STRM, mlc and LG--Thanks for your supportive words.
Monte--Thanks for thinking of me. I had a tough session, and I'm really confused right now about what to do.
TN--that wasn't a typo. She really said she has a waiting list of 200. I think that includes both current patients and those that are waiting to be able to get into see her for the first time. Yeah, I agree that that is way too much for one person to handle, and that she is feeling more and more the stretching thin that this kind of caseload inevitably causes. She'll be 68 later this month. I keep waiting for her to burn out, or announce suddenly that she's retiring or something. But she just keeps pushing herself. She does it to herself. She works 10-12 hour days, sometimes 13 hours. And that is by her choice.
Yesterday's session was not good. I went into it thinking from her reminder call the previous morning that she was upset about something, or distancing herself for some reason.
Lately there really hasn't been any chit-chat. Only in the hallway to her office. Once we sit down she starts in on stuff right away. She asked me how I was doing emotionally. I told her this past month has been really hard for me. Whether she understood that that was because of her vacation and how much I have missed her or not, I don't know. She had a sort of sympathetic look on her face, maybe. I told her my H and I are in a really bad spot right now, as we are going to 3 sessions of therapy with someone through our church, although that hasn't even been set up yet. I need to do that in the next day or so. If things don't get better between us we may be heading for divorce. That took my T by a bit of surprise. She asked what I wanted, and I told her I just want things to change in our marriage, but that I understand where my H is coming from. Living with a person who has been clinically depressed for almost 7 years, and who has pretty well abandoned her responsibilities as a homemaker and mother has got to be tough. But he doesn't sympathize much, or have any empathy for where I am at. I have told him several times that I would change things, but manage to only stick with it for a week or two and then I'm back to where I was before. I'm equally frustrated with me.
My T asked me to pick 2 things I wanted to see change in my mothering. She wanted me to envision what those things would look like if I were successful with them and then work backwards to see how I would get there. I told her I feel like I'm recreating my own relationship with my boys that my mother had with me; an emotionally dead relationship. So she suggested lots of things I could do with my boys to bond with them and create memories and experiences where I could validate myself as a "good mom". She says I don't validate the good stuff I do and instead beat myself up for what I am not doing. True.
She asked me (for the umteenth time) to look at my emotional struggles with her, my H and my kids and to tell her how much of the 'pie' each of those things represented. I told her I can't really do that, meaning I mentally get stuck in sessions, and I think I fear telling her how much of this attachment/relationship with her really affects me. She said she knows that it's hard for me but she wants me to really see how much each thing affects my life. After a couple of minutes I finally said that they all were probably 1/3 each. I think in reality now that I'm sitting here away from her and can actually think, she probably occupies at least 50-75 percent of that 'pie'. I'm sure she knows it, too. That's why she pressed me this time for an answer until I gave her one.
She said she feels worried that she is harming me more than helping. I knew this was going to come up again. She seemed sort of reserved this session, or maybe withdrawn a bit, I don't know. I feel like the fact that I haven't made real progress yet is disturbing her. I think she worries that I'm so stuck on this relationship with her that I am not really living life, and she is right. I'm not living. I'm always stuck in my head worrying about things that either have or haven't happened with her, or trying to sort out parts of the relationship that bother me, or trying desperately to feel some connection to her. I told her I struggle with keeping an image/representation of her in my mind that is congruent with the T in her office. I told her I struggle to feel connected after I leave sessions, and find myself panicked because that connection disappears within hours or maybe a day if I'm lucky. She asked me if I wanted to take a pillow from her couch home. I think she was joking, and I declined, but at least she got the whole thing about wanting or needing some sort of transitional object. I have the watchband she gave me made from some of her mother's jewelry, so that helps. I didn't have the courage to tell her about the photos I have on my hard drive, or that I've sat in the parking lot, listened to voicemail messages, that I'm still searching online, etc. She said she doesn't know what to do to help me with that loss of the connection. She said she needed some help with that, and could I help her? I should have said I needed weekly sessions, but with her previous comment about 200 people on her cancellation/waiting list, I feel like that isn't going to happen. I know I should ask anyway, but I was pretty down yesterday. She asked me if I feel joy in anything in life. I told her no. I was looking down, but could see her slightly shaking her head in discouragement.
