Hi Navyme,

intresting question and I am looking fw to other opinion...

I am really afraid of ruptures with my T, but that also causes, that I am cautios to much and that holds me back from being totally open...However we had like 3 ruptures, maybe small, but really painful for me...First was that she was too strict with me one session, so I totally shut down at next session...she noticed that and asked me about it...then when I told her, that she reffered to the wrong part of me, she sincerely apologized for not checking out which part of me is listening to her...she tried to shut down the part that is so critical in me, but Inny was the one who was listening...so...after a long warm talk with her, and talking with my little part helped a lot and I was able to get even closer with her...She gain her trust back, but she knew how and I deceided in my head, that she is good for me and she hears me, and she helped me a lot before, so this problem won't make me to leave her...then 2 missunderstandings happened again (don't wanna write about right now)...She being a human, and me being too sensitive and rupture was here...but I learned throughout our therapies that I can handle them, I can pass them...And it was a right decision...she apologized again...and stayed warm and sincere...and she is still the same with me...

The point is, that after the ruptures I do trust her even more...i am more relaxed at terapies...but she helped me a lot with getting through them...she validated my feelings, she aknowledged them, she was warm, and didn't make any excuses about her being wrong...

that is my story...

how about you?

btw...nice to meet you!

Nice to meet you
I have had some little ones with t (been together a year in jan 2012), mainly caused by communication/attunement/trust problems. Just minor niggles where she has not read me right or has pushed and I've slammed shut on her. T has felt them (I know this from what she has told me after the fact) - we talked about them gently, I have sometimes written about them when I can't express myself in words and on one or two occasions we have come to an agreement about how I signal when she is going somewhere i don't want her to go - she has always apologised where its been her fault or asked what she can do to help the issue that caused the rupture, it just so happens that on these occasions i have also usually come up with something to help the cause of the rupture

The t I see will never admit she has made a mistake or apologize for anything she has done (her apologies are always "I am sorry YOU feel or did or whatever" NEVER "I am sorry I ...")
She mocked and humiliated me and, when I tried to talk to her about it, blamed me for not knowing she was "playing".
She refuses to explain what is supposed to be going on.
If I do not bring up something every week - she thinks it is fixed and expresses surprise when I get frustrated and ask what she is asking has to do with X - so now I am just going to go in each week and start by reciting the list of things that are a still a problem. If the reason I came in was fixed, I would not still be going.
I do not know of any solutions.

stoppers, that is awful. I'm sorry. I couldn't work that way.


I'm sure I've had lots of little ruptures with my T, but I tend to just make stuff that goes wrong my fault, so I tend to shame myself over things rather than actually feel any anger toward him.

The one thing I would call a rupture was back in April, right before we did diagnosis and started with parts work. I had asked to sit on the floor to tell T something hard a few weeks previous. I had spent some time on the floor repeatedly for a few sessions in a row after that. When I moved to the floor, T asked if he could move as well. I didn't ask him, but he offered. His moving over-activated me, because one part was simultaneously desperate to connect and scared to death of it (actually fears it is impossible and that I poison/infect people just by my presence). Anyway, I was having some bad reactions to sitting together, trouble disconnecting at the end of sessions.

I had some awful dreams which helped me understand that there was a certain degree of "threat" in having someone that close to me, both emotionally and physically at the same time. I asked for an extra session to discuss/practice connecting and disconnecting safely, because I felt like I had sort of a breakthrough. I had some ideas of things we could do, ways to trigger and then describe what was coming up for me, so we could work through it together.

Instead, right when I got there, T (who I later found out had consulted a colleague on my distress) said, "You wanted to talk about disconnecting safely. That's really good...I think, perhaps, I shouldn't have sat on the floor with you." I completely shut down and wasn't able to share what I had wanted to. I wanted to leave, but I sat through it. After a while, I described how hard the work we do is and that the one thing that had ever felt comforting, connecting, made it less scary to share really hard things, he was now taking away, and all that was leftover was $#!+. Yes, I literally said that. I kept telling him, "I'm done," and I really meant it. I saw no point in being there anymore, because he had rejected me just like I had been predicting all along. At the time, I thought he hadn't been prepared for my reaction, but months later, I asked him to follow up and tell me what happened on his side of things and he said he knew it would be a very difficult session and have lasting repercussions, but for the sake of me being able to ground and leave safely, at the time, he thought it was the best thing.

