How do you dig yourself out of an unresolved transference after a disastrous termination of a 20 years long therapeutic relationship?
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Holy crap, what happened for it to dissolve? I have been with my T for that long, off and on. I can't imagine what I would do. I am so sorry. This scares me, as I would be completely devastated especially because of the losses I have been through these last couple of years. I returned to my T because of these losses and she has been the reason I still continue to walk this earth.
I'm sorry I don't have advice for you. Please take care.
I'm sorry I don't have advice for you. Please take care.
Harbour, I don't think anyone can answer that for you, but maybe it would help to talk about it more?
I don't want to scare anyone. I don't think that it has to end in a disaster only because we're in a very long therapy. Our stories and issues are different, and so are the therapists. I had a serious diagnosis, and things went wrong.
For you to be able to make any sense of it you'll need to hear some of my Therapy-story. Forgive me for going into details here and there. I think it will be more difficult to understand without certain details.
This is the only therapy I ever had. I'm not sure exactly what they call this kind of therapy, but it was analytical. I think maybe it was TFP (Transference-focused Psychotherapy). In 1990 I had a serious breakdown and was hospitalized in a psych. department for the first time, for 6 months. That was where I started the therapy with a psychologist, two weekly sessions. I was 37 at that time. A few years ago I read in a statement written by my T that I then was diagnosed with A Borderline disorder with schizophrenic features. I got rid of some of some symptoms, but I didn't really break through until after 6-8 years. Till then I wasn't aware of the extremely strong attachment I had developed to my T. It was of course necessary to make any change possible, but it was very scary. I kind of felt trapped and couldn't see how I would ever be able to stop. I was determined though to work hard on it with my T. My big issues were rejection, abandonment, separation and attachment. In 1998 I stopped in agreement with my T who said that I was welcome to come back if I needed it. So I did after one month. When I came back he insisted that I set a new date for closure. That was difficult. How would I know in advance when I was ready? So I just set the date to be 3 months later. In that period the therapy got really progressive and I had a real feeling that I was on the right way to get through to myself and the world. I was getting nervous as the end was getting near. It didn't feel right to stop now, and I was trying in silence to screw up my courage to ask for more time. Then in the session before the last session something went terribly wrong. He said several times that he thought I should stop now and added some ambiguous comments. At first I didn't want to hear what I heard him saying. But when he repeated it I, without being aware of it, just "disappeared", turned dead inside again, believing, like a robot, that when he said that he thought I should stop now it was the right thing to do. I did not wake up till after the last session. He let me stop at the last session. He was going on vacation for two weeks the following day. My nightmare started before the first day was over. All the layers of my protective armour lifted one by one. This was beyond my control. For the first time in my life I developed a full-blown psychosis. I didn't know until 8 days later when a sudden thought from the real world came to me, and then my struggle to get back began. I had to talk to someone to keep in touch with reality. So I scared the hell out of a few family members. I had still not come all the way back to reality when I returned to my T after he got back from vacation. I described my experience for him. I remember I was sitting in the chair bending forwards, toward the ground, stamping my feet on the floor and saying that I needed to get back to earth. At the end of the session he said that he could now only see me once a week because he did not have the possibility to continue twice a week because of certain circumstances. When I got home I kind of “fell” down the rest of the way to reality, and I was back in the well known terror. In the next session, in fear and tremble, I insisted to continue the therapy twice a week reminding him that he once had said that one condition was that the therapy would continue twice a week till the bitter end. He agreed, and we continued, but we never found our way back to that progressive way we had found before. I withdrew though I didn't want to, gradually, still I felt even more trapped in my deep dependence on him and in my terror of the danger of becoming psychotic again if I stopped. And I felt responsible for it. In the second session after I had returned I said to him, maybe to test him, that I had failed him. He answered: “Yes, you failed the therapy.” And then he asked me: “Why did you do it?” Why did I do it??? Well, I didn't answer him that I turned dead inside because of fun or that I jumped into a psychosis to see how that was like. I answered that I must have got scared of something and added: “You said that you thought I should stop.” He did not respond to that, but silenced. I wish we had talked about it. I have figured out that his fatal provocation must have been a trick or therapeutic technique to drive me into action, to make me object and ask for more time. And maybe to make us get access to my still unknown trauma. And it failed. I obviously couldn't bear the pressure. I wish he had said to me in that last session when I had turned dead: “Look here, I can see behind your protective shell that you are very vulnerable right now, so I don't think it is a good idea to stop yet.” We never talked about my deadly, protective armour. He never questioned it. I had the impression that he believed that I took it on and off consciously. I hate that armour. I have always lived with it, and I didn't discover it or saw it's devilish purpose until after several years in therapy. And then I wrote this:
You were never the captain of your ship, but the slave of a terrible force,
an invisible monster who knows how to vanish whenever you search its source.