She asked me to tell her where she had let me down or disappointed me. Had I not been sitting there in her presence I could have come up with quite a list, as I seem to have a big tendency to magnify all her shortcomings. I did manage to tell her one big thing; that when I have brought things up with her in writing that she never addresses the stuff in the letters, and that last session she said it was because I said I didn't want to discuss that stuff. I told her I don't remember saying that and that I bring that stuff up because it's important to me to discuss it, but that I feel like she doesn't want to. I told her I feel like that's because she is uncomfortable with my stuff. She said she is uncomfortable because I am uncomfortable. She said when she has tried to talk about stuff in the letters that it is painfully difficult for me. She's right. It is. I asked her how my discomfort could make her uncomfortable. She said because she feels helpless about my hopelessness. That she feels like everything she offers me in the way of suggestions or ideas are always shot down because I have already tried that, or don't think it will work. She said I am so negative. I am. She also said she is sad that I am so down on myself and can't see the positive. She told me I am really talented and named a few things, which I don't remember, and said that I just don't believe her or see those things myself. I think she is getting pretty discouraged with me because medication hasn't helped me at all yet (and I've been trying different stuff for almost 2 years now), and I can't seem to get myself into a more positive frame of mind.
She said I have really high expectations of myself. I told her I don't think they're high enough. She said she thinks I am a better mother and wife than I think I am. She also said she can't meet all of my expectations of her, and that she oftentimes doesn't even know what I expect of her and wishes I would tell her. She's told me before that she has "inklings" of what my expectations and needs are, but she wan't totally sure. I managed to force myself to ask her what she thinks I expect of her. This is where I wish I had had some courage to be confronting. She said that I expect contact from her outside of therapy sessions, and that she can't do that. She said she gets to work in the morning and usually has a lot to deal with. Yeah, I can see that with 200 people on a cancellation/waiting list! She said she just can't give me the contact with her that I want. She also said that she thinks I am searching for a relationship that can meet the emotional needs that weren't met by my mother as a child. She said she can't give me everything I want. That if she did it would take our relationship to a friendship level, and that wouldn't be therapeutic or helpful for me. She said she wishes I could accept the very genuine and heartfelt deep care that she has for me; that she cares about me a lot. I told her thanks. That felt so good to hear, but I just was so shut down because of all of this I don't know that I really took it in like she hoped I would. I was pretty upset with her telling me about how she can't meet my expectations of contact outside of sessions. She is the one that started those check-in calls last year. I never asked her for them, never mentioned that I needed more contact from her. She initiated it, but seemed yesterday to be saying that I expect it from her. Well yeah, when you offer something and you do it consistently for long enough, it becomes expected that it's going to continue. When she stopped the phone calls in December I felt pretty abandoned by her. I hoped that things had been messed up from the Christmas holiday and that she would get back to calling me, but she never did. I wish she would have been open with me about why she had stopped those calls, rather than just dropping them cold-turkey. I do have some rational side of me that can understand that she just felt burdened by feeling like she had to call me, even though she is really busy.
I feel pretty discouraged right now. I feel like my T really cares about me, but that she is stuck because I am stuck at rock bottom. She wants to go back to schema therapy with me in an attempt to focus on other things beside the attachment and the pain it is causing me (us). I can see value in what she wants me to work on, but don't know if I can actually pull myself away from the worries and concerns I have about my relationship with my T. There's so much that is unresolved. And now I feel like if I bring anything up with her, she's going to be defensive. She told me she wants me to keep letting her know when things aren't okay between us, and I know I should give her the benefit of the doubt that she is being honest in telling me that, but it's almost scary. I don't want her to feel like she really is helpless to help me but I feel like she's kind of already there. And if I point out more ways that she has disappointed me it's just going to send her into further withdrawal from me. I really think she is afraid that her shortcomings are harming me, and she's afraid that she will never be 'good enough' for me. She finally admitted to me yesterday (because I told her I'd rather hear it straight than never hear anything about it) that she is uncomfortable with me idealizing her, because she said that's not her (the idealized image I have of her). She has imperfections and flaws and things she needs to work on herself. So I feel like my admiration of her and who she is is something she thinks is not okay because none of it's true.
I know she's imperfect. You all can attest to that! I guess I just have impossible expectations of her because I think so highly of her or something.
I have so many other things I journaled about yesterday, and maybe I'll add more later, but I'm so tired and drained from my session yesterday that I need to go take a nap. I wish I could gain some clarity about all of this. Today I have just wanted to call my T and tell her that I feel like she really would be better off if I just found a different T, because I don't want to be the patient that burns her out. Her care for me (and her worry that she is harming me) feels like it's causing her more stress than it's worth.
MTF
Bad timing, T!! She tells me she's sorry it took her so long to get back to me. She was in a session when I called, and then she got a phone call about a death in the family. 
She said that the secretary had asked her after lunch if I had called to take the appointment and when T told her no, she said, "She's probably gone for the holiday weekend." (Independence Day here in the States) So my T agrees with her, instead of calling me a second time on my home phone, or even my cell phone again, and tells her to give it to someone else. This was at 2:00, and I called an hour too late. I'm thinking that if she offered me the appointment and told me she would hold it for me until she heard from me, she would at least wait until closer to the end of the day before deciding to write me off. 
