Yaku, I'm sorry this is all so confusing. I honestly think you are doing fabulous work and there might not be much you can do to avoid the discomfort. It's not easy to adjust to having something you've always wanted but never had before.

FWIW, I think if you were to tell *my* T about feeling nauseous/repulsed by something, she would get kind of hand-wavy and say it's just a different way of not feeling safe. Like when I talked about missing her between sessions feeling like pain in my chest and nausea, she said, "That sounds like sympathetic nervous system stuff." I was thinking, "No, stupid, that's attachment pain," but actually separation pain IS a sympathetic nervous system response. I dunno where I'm going with this really but I'm just throwing it out there I guess...

Hi Yaku - I did try and read all that, but it was rather confusing to read and i must admit I am not sure what you meant - but I thought I would send you a hug anyway and I might have another go reading it later when I am not so tired and can take time trying to follow it.
Hope you can talk to him about missing him and the attachment stuff. I find it is just normal now for me to tell my T how much I miss him and how pleased I am when he is there and I can feel that I am with him. He just takes it in his stride and smiles and feels so kind and caring. good luck with it all

((((YAKU))))

I only have a second but I think I get where you are coming from. I could be way off here but it almost sounds like what I've been describing, that I only know obsession/fear (just added fear there) or almost like a state of nothingness. I guess it could be called detachment. It almost sounds healthy but also something really unfamiliar. Your brain doesn't know anything else. Maybe you need to develop that more balanced attachment that I'm striving for.

Maybe the needs of the kids are finally being satiated. It's just different.

I have absolutely no idea if anything I said makes sense but I am so glad you were able to leave and go back and not let the projectiions get too wildly out of control. It all sounds .... terrific.

Hope you are doing okay there.



Liese

(((Yaku)))

I actually really love the metaphors that you used. To me it's a sign of a truly deep (and evolved) relationship with you and your T.

I actually kind of feel like I'm in a somewhat similar position with my T lately. There's not as much dependence - or at least it's not as much at the forefront of everything - but I still feel like I need her in some way.

I can also *completely* relate to feeling miserable about having those needs met. Recently my T shared with me that she was getting uncomfortable using my insurance (I am still insured under my father) because it's kind of like a way of having him in the room. So she offered to see me for a rate that is a tiny, tiny fraction of what her normal rate is and it spurred a few conversations that should have made me feel good, but they made me feel miserable.

Anyway, just wanted to say I understand. I think that this kind of odd period of being connected but disconnected and feeling warm but miserable at the same time is all part of the process and essential in learning what it's like to have a safe, caring person in your life.

(((BLT))) Thanks for the support and saying I'm doing fabulous work. It so often feels like I'm fumbling, stumbling and otherwise making a mess of things, so it helps when others see it as progress.

That's interesting about what your T says about the sympathetic nervous system stuff. My T never says stuff like that, but then again, I'm not sure how often I am actually EXPRESSING these feelings when they happen, because I tend to wait until I have something figured out until I say it. One reason for this is that if he doesn't understand me, has to keep asking questions, I go to this, "T can't understand what I'm saying, so I must be wrong," place where I am literally incapable of holding onto the reality of my own experience and completely shutdown. I am basically waiting to be humiliated for how wrong I am when I am questioned like that. I think I must have gotten interogated about my thoughts and feelings a lot when I was young. I don't really remember it, but my dad brags about invalidating things I shared that I learned at school, then when he convinced me he was right, went and argued the other side. He called it critical thinking exercises, but playing devils advocate with a young child like that seems to have just taught me that I am always wrong, that being wrong is bad, that I am stupid, that I need to be able to deny my own thoughts in order to surrender quickly and get the pain of being invalidated from the outside over with more quickly. So, a lot of times, I have to really ruminate on something I'm experiencing, be able to explain it, before I can go into it without shutting down after the second or third question my T asks. I wonder what your T would say about the feeling of repulsion, LOL. I think it might be something else (I'm still working on it and will say more below). You're so right that adjusting to having stuff you've found ways to do without isn't an easy thing!