He asked me if I felt like he wasn't there for me, didn't care, anymore and I said that was how it felt. He asked whether it was fair. I later wrote to him that it was patently unfair that because people in the past had been so unfair to me that I now must be unfair to him in my feelings. I kept wanting to leave, but apparently, I was so evidently distraught and distressed that he didn't feel right allowing that. It has been the only time he has firmly insisted on my staying. I couldn't promise him I would contact him if I felt like I might do something bad. He seemed concerned and surprised, but I told him that if I contacted him that meant I probably wasn't serious, but if I was serious about it, why would I contact him? In retrospect, that part of me might just have just been trying to hurt him out of her own hurt.

Anyway, he was very attuned and present and good throughout the whole session, but I couldn't see it at the time. However, despite the flashing lights and sirens and full-scale alert inside, I chose to override those fears with the intellectual knowledge that my T had never proven to be anything other than safe and reliable to me. So, I spent the next several days texting him (a method of contact he has encouraged) about how horrible I felt, every feeling from being completely responsible to hurt over his "ambush" and "abandonment" of me. I also wrote several journal entries over the next couple of weeks. Eventually, we were able to go back to our normal work, but the effect kind of lingered for months, even into parts work, before it was completely resolved.

It took me finally getting the guts to write out all my remaining questions on what had happened before/during/after that session from his side of things before I could see my T's care threaded throughout the whole experience and not be afraid of imminent abandonment. Since that time, we've been able to sit on the floor together again and protective parts are confident enough to let the kids get close, emotionally and physically, again. Sorry for such a long account, but that is my only experience big enough for me to call a "rupture." Everything else has mostly been T doing something, me having an emotional reaction, then me intellectually dismissing my feelings as not true. Sometimes that is exhausting and I wonder, like DF, whether the feelings ever get discharged when you observe them objectively like that...but it certainly is a hell of a lot less painful than the other route.

Edit: One thing I forgot to add is that T did, in the moment, apologize that he had caused me so much hurt. I dismissed it by saying it wasn't his fault and he asked over and over for me to look at him and then earnestly apologized, saying that he had hurt me and it was his responsibility. I think that moment is what really allowed me to keep sharing with him those next few days and weeks. He knew he had hurt me, more than he expected maybe, and he was genuinely sorry about it, because he genuinely cares.

Sometimes I think I am the queen of ruptures - always having a minor or major hissy fit about T.

The two big ones that stand out with this T - is that T was beginning to be very inconsistent despite her telling me a beautiful story how we are in a relationship together and bla bla bla.

Anyway she kept forgetting things she said she would bring up, totally forgetting really important things, she was tired, not paying attention etc. I cancelled my next appt. She wanted me to go back to talk about things.

I had a grievance list. She admitted all of the areas where she had made a mistake - it was amazing. She even said a few things where she was struggling that I had no idea about. We made a plan for the future that addressed my issues and hers. It has been working and yes I do feel closer to her.

But... 2 weeks later she promised to email me on a certain day. It coincided with a bad few days for me and I was really reaching out for her. T promised. She failed. I flipped out. I mentally went back to my traumatised separation from the old T. Eventually T did remember after I prompted her a few times. I followed up with an assertive but friendly email telling her what she had done, how it affected me and why she can't fail her promises again. When i got to the next session she apologised many times.

I think she actually said "sorry I stuffed up" and "I know I shouldn't have done it".

Nothing like admitting your faults up front - to diffuse a situation. Takes the wind out of your sails if you wanted to keep fighting about it....

The thing is - it is important to tell our T's - do this by writing if it is too difficult to discuss up front, think of solutions together and discuss, discuss, discuss.

Perhaps I was wrong when I said I had no solutions - if the T would apologize sincerely, then I think the rupture could be repaired.

Yaku - thank you. I keep quitting, but going back. I seem to have some bizarre negative attachment to the t and I keep thinking I can convince her to apologize. I am very careful now to never give info or engage in a way she can use against me or hurt me.

