Hey orbit, I just wanted to say I saw this post and want to respond, but I don't have time tonight so I will respond tomorrow if you leave it up until then, OK? It was brave to post and I hope you'll get some good support from other people, too.

Hi Orbit...

I read through your entire post. I will respond a little now but where I am it's really late so I hope I make sense.

I understand you are a survivor of childhood abuse and deprivation. You never had a secure attachment as a child. I don't know how much you do understand about attachment and the process of attaching to a T and I don't know how much your T understands either. Through almost all of your post I didn't see any real red flags regarding your T. I do have a question though...when you would email her did you get a consistent email response from her? Was it helpful?

Going through that period of attaching and trying to trust a T can be very intense. It's the hardest part of therapy in my opinion. What you were doing... searching for info on T on the internet and wanting to be near her all the time is called "proximity seeking". Being near to her would regulate your emotions to some degree, although in your case it also seems to make you feel anxious and afraid that she would leave you. Abandonment fears can be VERY strong. When I would tell my T about my fears he would leave me he would ask me to look at our relationship and his behavior and ask if there is any logical reason I would believe this. I couldn't find a real reason or anything to base my fear on and so little by little through years of repetition I have come to believe that he won't leave me (and I am someone who WAS abandoned by a T in a very cruel way). This has been really difficult to achieve.

In your case, I wonder if you have a more obsessive trait to your abandonment fears that would be helped by medication which would then enable you to tolerate the therapy with less anxiety. I am just guessing here. Have you ever had an evaluation by a psychiatrist for meds? I am not a med pusher by any means but they do help a lot of people when prescribed for the right reasons.

I think you did very well by taking the break and then seeing a sort of "consult" T to figure out what has been going on for you in therapy. I am truly sorry your oldT is now saying you should not see her again. She may be afraid that she is harming you more than helping you. That is the only reason I could see for her saying that as she truly seems to care for you. Would it be possible to have a session with both of your T's there?

You know, my current T also talks a lot about my inner kid and how I need to learn to comfort her and to calm her. He understands that a lot of my strong emotional reactions come from that part of me. I strongly resist communicating with that inner child because I dont' like her and like you... it scares me when he says that. I don't like hearing him tell me to talk to the child and comfort her but he tells me that unless I learn to do this... she will control me and make my life very difficult. I have come to believe he does not say these things because he wants to get rid of me or does not want to help me, but he is helping me to heal and grow. And yes, that is scary as hell.

I had an abrupt termination by a T I had been seeing for almost 3 years. It was a cruel abandonment and caused me to have full blown PTSD on top of my child hood trauma. While my story may not be the same as yours it's similar in that I had to learn to work with another T while in VERY bad emotional shape. I was fortunate enough to find my current T who is experienced in working with patients who come from prior failed therapies. He is a saint and my light.

If you want to search through my posts from the period of abandonment ... it began in July of 2010 and I was abandoned on August 12-13, 2010. It has been a long, hard difficult journey but there was light on the other side. I am much better off with this T now and I would not trade him for anything.

I know how you are suffering and I'm sorry I can't help more. I think you need to keep posting here because the support will help you to feel more stable.

Please feel free to ask me anything you need to know.

TN

Hi Orbit, I really appreciate your courage in telling your story and sharing. As I read, I kept thinking 'I do that, I think that, I've wondered that' in response to the things you have shared about your relationship with your T. You are definitely not alone.

There are many times when I wonder if I am obsessed... But then if I allow myself to reason it through, I realise that the need to feel safe and accepted is one of our primary needs and if we can't find that consistently, we are going to be pre-occupied about where that is going to come from next. My T tells me constantly that it takes a long time and is slow, difficult work... I've wanted to give up many times and thought I've lost all perspective.
I am sorry you are in such a difficult place. It sounds as if you are working really hard to look after yourself and I can understand how exhausting that can be. I hope you can start to feel less alone and more supported soon.