Sadly - Sorry it was so hard to follow. I kind of knew it would be, because it feels like trying to express an emotion that I don't have words for, like I am kind of deaf/mute when it comes to this area that I'm entering into. One reason I'm writing out here is that I WANT to talk to him about it, but I don't feel like I'll be able to explain it in a way he'll understand, so sometimes if something resonates with someone else and they can give me better words for it, it helps me to express it to him. We talk about my attachment feelings all the time. He knows we miss him. He has been told again and again about that and the angry reactions to having those feelings. My T usually just reassures me that we are still connected (kind of holding hands from afar) when we aren't physically present with one another, that the connection has not gone away for him and he is still holding on. And I believe he feels that way. It's just I have a hard time holding onto it, though some days are getting easier. Anything over a three day gap, as I said, is really hard right now. Don't worry about rereading. I wrote it on very little sleep and in the middle of the night and I don't quite know exactly what is going on myself, so I don't think it'll be easier to follow in other circumstances. But, thanks for the hug anyway!


Liese - I think you hit on something here. Part of it is that I am caught in this wildly oscillating pendulum of disorganized attachment, where I am either completely anxious about the relationship or completely divest it of any significance in my life. While I am swinging back and forth, there are moments where I hit a kind of middle ground that is good and safe, but it is so fleeting that it's practically non-existent. What you said did make sense. I do think a part of it is the weirdness of needs getting met. It's not something I've really allowed with almost anyone, even my own H. Like, I would fight to have a need met in my marriage and I would finally win and immediately say "nevermind," because there was something fundamentally unsettling about it. It got to the point where I could on occasion receive from my husband without being unsettled, but we have been married for eight years (nine in June) and together for over 13, seeing each other daily. That's how much relationship it usually takes for me. Anyway, it was good to not have to carry those projections, but it ends up they were there, just deeper down where I couldn't access them (more below on that).


Kashley!!! Good to hear from you. Thanks for getting my metaphors. I do think part of it is really that the relationship is evolving. It is something new and good, I think, a real gift. It is just the feelings of repulsion that are so confusing to me. Thanks for saying my feelings are understandable. Even if I can't really explain them, it's good to have them a little bit more normalized.

It is SO great that your T is offering to change rates for you. I can really see how your dad could feel in the room with you being on his insurance. I'm sorry that the conversations made you feel miserable, but it blesses me to know that you're with someone who obviously cares so much.


UPDATE:

OK, so I ruminated more on this last night and even though I don't know what's going on with these feelings, I think I understand it a bit better. I feel like the repulsion I'm experiencing is actually not exactly about T or our relationship or our recent, more "real" interactions. It's more like a memory of a feeling that got triggered. I can't really explain it, but it feels connected to a moment of loss of idealization of someone. I don't mean like, "Oh, this guy is a f--- up too just like all the rest." I think the feeling represents a response to a shift in a past relationship.

I sometimes get a lot of internal information through images and I have to translate them. So, what I'm being "shown" is it relates to my having successfully caretaken T the past two sessions. Usually if I am trying to manage T's boundaries around time or other things like that, he says to let him worry about it. My actions are obvious enough when I'm trying to cut off my own arm to accommodate him that he will ask me to stop and slow down and do things the right way for the internal kids and let him take care of himself. The past two days, from the combination of his being "off" and my being more stealthy about it somehow, I have managed to take care of him a couple of times, mostly in ways that are actually totally appropriate considering all he does (i.e. leaving for an hour so he could meet with his other clients). But, both Monday and Tuesday, I saw him get anxious about mistakes he had made (running very late on Monday, the double-booking on Tuesday), and I went into this nurturing, caretaking, reassuring mode where I tried to take care of his feelings.

We discussed it tangentially when I was apologizing for trying to manage the time, and he said caretaking itself isn't bad, though there are times it comes from an unhealthy place or manifests in an unhealthy way (true enough). I guess, the problem is that for me, those nurturing responses WERE pathological and he was not attuned enough to notice and help me pause inside them, see what was going on, why I felt the need to do that. So, all of a sudden, someone inside felt like, "Oh, these are the rules of this relationship that can keep me safe." So, I think the repulsion is this sort of feeling like, "Ugh, another relationship where I have finally found the way to manufacture my safety," (i.e. take responsibility). I succeeded in doing something I should have never had to do as a kid, but did, which was figuring out how to take care of my parents and their feelings.