Hi NavyMe,
This is a really good and actually quite important question I think. I think that ruptures and how they are handled are a very important part, if not the MOST important part of the healing process.

I was hurt so badly by my relationships when I was young that I essentially spent my life searching for that "perfect" relationship in which the person would love me enough to never hurt me and I would at last feel safe and loved. Problem is there's no such thing as a person who never hurts you. We're all human, and have human failings such as irritability, defensiveness and selfishness that get in the way of us responding well even to people we love deeply and are committed to.

So it was vitally important for me to learn that safety didn't mean never getting hurt, it meant being able to bear the hurt, be honest about it and be met with understanding so that the rupture could be repaired. That having something go wrong does NOT mean the relationship is a bad one or it's time to leave (a favorite reaction and one that quite reasonably drove my husband nuts until I outgrew it in couples' counseling). A committed, loving relationship can weather the storm of failures and hurts. In fact, working through these kinds of disappointments is in fact, what teaches us to trust the relationship.

OTOH, survivors of long term abuse can tend to stay in bad relationships way past the expiration date, trying to save something unworkable, still driven by the fact that when they were a child they had no choice but to MAKE the relationship with their caregivers' work.

So there are a number of skills involved in ruptures. One is to learn to endure them and the pain they bring and learn to heal them. The other is to discern whether the other person is actually acting in good faith to repair them.

I had a lot of ruptures with my T. If he thought he messed up, he was very quick to take responsibility and apologize. If he didn't feel like he did anything wrong (which happened, as sometimes I would get angry about things when he didn't do anything wrong), he would not apologize, but in either case, he would remain non-defensive and very willing to hear all of my feelings. He would work to normalize my feelings even when he didn't feel he had done anything wrong. So what told me I mattered wasn't that he never blew it, or never hurt me, it was that when I was hurt, I was attended to and listened to.

I want to give you two examples of ruptures, one in which he actually messed up, and another in which he didn't to illustrate what I'm saying.

OK, first rupture (and probably our worst). I emailed him and waited three days for a response, getting increasingly agitated. We didn't have a really good track record with email (for a variety of reasons on both sides) but in this particular case, I was pretty angry. I made an emergency call and when he called back, I asked if he had read my email. He said (wait for it) that he couldn't remember. I was so angry and hurt I could hardly breathe. He was being all reassuring and don't worry we can work through this (I usually react very insecurely rather than with anger). I literally just said very vehemently "we'll talk about it on Thursday" (my next appt) and literally hung the phone up without saying goodbye. Then I had my meltdown. I freaked, totally convinced that I didn't matter, the relationship wasn't real, that there was something wrong with me that people couldn't connect with me. So I made another emergency phone call. My T called back and was wonderful. He apologized for not remembering, that he had really messed up and that he understood why this failure had evoked such an intense reaction because of failures in past relationships. That when he was younger, he would have hedged more, but he knew how important it was that he tell me the truth so that I could trust him. He also reassured me that the relationship was real and the only thing missing was what I had not been given. At my next session, we talked through the whole thing again and he again apologized.

Rupture #2 was about having a regular appointment. I never had a regular appointment with my T (I had with my first T) and it was driving me nuts. I hit a two week break once because he was taking time off and felt he couldn't schedule me the same week we had a couples' appt because he didn't have enough openings. It was a really miserable two weeks. So at my next session, I walked in, sat down and told him it had been a really miserable two weeks, that I was tired of not having a regular appt. That I wanted a regular appointment but I would settle for just knowing I could get in weekly.

He was very welcoming of my feelings and expressed understanding of how I felt that way. But he also told me that he knew himself well enough to know that he couldn't work using regular appointments and he was not going to promise me something he knew himself incapable of doing. That I was always welcome to ask for an appt when I wanted but he couldn't guarentee one would be available. That part of the reason he allowed 24/7 access through email and phone was because he knew there would be times where I would need to contact him but wouldn't be able to come in. But he didn't apologize because he wasn't doing anything wrong, he was setting a boundary.