As I'm in the middle of all of this, I don't think I can offer any more than to say I understand and relate to much of what you've written. Thank you for sharing.

Hey Orbit!

Firstly let me say I'm glad you wrote all of your feelings and experiences with your T down. It brought tears to my eyes and opened all of my wounds (not that they were ever closed). My story is almost the same as yours - I probably wrote bits and pieces, so maybe that's why you didn't see it, or maybe it is just somewhere amongst the many others. Well my OldT abandoned me without any reason. I also tried to explain the feelings I felt over the months but I couldn't quite tell her because I was so afraid she would leave me. I thought it would scare her away. She was in my thoughts 24/7, you could say she went everywhere with me. She was my first thought in the morning and my last thought in the night. She was the one I wanted to share everything with even though I have a husband. She was everything to me. You taking the bus on the long route reminded me of me taking the long trip around every 4 days to take my kids to their sport. I still look on her sites, I do paintings for her, I write her poetry (I don't give it to her, but I know I've done it for her and nobody else), before I open my eyes in the morning I think of her. I remember words she used, her smile, how she held me, how she touched me. I remember the looks she gave at different times. I remember her kids birthdays and hers too, I send her Christmas, birthday, New Year, Easter etc messages - she has probably blocked them though - still I send them. It's all quite ridiculous, but I loved and still love her more than words can explain. When she left me she sent me a mail with no explanation, just telling me she could no longer treat me, and to date she has never spoken to me and I'm too much of a wreck to ever go and approach her. It was like losing an immediate family member - I have lost immediate family members so I can equate it to that. It's been 10 months and I am nowhere near over her.

I started seeing a new T recently but trust is a huge issue for me as is the possibility that I grow attached again - I'm so scared of that, but at the same time I long for that connection. Then there is the logic that tells me that whatever connection I feel will be one sided because no T will ever love me in the way I need to be loved. It's a mess.

I don't have the answers for you Orbit, but I can tell you this - you're not alone! The hope if there is any is that my feelings although they are still extremely raw are perhaps not as frequently intense - they have their moments, whereas when she initially left me they weren't moments - it was just a constant.

's to you Orbit

B2W

Alright Orbit, so I will tell you what I think about attachment and dependency in therapy, based on what I've learned here and through my own experiences.

For those who have had abuse or neglect in childhood, or sometimes just abandonment or attachment failure (like a parents died or was depressed), it's not that unusual to develop a strong attachment to a therapist or to experience extreme feelings of dependency on a T. This is *particularly* true the more stress and difficulty is going on in your life, otherwise. Just like children tend to get clingy with their parents when they are tired, stressed, in an unfamiliar environment, etc., so those of us with attachments to our T's will feel them more the more our lives are rough at the moment.

Attachment and dependency are not bad things on their own. They are actually healthy to experience in therapy, which is probably why your T was reassuring you at first that it was OK for you to be feeling that. The problem, as you observed, is when it becomes so obsessive or distressing that it can't be tolerated. Then it's almost like doing surgery without anaesthesia in my opinion. That was sort of the situation I had with my old T (although on the surface she referred me because she thought I needed more availability for outside contact that she could give.) I had a lot of stress in my life while I was seeing her, and whenever she would be inconsistent, like not responding to an email, it would make me extremely anxious and upset.

The most important thing to understand is that attachment and dependency aren't all-or-nothing and don't have to be. It's not a choice of being so attached to a T that you can't think about anything else, and having no connection at all. For those of us with certain histories though, this can be very hard to regulate on our own. So it helps to have a T who can help you *manage* the attachment and kind of ease into it more gradually to where it feels OK.

