Hi All,
I’m finally done with my release (at least this stage of it) and returning to normal hours. Which isn’t as good as it sounds, since my husband finished his refuel outage last Thursday, but we got woken up 3 AM on Tuesday by his beepers because the plant had gone back down, so he’s back on 12 hour days (not sure how long this is going to last yet,. there still trying to figure out the problem). But things should get somewhat better with me at least back to normal working hours.

I am having the first half of my periodontal surgery tomorrow and am experiencing a rising sense of panic (terror?). Having gotten so triggered and linking it back to that memory has left me feeling just a little fragile. My husband had been planning on taking a half a day and coming with me but probably won’t be able to. I’m in that weird place where intellectually I know it’s all going to be fine but I’m feeling kind of scared and fragile feeling-wise.

It’s been a long five or six weeks. Because I was both working OT and taking care of things at home, it got pretty stressful. Mainly because there just weren’t many downpauses. And something happened that I never expected which was I actually got more time alone than I wanted. It actually got kind of lonely. And interwoven throughout was me still working on grieving the end of therapy (combined with fighting the feeling that I really should be over this by now. A belief that only I seem to hold. )

I ended up emailing and calling my T a few times. I can feel myself working through this but it’s been difficult and somewhat confusing. I had written a email to my T at one point about how angry I was and when he responded one of the things that he said was that he understood that he represented what I didn’t or couldn’t get. As I mulled that one over, I did finally realize that I was engaging in some black and white thinking. I realized that I believed that the only way to let go of the longing of the unfulfilled needs was to completely let go of my T. Which wasn’t really fitting with the fact that he was making it clear he was available (he stated that quite clearly and unequivocally in the same email). I finally realized that I needed to let go of what he symbolized, but can hang onto the real theraputic part of our relationship. He’s my therapist and that’s not changing. So he’s available here and now to help me with letting go of the symbolic part of the relationship, he can comfort me in my grief and help me handle the feelings that come up. But it can sometimes be difficult separating the two as I go along which is where a lot of the work comes in.

And the last time I talked to him, while he is still very warm and engaged and makes it very clearly that its good I called, I can also feel him holding back somewhat in the sense of not doing for me anything I can do myself. Part of what I’m coming to grips with is the fact that I really don’t need him anymore, at least in an ongoing steady sense. That can feel pretty sad sometimes.

As I’ve struggled with letting go of anything beyond therapy, I connected a few more dots. It’s kind of a long story but when my first T retired, my husband and I were already seeing my T (who was my husband’s therapist first). When FirstT told me she was retiring, my first thought was “oh I’ll start going to T for individual work also” but when I was talking to my sister about it, her first reaction was “how is DH going to feel about that?” and I realized that she was right. So I talked to my DH and he was pretty uncomfortable (and rightfully so) with the thought of my seeing his T individually. At our next couples’ session, I told our T about my FirstT retiring (and really appreciated his reaction, he was the only one that seemed to get what a big deal it was). I mentioned that I had thought of coming to see him, but that DH didn’t want that, and he very calmly agreed that he didn’t think that was a very good idea. So I finished up with FirstT (she had given me between 4 and 5 months notice), then just stopped going to individual therapy. But my relationship with my T continued to build doing the couples work. I had actually felt a little guilty near the end of my work with FirstT because I felt like I was getting more out of our couples’ sessions. I developed really strong feelings of attraction for our T and eventually scheduled an appointment with him to discuss it. Again, it’s kind of complex, but after a period of about six weeks, my T, my DH and I all discussed it and decided I could see him individually. My husband was more comfortable with the idea at that point, not least because things were much better between us (this was almost a year later) and as for my T, he had recognized both my attachment injury and the fact that we would work well together. I think he really wanted to help me and also knew that the healing I needed to do was directly related to my ability to have an intimate, open relationship with my husband. So I started seeing him for individual work also.

Throughout our work together I fought a sense of guilt, often feeling like I had selfishly not taken no for an answer and had manipulated my way into working with him. We talked about many times and eventually it led to a major breakthrough when I connected it back to feelings from my childhood. So I finally go over the guilt.

But here’s the thing, on some level what I experienced was asking for something I wanted and being told no, the boundaries wouldn’t allow it. But I really didn’t stop wanting it and eventually the boundaries moved and the no became a yes. So I realized that part of what i sgoing on now is that I’m hoping that will happen again. That if I just hang in there and persevere, the boundaries will shift again. While being painful, realizing this has helped, because when I pulled out this belief and examined it in the cold light of day, it’s obvious that these are quite different situations. The first scenario was one in which the theraputic boundaries were moved WITHIN the context of therapy, while what I want now is for the boundaries to cease to be.

The truth is that these were deep, fundamental needs, and mourning them has been a long, slow process. On the other hand, I really can feel myself letting go, it’s just taking a lot longer than I would like. And as I let go of those needs, it’s bleeding off intensity from the relationship with my T (not the very real depth and the very real gratitude) and honestly, as much as I want the obsessiveness gone, it’s still sad to keep letting go. I still really miss him alot. While at the same time being worried about how often I’m contacting him (it seems to be about once every three weeks although some of those contacts are just me sending him an email and not getting a response). But when I asked, he reassured (in that maddening, I won’t really answer you T way) that it was ok that I still needed to contact him sometimes.

So I’m in the middle of this very weird dichotomy right now which is that I can sometimes see how well I am handling everything and how well I got through all this OT and took pretty good care of everything I needed to while continuing to do the work of grieving. But at other times, I’m feeling pretty wrung out and depleted. And I can still feel overwhelmed and scared at times. The periodontal work tomorrow is not helping, I’m feeling a little small and vulnerable. I’m looking forward to having that over with.

So that’s kind of where I’m at right now. I should be able to be around a bit more consistently now that my schedule is settling down, although again, not as much as I would like with my husband still on long hours. As always, thanks for listening.

AG