Hi Sheychen,
Sorry it’s taken me so long to reply but I was out of town for the weekend and had no internet access. I’m sorry that this had been one long ongoing nightmare for you. I must agree with other responses you’ve gotten and say that L.E. sounds very wise. I think what she said about her “loss of interior boundaries” was so spot on. Your C is out of her depth and not equipped to handle the very things that you desparately need to process in order to heal. So she is the one breaking her own boundaries (or not holding them, whichever way you wish to word it) then blaming you. It’s like spending a whole party running around filling everyone drinks, bringing food to people and cleaning up without anyone asking, then at the end of the party screaming at everyone for how selfish they are. No matter how much she may want to blame you (and most human beings occasionally slip into the “you made me....” at times) she cannot make you responsible for what she does. Even if you were being incredibly demanding and pushy, it’s still her decision about what she’s willing to do. I have to tell you that as frustrating as it could be when my T held a boundary, and later my husband
, I have always gained an incredible sense of safety in knowing I could NOT push him around. Which was good, because often when I was processing these overwhelming confusing chaotic painful emotions the last thing I felt was in control, so it was good to know someone else was even if it meant being disappointed about some things. I also very much agree that you are starting to deal with unconscious stuff and your C is not equipped. It is too easy to be re-traumatized with someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. And as much as it feels like you may be wasting time, if you stick with her and continue to be retraumatized, not only are you not getting better, you’re adding to the pile of stuff you need to deal with, which again increases the amount of time spent in therapy.
I know the expense can be overwhelming, but I think at this point, it’s pretty important for you to find someone who is both trained in trauma and who is willing to provide you with the level of contact that you feel you need (just know that any level of contact a T is willing to provide will still not be enough at times.)
quote:
AG ... got re parented, she went beyond attachment issues, This Psychologist is saying that sometimes you just have to learn to live with the pain.
Sheychen, I hope this next part is not too difficult to hear right now, but I really felt it important to talk about what you said here. I wouldn’t call what my T did “re-parenting.” There was a dual process of providing for me the things that I was capable of taking in even as an adult, and providing a safe, secure place to mourn the loss around the things my parents didn’t provide that are now impossible to get. And the only way to figure out the difference between those two things was to keep (very painfully) running into his boundaries. Once we established enough trust, I became clear that my T was very committed to my well-being and that if there was something that he was capable of providing me, he NEVER held back. It was given freely and given for as long as I needed to experience it. (The best example of this was being able to reassure me that he was neither going to leave me nor send me away. I said once to my husband in a couples’ session that my T had explained something to me eight times and my T said 8 of 8008. If I had known he was being literal I might have fled.
) But if he knew that it was impossible to provide something, he was just as quick to make that clear. Very gently, and compassionately while making room to hear all my feelings about that, which is why I would mourn. Because if I wanted it and he said no but was clear that it was normal to want that, then I realized that as much as I should have had it, I didn’t and the only way to heal was to grieve. The example that springs to mind on this one, was about being special. I wanted so badly to know that I was a “favorite client” in some way. The truth is that everyone is supposed to be special when they’re little, to be adored by their parents and only later in life have to come to grips with the fact that people outside their family might not quite see them that way all the time. If we don’t have that, the desire for it does not go away. I lost track of the number of times I discussed this with my T. About how jealous I was of his family and what they meant to him, how I hated being limited to an hour a week, how I hated that he was such a large part of my life and I wasn’t of his. That while what he gave me was real and deep, it wasn’t anything he wouldn’t offer to anyone who came through his door. When we discussed it, he was really clear that it was not only ok that I felt that way, but very understandable. But it still wasn’t something he could give me. So I grieved.
So what I did get from the relationship was a stronger, wiser other that I could depend on to hear me and understand me, focus on only my needs, mirror to me an accurate picture of who I was, and to treat me as if I mattered until I could believe it. It’s the closest thing to unconditional love I think I’ve ever experienced on a human level. It became clear over the course of our relationship (it was a LONG uphill battle to believe) that no matter what I did or said or expressed, my T was there and I was cared for. I remember once asking my T if he was proud of me (I had just talked, very self-consciously, about an accomplishment of mine) and he went right past my question to what I was actually asking. He told me that there are two ways to ask that question, the first of which is a rhetorical way of saying “hey, I did good here, didn’t I?” and that was fine. But the second meaning of that question was “hey, I did this, am I ok now?” Then he told me that the problem of getting a yes answer to that question was that it implied that there was a time that the answer was no. He then proceeded to tell me that of course hearing about good things was enjoyable, how could he not be happy about life begetting life but it didn’t matter if I came to him with an accomplishment or sat across with him with snot running down my face (unfortunately a literal experience for my T
) that NOTHING changed about how he felt about me. That while he might approve or be disappointed by things that I did (he gave the example of me getting drunk and running into a pole for the later.) that nothing would change how he felt about me. That he was always proud of me. The real gift he gave me was sitting across from me KNOWING and BELIEVING in what to him was a self-evident, given fact: that I was a worthwhile, capable person who just needed to learn that about myself. Which was a gift beyond price. (Sorry had to stop for the tears.)
But he didn’t give me everything I didn’t have as a child and there were times when that was unspeakably painful and difficult to face. Facing those griefs and the pain of them is among the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.
Which brings us to the “sometimes you just have to learn to live with the pain” part. There is some truth to this but don’t stop reading! When I was trying to heal what was basically in the back of my mind was that eventually I would have an “earned” secure attachment with my T (earned does not refer to you being worth of the attachment, but the fact that you have to work really hard to heal from old injuries in order to feel secure) and that it would be the same as if I had grown up with “good enough” parenting and had a secure attachment from childhood onwards. But it’s just not true. There was real loss, and real pain involved in what my childhood was like, and I healed from those losses by grieving. But like all grieving, it left scars. My T used the analogy of someone burying a spade deep in a tree. The tree is injured but it will continue to grow around the spade and heal from the injury and go onto to thrive but it will always have as spade buried in it. In the same way, in certain stressful, triggering situations, I can still have those old feelings and lies rise up (I’m unlovable, I’m stupid, I’m worthless, everyone will eventually leave me, you know the drill I’m sure). But now I have something to balance against those messages. other truths to help me work through them. So I am able to stand on what I NOW know to be true. That I am worthwhile and valuable but I am also human so that sometimes I make mistakes but that doesn’t completely define me. That those feelings which rise up are just that, feelings, and they’ll pass. I don’t always feel like that and what I feel isn’t always an accurate reflection of reality. That process used to take me a very, very, long time, but now I find that it can take only minutes and even sometimes, miraculously, seconds. I have to “gently push” myself when these things happen. The gentle part is realizing when these old messages rise up, that I can be compassionate with myself about them, because they make perfect sense based on what I experienced (something my T taught me over and over again). The pushing part is being able to say to myself “but I know that’s not true anymore, so I’ll just go forward acting like I believe it isn’t true, until I no longer feel like it’s the truth.” So yes, the pain is in some sense always with me, but it has no where near the power and control it used to have. And I’m no longer scared of feeling it, because now I know it won’t destroy me. I even in some sense welcome those scars, because it is from those places and the work I had to do to heal, that some of the best parts of me have come.
I wouldn’t want to have what happened to me happen to anyone, but I have also made my peace with the fact that what happened is an integral part of who I am, that it has helped to shape and mold the person that I am and that some of my greatest strengths have grown directly out of surviving and healing from what happened to me.
All that said, I think it’s really important to find someone who understands trauma. It was the clarity of my T’s understanding so that he was able to hold still that allowed me to understand what I needed to mourn and what I need to take in from him.
AG