It dwells within you like a devil in disguise.
It shows no mercy, it takes you by surprise.
Like the ghastly Medusa it puts out every fire, every spark of life.
To beat your passion and black out your mind it needs no weapon, no sword or knife.
It fills you with dope and makes you believe it's better this way.
With a satanic smile it puts you to sleep and persuades you to stay.
It keeps watch at your lonely shelter, it keeps you away from disturbance and nightmares.
It knows that it's safe to lie dormant, your defender of freedom from cares.
Knowing this did not enable me to get rid of it.
We continued, and I set a new date for termination, and a new date, and a new date until it no longer had any real effect except me clinging to the therapy and my T. Two years after the fatal second stop I had cancer and went through surgery and a tough radiotherapy in my neck and mouth. That treatment was almost killing me, and it certainly did not strengthen me in any way, nor in the therapy. It took me years to recover. About 6 month after the radiotherapy when my T suspected that I was developing a depression, he said that he did not want to have anything to do with depression. I froze in terror. Would he throw me out? I became very, very cautious, trying to seem not depressed. One year later, in 2002 he stopped the therapy, saying that it failed, but suggested that I continued to do follow-up half a year, and I could contact him between these sessions if things got difficult (whatever that meant). I did of course contact him regularly trying to get back to therapy, but he rejected me saying that he was only disturbing me. I could see that we were getting nowhere, but I felt I was a complete failure, and would not accept being a failure. I was very much aware that crucial issues had not been resolved, psychologically and in the relationship with my T. To me it had become a hopeless and impossible riddle how to stop. When he stopped it he said that my big task now was not to destroy the therapy. That was an even more impossible riddle to me. How could I avoid destroying the therapy since it had failed and he had stopped it? The following years I sailed away into resignation and depression. I drowned myself, sinking back into the old false, superficially chatting and empty little me. That was what my T met every half year for the last 7-8 years. I had no job, and after the radiotherapy I got early pension. I did see people. I had projects, I did things. But I was still not able to attach to anyone, and my life nerve and energy was drastically reduced.
Then in June last year, after I got back from a 6 weeks journey abroad, my T called me to tell me that he stopped working and that he would give me one last session in three days. I didn't feel anything at all. I wondered and thought about it. I concluded that I was no longer attached to him, that time had somehow resolved the transference and the attachment. When I turned up at his office at the appointed time he came with a colleague and asked me to wait for 5-10 minutes because he should talk with his colleague. I did wonder because he had never ever before cut off time. But it didn't stir up anything. During the whole session I was sitting there in my numb false shell not feeling or perceiving anything. We were both just being kind and “cheerfully” chatting. Then after about 20 minutes or so he said things that I did not respond to or understand the meaning of: “This is not the ideal way to stop, but the circumstances ....” He said that twice. And: “We have a story together.” We did not talk about ending, and he did not ask me how I felt about it or anything. For a moment a faint sadness emerged, and I said that I didn't like goodbyes, especially not this one. He turned his face away from me and said: “No I know that.” And that was that. So I gave it up and sank back into the numbness. His last words were: “I guess it's time to stop here, …. or should we?” I was gone. I heard the words, but they didn't get through to the real me. And I guess I didn't get what he meant. He had said that he would give me one last session, so that was what I believed he would do. That session had no character of being a goodbye or closure session.