I can feel the truth of the connection to these past experiences, because Monday we were discussing very heavily both my past and current accommodation, excusing, and taking responsibility for my parents' feelings. T was talking about allowing the anger, realizing it, connecting to it rather than bypass it by taking responsibility/excusing, before forgiveness or any sort of moving beyond was a possibility. Something about discussing that topic had me start doing that to T (when I absolutely DON'T need to) or something about doing it to T triggered us into that conversation. I'm not sure which. So, this moment of, "Oh, I've figured out how this works" was rather dreadful for me. Part of it is there is more trust, a stronger relationship, a bit less dependence on my end. But, rather than interdependence or cooperation like I should be shifting to, I'm doing the only thing I know how, which is trying to make him dependent upon me instead. I know he won't become that way, but because of him disclosing much more the past couple of sessions, I think there is a deep down fear about it happening again.

It reminds me of the guy on the end of Spaceballs, when they are parodying the Alien movies, and the little alien bursts out of the guy's stomach and he says, "Oh no...not again!"
Spaceballs Clip
Except, you know, without the funny dancing singing part afterward. Inside, there is just such a heaviness about us trying to carry him, 'cause really, we've got nothing left to carry anyone else with right now. I know, absolutely know, my T will not allow me to carry him, but the shift in the relationship is just giving me emotional memories of a MUCH too early shift between me and my parents. I never really attached to my mom and I think I was taking care of her feelings before I was in preschool honestly. With my dad, it came later, and there were specific memories that this shift is related to, this finding out that he needed me to take responsibility for him and he couldn't for me. I know it's not the same with T, but that's the feeling that was triggered.

Have I made any sense. Like I said, I am getting this information mostly through images of moments of my session and moments from the past and image-metaphors about how they are linked to one another.

Also, there is not so much trust as I thought. Part of it was just disconnection from the rest of me, I think. Because even though I still can't reflect on the session hiccups with anything but apathy and generosity toward my T, I had a horrible nightmare last night that he pawned me off on some intern and when I texted him about being scared and wanting to leave, he got really stern and told me I wouldn't leave and I would learn to work with this other person instead. In the dream, I got very little and scared and this (female) intern kept writing all sorts of notes about my every quiver and sound and action. And T just would never come back and help. So, the abandonment is there, somewhere deep down...I'm just not connecting to it right now for some reason.

I hope I haven't confused this whole matter more. My brain hurts. Maybe I can explain this to T soon. I'm not sure I could really do it verbally.

((((YAKU)))))

That was so insightful. I often get visual images like that too or just "feelings" connected to T, connected to something he might have unintentionally triggered. I'm getting good at just experiencing them and connecting them to where they belong.

You didn't hurt my brain. I was right there with you.



Liese

I just wanted to say that what you said made sense to me. I guess the difference here is that even if you manage to take care of your T a little bit, sometimes...he's still able to take care of YOU. That dream is so awful, but he's not really abandoning you.

(((Liese))) (((BLT)))

Thanks for understanding. I think I need to redo this post and some other stuff as a journal. I tried to tell T about it as an explanation for why I couldn't leave well today (he triggered my nurturing/caretaking again and I had to run off to avoid trying to take responsible for making him feel good, not worry about me, etc.). I am just awash in attachment pain. We are talking SO much more about everything lately, from now stuff to past stuff, to these bizarre internal rules and where they came from, to how we feel about the connection. A little part tried to say "I love you" today and another one got so anxious about it (because saying that is some sort of imposition on T) and I was explaining the internal battle I was witnessing and T just gently said he knew without her saying (without me telling him what she wasn't allowed to say) and that those positive affection and expression of her thoughts and feelings and needs were very welcome, not an imposition, but something he felt really good about...I don't remember how he worded it, but something about him being pleased when she feels safe and comforted and is able to reach out for and take in the connection, even if her needs and feelings can't be explicitly verbalized (but he knows and it has been written about before, so I know that he knows even if he hadn't made it clear). On the other side, there is such an "ugh" reaction, like he got asked how he could possibly want her to say that, feel positive about her having those feelings. So, it's back to feeling like this attachment stuff has me being drawn and quartered by tiny relentless kids, each of whom are stuck in seeking or running/hiding. Yesterday I felt so disconnected from all of this. Today, it's crushing me. My reality is so compromised. Who the hell am I, anyway?