That´s right RabbitEars, „new T“ will not be available for much longer, he was just supposed to be working with me until last December but has extended the time until I find someone new. Since December he has been working in a children's mental ward and I meet him there. I knew from the beginning that he was just going to be working with me for a short time.
And what about „old T“? you are not nosy Rabbit Ears, thank you for asking
I was deeply attached to dear old T, but then something went wrong and I felt I couldn´t see her any-more.
Here is an old post I wrote exactly one year ago
„Hi all
As many of you know I did therapy with old T for 4 years. In the beginning of that therapy (fall 2007) I could not trust her. For months I did not make any progress. I came to my appointments did not know what to say and had often self harmed in between sessions, even took overdose of pills before one session so she had to send me straight to the ER.
In time I learned to trust her. I felt that she was there for me, no matter what. And now I admire her perseverance for continuing with my therapy at that time.
When I finally felt I could really trust her, there came transference. I had dealt with transference before. The first time with my teacher when I was 13, then a mental nurse at women-shelter when I was 25 and later a minor transference with my family doctor. Usually I have transference for a long time . In fact I have been transferencing for 16 years of 26 since I was 13.
But this time it was different, I decided that I had to tell T that I was transferencing. With the 3 other people I had kept it a secret.
But dear T and I could not really work with the transference. We hardly ever talked about it. I tried to understand it and wrote about it in my e-mails to her, but she didn´t seem comfortable talking about it. The only thing she said about it was;"Are you making any progress un-attaching to me?"
Despite that, I feel I made a really good progress in therapy since I began trusting her. I had been a very active self-harmer, now it happened very seldom, I also had been an inpatient for many and long times, now I almost never went to the psych-ward(except for sometimes during T´s summer-, Christmas-, Easter-breaks). I was feeling better
I think it was a huge milestone in my therapy when a psychologist from my DBT-group talked about acceptance and not judge. She said that we should stop fighting...stop saying “I should not feel like that”. I asked “should you just accept anything?, should I just accept the fact that I was transferencing with my T, should I stop judging it as something bad? Should I stop the fight I had been in for 16 years of the last 26? “Yes” she said.
It was like she had waved the magic wand…
I could not see it at the time but now I can feel what a big transformation this new information made on my thinking. It was hard to accept the fact that I loved T. I knew it was not like a grown-ups love, more like a baby that loves it´s mum. All of a sudden I could feel my inner child. I played lullabies for this little girl at nights (Miracle by Celine Dion was her favourite), I imagined that T was my mother, that some grown-up was taking care of me, something I didn´t experience in my childhood. In my fantasy she hugged me, rocked me and protected me. I felt safe.
It felt wonderful, I had never felt this kind of thing before in my life. I told dear T about how great I felt and I told her it was like this empty hole in my heart was filled.
She was glad for me, but it felt like something was missing… she was not completely there for me… that felt strange… and somewhere in the midst of all… I began feeling bad as well. I couldn´t disappoint T and tell her I also felt bad, and to me it seemed like she wasn´t feeling well. She often had migraine, she was distant, I knew in her personal life she had lost a very close friend. So I kept those bad feelings to myself, I didn´t know why I felt bad, I just felt bad and wrote about it many times in my diary.
Weeks later I was still feeling bad and I said to myself ; “Little me, this is not how therapy works, you have to tell T you are also feeling bad, it´s not all good”.
I decided I had to tell her. I said; ”T, I feel really bad, I can´t sleep or eat, and have to take a lot of painkillers to get through the day and I don´t know why I feel this bad”.
But unfortunately when I did she had one of her migraines, she didn´t think straight and just talked like some DBT- textbook.
She said; You have been through worse, you don´t have to know why you feel bad, you don´t have to analyse everything, Feelings don´t last forever, this feeling will go away eventually”
Those words made me feel terrible. My head was spinning… I was getting out of control, I couldn´t think straight. I tried to shut everything out, didn´t want my feelings to control my head, felt the tears trying to burst out my eyes, but I didn’t want to cry. She had hurt me so much and I didn´t want her to see that, I wanted to be strong. I could feel my brain tried to dissociate, and I´m scared of that. So I tried to focus on my breathing… and had to say the word out loud…focus on the breathing. Then she said she had to leave early because she had migraine. I was so hurt and left.
After the session I felt I was so childish. I thought I should understand, she was sick… sometimes people say unreasonable things when they are sick. I thought I should show her the same empathy she had shown to me for 4 years.
But the little child inside me could not understand, she was terribly hurt. … and I told this baby to shut up, you have to show T some empathy, I thought.
My trust towards T decreased, she decided it was best for me to have two weeks between sessions. I felt worse and worse, could not sleep, eat, lost a lot of weight, looked terrible, almost didn´t make it through the day at work. After 3 months I was exhausted, was admitted to the hospital, decided I could not do therapy with dear T any-more, tried suicide, intensive care for 48hours, back to the mental ward. Those days were terrible.
Now I´m working with a new T. He thought it would be in my benefits to try to realize what happened, before and in the “storm” I had with old T. I also miss her a lot. I was glad he wanted to talk about it. He has also said it would be good if we, me and him could schedule an appointment with old T and discuss this. Last weekend I read all my diary from this terrible time, it was difficult, but it made me see what I think really happened.
After reading my diaries I can feel that this was a part of transference… Freud had talked about this… when his patients where transferencing they did asset him feelings and thoughts that were not his own. And they acted to him like those feelings where his. I had read about this before, but at first I did not connect the dots.
I had made old T my mum. And later when I could access my inner child, I acted towards old T like I had done to my real mum. When I was born and through all my childhood, my mum was depressed, maybe because 3 years earlier my grandmother had forced her to give my older sister up for an adoption at birth. My mum and I never attached. I could feel she was in pain, she was not there for me and she was distant. When I was one, she met my stepfather, and he didn´t want me around, he never talked to me and completely ignored me. To survive I must have felt I had to keep everything to myself, never tell anyone if I felt bad.
Same things I did to old T.
And I didn´t realize how much impact it had on me when old T said those poorly thought things to me (“have been through worse, you don´t have to know why you feel bad…”). I just felt I was overreacting, and told myself, don’t be so childish. Maybe I have done that to much, not to listen to that inner child and just want to throw it out the window. I realized that last Tuesday in my DBT-group.
I´m glad new T asked me to look back, and try to figure out what happened between me and old T. It has given me better insight and understanding of myself. „
In June last year new T called old T and asked her if she would meet him and me, talk about what happened and maybe work with me again. She said she wanted to think about it until net fall. In January newT called her again, and then she said yes she would like to try working with me again.
But then I was scared, was this the right thing to do? if she does not want me to attach to her is this the right thing to do.... so I put the whole thing on pause... but now I have to make my decision... I can´t wait forever, I´m not supposed to be seeing newT at the children's ward. Another thing I could do is to try and find someone here in my small country that is willing to work with a patient through transference. I´m not sure there is anyone other than pshycoanalists, and they are very few here and I could not afford seeing one more than 2-3 times a month.... I am scared and confused
Learning to fly; what a cute name
wish I had had the time to learn to fly with old T before the rupture. Welcome back to the site
Closed doors; Thank you for welcoming me, yes it was nice to know newT was thinking about me even when he was doing his groceries.