When I got home I felt something ominous. And the first layer of my armor lifted. Soon hell broke loose. The dam broke down. With an enormous power I was thrown back into the old intense transference and that strong attachment to him. I called him many times the following day, but there was no answer. I needed one session to terminate and to say a proper goodbye, with my real me, and a whole session without him cutting time off. I wrote him a letter and sent it to the hospital. I continued calling him. Nothing. Five days later I wrote him another letter. The following day I received a short letter, where he rejected me, saying that he had stopped working and had no longer access to his office or any other room at the hospital. I did not have his private address or phone number. I still did not believe that he would refuse this crucial last session with me. I wrote him a third letter. Two weeks later he sent me a letter, where he wrote that he had no possibility of more sessions or any further contact with me, since he was no longer employed at the hospital, and he would and could not have any more treatment business because of legal circumstances. Besides, he wrote, he was only disturbing me. When I realized that he actually meant it and that I had terminated a 20 year long psychotherapy this way, and back in the transference trap, my disaster was total.
I did not avoid another psychosis. That closure represents the most destructive in me, and it cements the completion of my mental suicide. There is less of me than before the therapy. My self confidence is reduced. The hope that I once had has gone. I am still tied up. I can not let go or terminate a therapy that has not been terminated. I do not understand that “termination”. I do not understand why he did not want to talk about anything related to the closure or about what that would mean to me. I do not understand why we should not have an evaluation of the therapy. We did not evaluate when he stopped the twice a week sessions. We never evaluated. I do not understand why he cut off time in the very last session. I do not understand why he closed it with this question: “I guess we should stop here ... or should we?” It looks as if he after doing nothing for all those years tries one last time if he could wake me up, and if I didn't wake up during that half hour he let me go. But then why did he reject me when he could see from my letter that I had woken up? I do not understand how he could refuse to take one more session under these circumstances. The date of his retirement was his choice. I do not understand why he made such a disastrous termination after such a long and hard therapy. This is the most traumatizing experience I ever had.
My T did work hard with me, and I don't think that he meant to do me any harm. But this therapy did harm me more than anything else.
I see it as if we are two pilots who have been trying to manage an aircraft. The takeoff seemed to be successful, after a long time. But then, we could not find out how to land it. It got so hard that we eventually stopped trying, and for many years we pretended that there was no aircraft to land. In the end he left the aircraft using a parachute. I had no parachute.
I feel we have been gambling with my soul. And I don't know how to rescue myself and my soul.
I have tried two therapists after that. I left after the first session with both of them. It was like talking to a wall. One of them talked a lot about her own problems. The other did not understand what I was talking about. Like an alien. I can't afford to try a lot of therapists, financially or mentally. This was in August. Last week I found one on the internet that seemed experienced and professional. A few days later I received a mail from his daughter. He died in October last year.
I feel imprisoned in my disaster.
For you to be able to make any sense of it you'll need to hear some of my Therapy-story. Forgive me for going into details here and there. I think it will be more difficult to understand without certain details.
