Anyway, the point of this is that I am struggling with my relationship with my T. I was so injured in therapy and it was hard to go back to do the thing that caused me so much pain. But I did seek therapy mostly because I needed a place to grieve my loss and someone who could hear and understand the pain I was in. I needed a safe place and I told myself that I would return to therapy to process the loss and deal with the grief. I am doing that and my T has been nothing short of amazing in helping me with this.
But now.. I don't know what to do. Do I continue and try to process and resolve all those many issues I went to therapy for 3 years ago? Do I stay now that I can mostly manage the grief? I think I can stay with him but... I feel like everything I say to him and everything I do is nothing but a re-run. It feels like a re-tread, a do-over. It feels false and trite and not important because the first time it really meant something to tell my oldT what I did. It was the whole struggle to articulate and reveal what my life had been like and now it's just not the same.
I put so much of my heart into that therapy with my oldT. I gave him ME. He didn't want me it seems. I was too much for him and he ran away from me. So, I don't know how to express myself to my T now. I already did everything I knew how to do with my oldT and it seems sort of unfair to my T to use the same songs, poems, pictures, symbols to allow him to get to know me. It's like he is second best and he gets the left-overs or the second-hand clothing that was discarded by the original owner.
Does any of this make sense? I'm not even sure how to explain this.
I think this got triggered by something my T said to me on Thursday which was something lovely... he told me to use him as my anchor. That he will be my anchor and I could hold onto that to steady me. Well, I thought my head would explode because I had tried SO hard to make my oldT my anchor. I had given him an anchor, sent him a song You are my Anchor, I referred to him in my wriitngs to him as my anchor and the session before my last one I gave him a small hematite anchor on a red ribbon. It was the night before my surgery. He gave it back to me during our last session the following week. I tried so hard to think of my oldT as my anchor and evidently, he refused to be that for me. He would not discuss or comment on the symbolism of it and so that means he rejected the thought. And now... here is my T freely offering to be my anchor and I can't even tell him what that means. It feels like it just loses something because I wanted someone else to be my anchor.
This is just one example of how confusing this do-over of therapy is becoming to me. Nothing feels real because it's been done before and the outcome was negative and painful.
So I'm thinking/feeling like I cannot move on in therapy beyond processing the grief of losing my oldT. And then last night I fell apart because out of nowhere I got this strong feeling that my T was going to leave me for some reason... I have no idea why it just felt that way. Like I am going to do something that will have him terminating me. And the fact that this made me so sad and upset was scary because it means that he has become important to me and I have nothing left to offer him that has not already been given to my oldT.
Sorry for the ramble. I was wondering if any of you who have had multiple Ts have felt this way or struggled with these same feelings?
Thanks,
TN