Then we talked about how my wanting a regular appt was about me wanting "my" space where I was safe and I would not have to ask for what I needed (I HATED asking for what I needed, it was a big part of our email problems.)

In the end, I had to decide whether I could work with him knowing his boundary about regular appts. I decided to stick with him (glad I did ).

Something really good came out of this. Actually a number of things. I found out I couldn't push my T around, that he was capable of saying no to me when he needed to, which made me feel much safer with him. It also taught me that he would say no to me, which meant that when he said "yes" he meant it and it was a free choice on his part.

So I would encourage you when a rupture occurs, to face it directly and bring up your feelings in session. A lot of good work gets done in working through ruptures.

And if you get a lot of denial or defensivenss or an inability to hear your feelings, then these are red flags to look at about the relationship with your T.

AG

quote:

I am very careful now to never give info or engage in a way she can use against me or hurt me.

Stoppers,
This just seems very wrong to me. Therapy should be a safe place in which you can express all of you, and all of your feelings without worrying that you'll be punished for it. We learn to accept all of ourselves by having all of ourselves accepted by our therapist. If you are feeling like there are things you cannot address then something is wrong, either in your perceptions or in your therapist.

I would talk about it. If it's just a matter of you believing something that is not true, your T should be able to reassure you and work through it with you. If your T continues to be defensive, not take any responsibility or mock you (ok that freaked me out, there is NO place for mocking a client in therapy unless the relationship is really strong and solid and it is very gently done. My T didn't risk anything like that until years into our relationship. And as I said, it was exceedingly gentle and actually funny.)then you need to consider that she may not be very good at what she does and you need to find someone you could actually heal with.

In situations like this, we have to be willing to look at ourselves and try to figure out if we are projecting, but we can't bend over so far backwards that we are allowing ourselves to continue working with someone who is not helping us or even worse, compounding our injuries.

AG

Thanks AG. The t acknowledges she did it, but that I should have known she was "playing" and because she did not intend to hurt me,it is no big deal and I should not be hurt. I keep trying to talk about it and she keeps insisting I was not humiliated because she did not have intent.

Wow. Why is she telling you how you "should" feel?I actually told my therapist via a a "boundary" proposal (see sarcasm post) that playing such games was not an option. It says "no means no, and stop means stop" when it comes to humiliation and mocking. Surprisingly, he agreed. That's just my take on it. I personally believe in freedom of choice,

It went like this:
state the context.
What you like about the relationship
What you apologize for or take responsibility for.
State what you believe
State "when you" (humiliate me)
"I feel"
"I want'
"I need"
"if you"
then "I will"

I did this to create a more stable relationship based on the interaction of 2 adults. It also helped me to ask for what I need, while also respecting the person I am dealing with. It aslo drives home that there are things to be tolerated in a relationship, and as well, things that we DO NOT need to tolerate. It's ok to draw a line, respectfully, if need be. (IMHO!)

Anyway, that's my take. Hope this helps somehow. I was struggling with this same issue, and we have a stronger relationship now.

This is also a great exercise, because in writing out this boundary proposal, it becomes more apparent if one is projecting or if there really is a legit complaint. In my case I also found it best not to propose it like an ultimatum.

Stoppers, that's awful. I can't imagine staying with a therapist who tried to tell me what I should or shouldn't feel. That's totally opposite of what they are supposed to do

I have ruptures with both of my Ts and they've all worked out just fine in the end.

In the ruptures with T1, I tend to get wayyyyy more upset and affected by it than she does. I had a rupture one time with her that was so upsetting that I asked her to please call me before she left town for vacation, so she did and it was at midnight when she finally called me and she had been drinking I think and yelled at me and then got really emotional. It was an intesnse conversation, but it got worked out and I'm glad that I asked her to call me before she left town so that I wasn't upset the entire week.

In hindsight, no rupture has been so epic that it couldn't be resolved and I can honestly say that the magnitude of the events that led up to the rupture was really amplified by my history of abandonment. Once I had some time and distance between myself and the rupturing event, I can see that I was blowing it out of proportion. Not saying I should not have been hurt, but the degree to which I allowed it to affect me was disproportionate to the actual event. Nevertheless, in the moment, those ruptures can feel devastating.