This is the only therapy I ever had. I'm not sure exactly what they call this kind of therapy, but it was analytical. I think maybe it was TFP (Transference-focused Psychotherapy). In 1990 I had a serious breakdown and was hospitalized in a psych. department for the first time, for 6 months. That was where I started the therapy with a psychologist, two weekly sessions. I was 37 at that time. A few years ago I read in a statement written by my T that I then was diagnosed with A Borderline disorder with schizophrenic features. I got rid of some of some symptoms, but I didn't really break through until after 6-8 years. Till then I wasn't aware of the extremely strong attachment I had developed to my T. It was of course necessary to make any change possible, but it was very scary. I kind of felt trapped and couldn't see how I would ever be able to stop. I was determined though to work hard on it with my T. My big issues were rejection, abandonment, separation and attachment. In 1998 I stopped in agreement with my T who said that I was welcome to come back if I needed it. So I did after one month. When I came back he insisted that I set a new date for closure. That was difficult. How would I know in advance when I was ready? So I just set the date to be 3 months later. In that period the therapy got really progressive and I had a real feeling that I was on the right way to get through to myself and the world. I was getting nervous as the end was getting near. It didn't feel right to stop now, and I was trying in silence to screw up my courage to ask for more time. Then in the session before the last session something went terribly wrong. He said several times that he thought I should stop now and added some ambiguous comments. At first I didn't want to hear what I heard him saying. But when he repeated it I, without being aware of it, just "disappeared", turned dead inside again, believing, like a robot, that when he said that he thought I should stop now it was the right thing to do. I did not wake up till after the last session. He let me stop at the last session. He was going on vacation for two weeks the following day. My nightmare started before the first day was over. All the layers of my protective armour lifted one by one. This was beyond my control. For the first time in my life I developed a full-blown psychosis. I didn't know until 8 days later when a sudden thought from the real world came to me, and then my struggle to get back began. I had to talk to someone to keep in touch with reality. So I scared the hell out of a few family members. I had still not come all the way back to reality when I returned to my T after he got back from vacation. I described my experience for him. I remember I was sitting in the chair bending forwards, toward the ground, stamping my feet on the floor and saying that I needed to get back to earth. At the end of the session he said that he could now only see me once a week because he did not have the possibility to continue twice a week because of certain circumstances. When I got home I kind of “fell” down the rest of the way to reality, and I was back in the well known terror. In the next session, in fear and tremble, I insisted to continue the therapy twice a week reminding him that he once had said that one condition was that the therapy would continue twice a week till the bitter end. He agreed, and we continued, but we never found our way back to that progressive way we had found before. I withdrew though I didn't want to, gradually, still I felt even more trapped in my deep dependence on him and in my terror of the danger of becoming psychotic again if I stopped. And I felt responsible for it. In the second session after I had returned I said to him, maybe to test him, that I had failed him. He answered: “Yes, you failed the therapy.” And then he asked me: “Why did you do it?” Why did I do it??? Well, I didn't answer him that I turned dead inside because of fun or that I jumped into a psychosis to see how that was like. I answered that I must have got scared of something and added: “You said that you thought I should stop.” He did not respond to that, but silenced. I wish we had talked about it. I have figured out that his fatal provocation must have been a trick or therapeutic technique to drive me into action, to make me object and ask for more time. And maybe to make us get access to my still unknown trauma. And it failed. I obviously couldn't bear the pressure. I wish he had said to me in that last session when I had turned dead: “Look here, I can see behind your protective shell that you are very vulnerable right now, so I don't think it is a good idea to stop yet.” We never talked about my deadly, protective armour. He never questioned it. I had the impression that he believed that I took it on and off consciously. I hate that armour. I have always lived with it, and I didn't discover it or saw it's devilish purpose until after several years in therapy. And then I wrote this:
You were never the captain of your ship, but the slave of a terrible force,
an invisible monster who knows how to vanish whenever you search its source.
It dwells within you like a devil in disguise.
It shows no mercy, it takes you by surprise.
Like the ghastly Medusa it puts out every fire, every spark of life.
To beat your passion and black out your mind it needs no weapon, no sword or knife.
It fills you with dope and makes you believe it's better this way.
With a satanic smile it puts you to sleep and persuades you to stay.
It keeps watch at your lonely shelter, it keeps you away from disturbance and nightmares.
It knows that it's safe to lie dormant, your defender of freedom from cares.
Knowing this did not enable me to get rid of it.
