply in which he thanked me for letting him know and he would appreciate instructions but he would prefer to fix it himself. And if that felt creepy, we could talk about it at our next session. I had already been worried about asking and although he used the word creepy to refer to what he did, it totally set me off. I went into a complete meltdown, totally convinced that I had really, really, screwed up and creeped him out. When I called him (which honestly, I think he was waiting for. ) he was really clear that my asking was perfectly ok, that he was comfortable both telling me no and talking about why he told me know and how I felt about him saying no. That his decision had nothing to do with me but with him and what he was comfortable with.

This is all to say that you are running into a boundary of your Ts. He feels it's very important that you not hurt yourself, he wants to keep you safe. so this is NOT about you messing up, or doing things wrong or being worthless because you won't behave right. This is about your T wanting you to be taken care of, even by yourself.

And I understand your fear of talking about feeling submissive but that's the whole point of therapy. We can't act out our feelings (and cutting would probably fall in that category) but we are supposed to talk about them. You should be free to discuss ANYTHING at all so that you can learn that all of you is acceptable including the things you don't like or are ashamed of, but also because you need to look at how you feel to have any hope of changing it. the only way to really screw up therapy is to not talk about all of it. Holding back our feelings and thoughts is what impedes therapy. Your T should be able to handle anything you need to say, so talk about whatever it is.

And please be patient with yourself. We learn these behaviors because we needed to survive. They run deep and it takes time and patience, and go both forward and backward to learn how to do things differently. So it's ok and perfectly human for there to be stumbles along the way.

AG

Thanks AG. I don't think I've ever run into a boundary with him before. Now I'm hitting all sorts of them, and it feels pretty awful. It's not just the self harm, it's about e-mail too. First I'm can't talk about emotionally charged stuff over e-mail, now I can't really e-mail him at all. And I'm absolutely terrible with the phone. (As in, I become so terrified I start switching words around and such as if I were dyslexic, which I'm not.)

I'm not trying to complain about the boundaries, just seem to be hitting them all at once.

We were talking on Monday about how no one ever set any boundaries for me before. So I never thought rules applied to me. Vast majority of the time, it didn't matter because I just naturally don't do things that break rules, but the couple of times I did, it was just "ohh that's Heather, we know she didn't mean it."

Even when I got charged with a misdemeanor (criminal mischief) -- my dad paid the fine for me, I was 18 at the time.

Z or anyone interested, How do you believe your therapist feels about you? Do you think he loves/likes you? or just thinks of you as a patient to treat? Does your belief about his feelings towards you change? if so, how does it affect your therapy? I'm curious because I am having trouble with how I believe my T feels about me and it is negatively affecting my therapy and I was wondering how others believed their T's felt about them, etc...mlc

quote:

Originally posted by mlc:
Z or anyone interested, How do you believe your therapist feels about you? Do you think he loves/likes you? or just thinks of you as a patient to treat? Does your belief about his feelings towards you change? if so, how does it affect your therapy? I'm curious because I am having trouble with how I believe my T feels about me and it is negatively affecting my therapy and I was wondering how others believed their T's felt about them, etc...mlc

I honestly believe that he loves me, and that he is doing what he is doing to try and help me and keep me from making him too angry / frustrated / burnt out. Him being unable to treat me because of his own frustrations (countertransference) is not beneficial to me. So, setting up boundaries is a way that he is showing that he cares about me and does not want our relationship to end.

While he won't say it, I do believe that I have made him frustrated and angry lately.

Of course, while I'm in the middle of writing this, he responds to my frustrated e-mail and knocks all my thoughts off balance. (In the good direction though.)

The short version is ... I don't think that the fundamental way he feels about me has changed, but my feelings surrounding our relationship keeps going off the charts in different directions. This affects therapy -- but that's the whole point.

Hi Heather,

I can't remember if i already wrote this, so forgive me if I did, but I wanted you to know you are not alone in this boundary about e-mails. I used to send emails, also very emotionally charged, to my T on a very frequent basis. (as I look back, it is almost embarrassing how many I sent. I did often get responses. She never directly told me she was frustrated or angry, but did finally (and also rather abruptly) tell me explain that she had to put some boundaries in place so that she could be available to me when we were together. At the time, it was extremely painful, and completely not understandable. In retrospect, I think my multiple times perday, emotionally charged emails, plus phone calls plus sessions were just overwhelming, and the best way she knew how to preserve our relationship and to be available to me was to place those boundaries. Now, I can email--and do--and sometimes the nature of the emails are pretty intense, but the boundaries of the occasional email permit her to be avialable to me. I don't always get a response, but she assures me she always reads them, and knows what I am feeling.

I do know that that initial shock of hitting that first boundary was incredibly difficult, sad, frustrating, maddening. . . It completely threw me. What it did show me, though, is that my T worked hard to make sure that she could stay in the relationship, and could hold me in it, even when it was really hard for me.


Mlc,

I do think my therapist loves and cares about me. It is ironic that you ask. I just (this week) got up the courage to ask her if she loves me. She has VERY tight boundaries, and always sends me back to myself and my feelings for just about everything. I told her I felt very loved, and all she would say is that my feelings were genuine. She would not tell me she loved me. Although I so wanted to hear it (and really need to)I do feel like she thinks I am special, and that she does love me. I think if I was just a patient to treat, she would have gotten rid of me long ago. . .the work is too hard, and honestly, I think I have presented way too many hurdles and challenges for her to want to keep working with me if I were just a patient to treat.

I think many T's (IMO those worth their grain of salt) will refer patients if the do not feel they can connect, or don't have the ability to help a patient. I am sure that is a very difficult thing to do and hear, but because the connection is such the cornerstone of the therapy relationship, I do believe that most T's care about their patients for who they are, not just as another patient to treat.

WhereamI

I thought you guys might like a little update. I wound up getting pretty pissed off at my T for the e-mail he sent me, telling me how e-mail is an inappropriate venue for strong emotions and that I do e-mail him an awful lot, probably too much, and so forth. This is actually rather out of character for me. I had been totally angry myself for screwing things up.

So I wrote asking him to have the same consideration for me that he asks me to have of him and not e-mail me with emotional stuff and tell me I cannot reply in kind. He wrote back telling me I had a valid point. I feel better now. I know he could have handled me better, so it's ok I go upset. I don't want to sound like I'm shedding my responsibility for things, but it feels good to not turn everything inwards for a change.

Thanks for writing, Heather. Great job with your T. Way to go taking that step! It is great that he was able to acknowledge that you had a valid point, and validate what you were saying and feeling.
Glad you are feeling better about it.

WhereamI

WTG Heather!

Good for you for taking control and standing your ground! I'm glad to hear that your T saw your side of it and validated what you were saying!

Holly