We continued, and I set a new date for termination, and a new date, and a new date until it no longer had any real effect except me clinging to the therapy and my T. Two years after the fatal second stop I had cancer and went through surgery and a tough radiotherapy in my neck and mouth. That treatment was almost killing me, and it certainly did not strengthen me in any way, nor in the therapy. It took me years to recover. About 6 month after the radiotherapy when my T suspected that I was developing a depression, he said that he did not want to have anything to do with depression. I froze in terror. Would he throw me out? I became very, very cautious, trying to seem not depressed. One year later, in 2002 he stopped the therapy, saying that it failed, but suggested that I continued to do follow-up half a year, and I could contact him between these sessions if things got difficult (whatever that meant). I did of course contact him regularly trying to get back to therapy, but he rejected me saying that he was only disturbing me. I could see that we were getting nowhere, but I felt I was a complete failure, and would not accept being a failure. I was very much aware that crucial issues had not been resolved, psychologically and in the relationship with my T. To me it had become a hopeless and impossible riddle how to stop. When he stopped it he said that my big task now was not to destroy the therapy. That was an even more impossible riddle to me. How could I avoid destroying the therapy since it had failed and he had stopped it? The following years I sailed away into resignation and depression. I drowned myself, sinking back into the old false, superficially chatting and empty little me. That was what my T met every half year for the last 7-8 years. I had no job, and after the radiotherapy I got early pension. I did see people. I had projects, I did things. But I was still not able to attach to anyone, and my life nerve and energy was drastically reduced.
Then in June last year, after I got back from a 6 weeks journey abroad, my T called me to tell me that he stopped working and that he would give me one last session in three days. I didn't feel anything at all. I wondered and thought about it. I concluded that I was no longer attached to him, that time had somehow resolved the transference and the attachment. When I turned up at his office at the appointed time he came with a colleague and asked me to wait for 5-10 minutes because he should talk with his colleague. I did wonder because he had never ever before cut off time. But it didn't stir up anything. During the whole session I was sitting there in my numb false shell not feeling or perceiving anything. We were both just being kind and “cheerfully” chatting. Then after about 20 minutes or so he said things that I did not respond to or understand the meaning of: “This is not the ideal way to stop, but the circumstances ....” He said that twice. And: “We have a story together.” We did not talk about ending, and he did not ask me how I felt about it or anything. For a moment a faint sadness emerged, and I said that I didn't like goodbyes, especially not this one. He turned his face away from me and said: “No I know that.” And that was that. So I gave it up and sank back into the numbness. His last words were: “I guess it's time to stop here, …. or should we?” I was gone. I heard the words, but they didn't get through to the real me. And I guess I didn't get what he meant. He had said that he would give me one last session, so that was what I believed he would do. That session had no character of being a goodbye or closure session.
When I got home I felt something ominous. And the first layer of my armor lifted. Soon hell broke loose. The dam broke down. With an enormous power I was thrown back into the old intense transference and that strong attachment to him. I called him many times the following day, but there was no answer. I needed one session to terminate and to say a proper goodbye, with my real me, and a whole session without him cutting time off. I wrote him a letter and sent it to the hospital. I continued calling him. Nothing. Five days later I wrote him another letter. The following day I received a short letter, where he rejected me, saying that he had stopped working and had no longer access to his office or any other room at the hospital. I did not have his private address or phone number. I still did not believe that he would refuse this crucial last session with me. I wrote him a third letter. Two weeks later he sent me a letter, where he wrote that he had no possibility of more sessions or any further contact with me, since he was no longer employed at the hospital, and he would and could not have any more treatment business because of legal circumstances. Besides, he wrote, he was only disturbing me. When I realized that he actually meant it and that I had terminated a 20 year long psychotherapy this way, and back in the transference trap, my disaster was total.
I did not avoid another psychosis. That closure represents the most destructive in me, and it cements the completion of my mental suicide. There is less of me than before the therapy. My self confidence is reduced. The hope that I once had has gone. I am still tied up. I can not let go or terminate a therapy that has not been terminated. I do not understand that “termination”. I do not understand why he did not want to talk about anything related to the closure or about what that would mean to me. I do not understand why we should not have an evaluation of the therapy. We did not evaluate when he stopped the twice a week sessions. We never evaluated. I do not understand why he cut off time in the very last session. I do not understand why he closed it with this question: “I guess we should stop here ... or should we?” It looks as if he after doing nothing for all those years tries one last time if he could wake me up, and if I didn't wake up during that half hour he let me go. But then why did he reject me when he could see from my letter that I had woken up? I do not understand how he could refuse to take one more session under these circumstances. The date of his retirement was his choice. I do not understand why he made such a disastrous termination after such a long and hard therapy. This is the most traumatizing experience I ever had.
My T did work hard with me, and I don't think that he meant to do me any harm. But this therapy did harm me more than anything else.
I see it as if we are two pilots who have been trying to manage an aircraft. The takeoff seemed to be successful, after a long time. But then, we could not find out how to land it. It got so hard that we eventually stopped trying, and for many years we pretended that there was no aircraft to land. In the end he left the aircraft using a parachute. I had no parachute.
I feel we have been gambling with my soul. And I don't know how to rescue myself and my soul.
I have tried two therapists after that. I left after the first session with both of them. It was like talking to a wall. One of them talked a lot about her own problems. The other did not understand what I was talking about. Like an alien. I can't afford to try a lot of therapists, financially or mentally. This was in August. Last week I found one on the internet that seemed experienced and professional. A few days later I received a mail from his daughter. He died in October last year.
I feel imprisoned in my disaster.
I wrote that my T suggested follow-up half a year. that is wrong. I mean every half year!
quote:“Yes, you failed the therapy.”
That is one thing no therapist should ever say to a client. You cannot fail therapy as a client, therapy can only fail you. And I am sorry it failed you :-( Many of us on this board know how painful termination can be, although to imagine what it would be like after 20 years is even beyond me.
What are you going to do now?
Harbour, I don't know what to say except that I am so very sorry. It has to be a living hell. Please continue to reach out here and also for a new T. It will be difficult but you need someone to help you process what happened to you. I will be thinking of you and again I am so sorry.
((((HARBOR))))
I agree with BLT that no therapist should ever say that to a client. You can't fail therapy. He failed you. And I agree with him, that he hurt you.
(((HARBOR))))
I agree with BLT that no therapist should ever say that to a client. You can't fail therapy. He failed you. And I agree with him, that he hurt you.
(((HARBOR))))
I am aware that I need some help to get through this, but as I say, I did try two therapists last August, and reached out for another recently, but he had died. I have spent days and nights searching on the internet. There are not that many serious and professional therapists where I live. I have written I don't know how many letters to my T during the last months without sending any. I sent him 4 letters after the closure. He did not answer the last one. 9 months have passed, and I think that if I send one now, it will be returned to me from the hospital where he worked. I am desperate and afraid, because I am at a loss now. I'm constantly struggling to keep a hold on myself. I am desperate now because I'm at a loss and don't know what to do or who to turn to.
Thank you to all of you. I am so grateful for your response, your concern and your comments. It is very helpful for me.
I have been struggling, and I still am, with a devastating feeling of being totally hopeless and unable to grow and become stronger after this termination of my very long therapy. The huge and abrupt loss and being alone with an unmanageable retraumatisation are also very, very difficult to cope with. Every time I do the slightest thing wrong in my life the closure hour with my T overwhelms me like a tidal wave, and I'm flung back into traumatisation. I always saw my T as a very professional and skilful psychologist. But he may not have had the skills to manage the situation. And then I think, if this is so, it may be me being so impossible to manage that even the best T will not be able to help me. I know that sounds destructive and self-critical, but I mean, he/we tried. For 20 years! I have not given up searching for another T. It's just, my self-confidence, and my trust in therapists in general are very low. I did try two, who seemed to be professional and serious. But ... they were not. The truth is, and I am ashamed of it, that I felt superior to them. They didn't seem mature or experienced.
Again thank you so much for your support. It is invaluable to me.
I have been struggling, and I still am, with a devastating feeling of being totally hopeless and unable to grow and become stronger after this termination of my very long therapy. The huge and abrupt loss and being alone with an unmanageable retraumatisation are also very, very difficult to cope with. Every time I do the slightest thing wrong in my life the closure hour with my T overwhelms me like a tidal wave, and I'm flung back into traumatisation. I always saw my T as a very professional and skilful psychologist. But he may not have had the skills to manage the situation. And then I think, if this is so, it may be me being so impossible to manage that even the best T will not be able to help me. I know that sounds destructive and self-critical, but I mean, he/we tried. For 20 years! I have not given up searching for another T. It's just, my self-confidence, and my trust in therapists in general are very low. I did try two, who seemed to be professional and serious. But ... they were not. The truth is, and I am ashamed of it, that I felt superior to them. They didn't seem mature or experienced.
Again thank you so much for your support. It is invaluable to me.
Harbour!!
Sorry I am not qualified to comment, but just wanted to send you hugs!
Sorry I am not qualified to comment, but just wanted to send you hugs!
Cat
Thank you so much.
I can understand that you have had a very bad time yourself and that you were badly damaged by your former T. May I ask you how he abused you?
It is good to know that you seem to be moving forward now and that you have rebuilt your courage, trust and confidence, and that you are healing with the help of a new T. That gives me a little hope That maybe there is a chance for me too to heal somehow, sometime.
If it was completely my T's responsibility, then what was my responsibility? I mean, I am a very grown up person, so I must have some responsibility to some degree. Is it not reasonable for a T to expect that the client will collaborate? I am here thinking of what they call resistance. I can sometimes feel sorry for my T when I recall him sitting there for me and me sitting there in my poor, ghastly armour. It is true that I felt stuck in a trap for years. I simply did not know how to get out of it, and I felt stupid and hopeless because of that, and scared.
My sense of guilt is a difficult one. I hear my T saying these things he said like: "You don't take the therapy and your life seriously" and "You are throwing the baby out with the bath water" and "You are not good at learning from your experience" and other things. I don't want to hear them. But I hear them. I Know that it definitely does not help me getting anywhere. When I hear you saying that he was the responsible for ensuring that the therapy was on track and actually helping me, I feel kind of relief. Like when you're struggling not to drown and get the chance to get up to the surface of the water for breath and a break. Then again, the therapy was supposed to help me becoming a responsible and independent person (among other things). And then I think that if I don't take my part of the responsibility, then I failed. I think that I am also afraid to drag the whole therapy down, to destroy it. There were good things, and I am so sad that I can't seem to hold on to them in this mess.
Harbour
Thank you so much.
I can understand that you have had a very bad time yourself and that you were badly damaged by your former T. May I ask you how he abused you?
It is good to know that you seem to be moving forward now and that you have rebuilt your courage, trust and confidence, and that you are healing with the help of a new T. That gives me a little hope That maybe there is a chance for me too to heal somehow, sometime.
If it was completely my T's responsibility, then what was my responsibility? I mean, I am a very grown up person, so I must have some responsibility to some degree. Is it not reasonable for a T to expect that the client will collaborate? I am here thinking of what they call resistance. I can sometimes feel sorry for my T when I recall him sitting there for me and me sitting there in my poor, ghastly armour. It is true that I felt stuck in a trap for years. I simply did not know how to get out of it, and I felt stupid and hopeless because of that, and scared.
My sense of guilt is a difficult one. I hear my T saying these things he said like: "You don't take the therapy and your life seriously" and "You are throwing the baby out with the bath water" and "You are not good at learning from your experience" and other things. I don't want to hear them. But I hear them. I Know that it definitely does not help me getting anywhere. When I hear you saying that he was the responsible for ensuring that the therapy was on track and actually helping me, I feel kind of relief. Like when you're struggling not to drown and get the chance to get up to the surface of the water for breath and a break. Then again, the therapy was supposed to help me becoming a responsible and independent person (among other things). And then I think that if I don't take my part of the responsibility, then I failed. I think that I am also afraid to drag the whole therapy down, to destroy it. There were good things, and I am so sad that I can't seem to hold on to them in this mess.
Harbour
It is beyond me how any therapist can do what yours did to you. It is also beyond me how my T could do what he did. If he knew for all those years that he couldn't deal with it, then why did he continue? I'm asking myself. But it is even more beyond me how he could end it the way he did. That is one thing that I cannot forgive him. That was not necessary. I sometimes get this ugly thought that I hope he feels very bad about it. That is revenge, and I don't like that feeling. It is primitive and not constructive. Yesterday I found another T on the internet who may be able to help me. I am not optimistic, but I will call her. Most of the therapists on the internet seem superficial and too business-like. As if it was a refrigerator or so they are trying to sell. This is the T marked in Copenhagen.
You are a very clever and insightful person.
I have sensed what you're saying, afterwards when I look back, that he couldn't handle being unable to "cure" me. And also that he was angry with me and has punished me with a bad ending. I am convinced that he sincerely did want to help me and that he very strongly indeed wanted this to succeed. I know from the first 8 years. It was after he had made that "trick" or technique provoking me to ask for more time and I didn't because I was in my "coma" and consequently had a psychosis when I got home, that everything changed. I remember that when I returned to the therapy 2 weeks later I sensed that he was angry with me. So I said that to him. He answered that I was the one who was angry with him. I said that I didn't feel so. And then he silenced. This was after he had said that I had failed the therapy. Knowing that he seriously intended to and wanted to help me makes the end even more disastrous and devastating for me, I think. It makes it all very confusing. It makes it extremely difficult for me to blame him and not to blame myself. I cannot understand why he didn't, for all those years, say to me: "Look here, it seems that things are not working very well for us, that we are somehow stuck and getting nowhere. I think that we should talk about why this is so and how we can move forward again. Remember, I am here to help you." I wish he had said something like that. I cannot understand why we didn't talk properly about it. I feel that he just let go of me after the "accident". I feel he withdrew. So did I, and I'm not sure who did it first. It is as if we both have been waiting for all those years. I was waiting for him to suggest something or to do something, and he was waiting for me to do something. If it had been a married couple it was doomed to end in a tragic divorce. I still have trouble accepting that it ended that way. It was not necessary. If this is grieving, then grieving is the most unbearable I ever experienced. Maybe because it is not "only" the loss of my T. There is the unfinished and the unresolved, both psychologically and in the relationship. And the loss of a proper goodbye.
Thank you for your advice about asking the new T questions. I will do so. I have not yet called her. I am going abroad in one month for a month, and I am hesitating to do anything until I come back. I do need it now, but I'm not sure if it is a good idea since I'll soon be away for a month.
Thank you again for your wise and understanding support.
I have sensed what you're saying, afterwards when I look back, that he couldn't handle being unable to "cure" me. And also that he was angry with me and has punished me with a bad ending. I am convinced that he sincerely did want to help me and that he very strongly indeed wanted this to succeed. I know from the first 8 years. It was after he had made that "trick" or technique provoking me to ask for more time and I didn't because I was in my "coma" and consequently had a psychosis when I got home, that everything changed. I remember that when I returned to the therapy 2 weeks later I sensed that he was angry with me. So I said that to him. He answered that I was the one who was angry with him. I said that I didn't feel so. And then he silenced. This was after he had said that I had failed the therapy. Knowing that he seriously intended to and wanted to help me makes the end even more disastrous and devastating for me, I think. It makes it all very confusing. It makes it extremely difficult for me to blame him and not to blame myself. I cannot understand why he didn't, for all those years, say to me: "Look here, it seems that things are not working very well for us, that we are somehow stuck and getting nowhere. I think that we should talk about why this is so and how we can move forward again. Remember, I am here to help you." I wish he had said something like that. I cannot understand why we didn't talk properly about it. I feel that he just let go of me after the "accident". I feel he withdrew. So did I, and I'm not sure who did it first. It is as if we both have been waiting for all those years. I was waiting for him to suggest something or to do something, and he was waiting for me to do something. If it had been a married couple it was doomed to end in a tragic divorce. I still have trouble accepting that it ended that way. It was not necessary. If this is grieving, then grieving is the most unbearable I ever experienced. Maybe because it is not "only" the loss of my T. There is the unfinished and the unresolved, both psychologically and in the relationship. And the loss of a proper goodbye.
Thank you for your advice about asking the new T questions. I will do so. I have not yet called her. I am going abroad in one month for a month, and I am hesitating to do anything until I come back. I do need it now, but I'm not sure if it is a good idea since I'll soon be away for a month.
Thank you again for your wise and understanding support.