In my view, there are two best ways to modulate a feeling of intense dependence on a T if it becomes difficult to bear. The first is to feel you have tools that you can use on your own to deal with stressors in your life and to regulate your own emotions. Feeling empowered is the opposite of feeling like you desperately need someone to help you. In the end you will be able to both feel empowered and accept support from someone else, but in the beginning they are a good counterbalance to each other. Some T's are better than others at teaching those kind of skills. You can also try to learn some on your own. A good place to start might be to order a DBT skills workbook or a book on stress or anxiety management techniques. There's also the Brain Coaching Program that Shrinklady has put together, although it's a bit pricey.

Aside from learning some tools or skills to use on your own, the other counterbalance to extreme dependency is to have multiple support networks you can draw on. So instead of needing your T all the time, to know you have friends, or a forum like this, or a support group you can also draw on. Some people do really well with being in group therapy at the same time as individual therapy. Other people will see two T's at the same time, for different things (like a normal T and maybe an art or dance movement or body-based T) and that also helps them to manage the attachment.

I have to agree that your former T probably refused to keep seeing you because she felt she was harming you. This is sad and in fact crushing as I understand, but says nothing about how she feels toward you. I know that's cold comfort at this point. But the grief *will* get better going forward. And it's entirely possible that at some point you'll be able to go back for a couple sessions to get closure. But I think it's good to get to a bit of a stronger place before you attempt that.

I hope you'll keep posting here. As you can see, you are not alone with facing these issues.

BLT, TN, B2W and Iris, thank you so much for your replies. It means so much to me that you all took the time to read my novel and write such thoughtful replies. I will reply properly later as I'm heading off into the world for my first day at a new practicum (the timing of all these new things in my life couldn't be worse, really... or maybe it's the melting down that came at the worst time!) But I just really wanted to thank you all for helping me feel less alone in all of this. Your responses gave me a lot to think about.

orbit

Orbit,

I am impressed with your honesty and ability to describe all these painful feelings. My story is similar to TN's as I have been abruptly terminated and have had trouble attaching to new T. I understand all the behaviours you describe although I haven't done them all, some I have and others I think of doing..... What you write seems really normal to me and for people who have gone through what we have.

Up to a point, I thought your T was doing such a great job - she really was giving you great support, beautiful understanding and care and solid ideas for helping you. But as TN said - the thing that was intensely bad for you was your obsession / anxiety about email, contact etc. I think all that came in the way and made things so much harder for you.

I also agree that I think your T is worried that continuing to see you will harm you.

Stick around and write as many posts here OK? You will get a lot of support.
Somedays.

First of all orbit - big hug!

I'd like to echo the above wise words that its natural and expected that strong attachment and dependency feelings arise in therapy when there is a history of neglect/abuse/deprivation.

It sounds like you were able to explore some very painful and vulnerable aspects of your abandonment issues. To then have your T "abandon" you is going to feel excruciatingly hurtful and re-traumatising to the little one inside. I hope her reasons for terminating were based on her concerns that she wasn't able to help you. Given the intensity of your attachment to her, confusion and grief are totally understandable and the idea of trusting another T might seem impossible.

A few pragmatic ideas for you. Perhaps consider a T who is trained in psychodynamic/psychoanalytic therapy who is experienced. When you find someone you're comfortable working with, ask for advanced notice for holidays and for an alternative contact for when they are away.

I've had my degree of obsessing over the 4 years I've been seeing my T. I hope the new medications help you feel a bit more balanced. I can also understand ththat you can feel rejected when your T starts talking about self-nurturing, I get really angry and paranoid when my T does. However there is a grown up in all of us that needs to self-care outside of therapy. The DBT self soothing ideas and support from friends, forums and other contacts is also very valuable. You're not alone orbit there are people who care and understand!

Hi all - I just deleted the details of my story because I found I was so anxious about it all day, I just couldn't handle having it posted publicly. I do still want to talk about it but understand that might be hard to do since the original post is gone. I'm sorry if it makes things confusing.

TN - Thank you so much for support and your clear explanation of how attachment stuff works. I have done a lot of reading on the subject but I don't have a clear enough understanding to be able to explain it to myself or anyone else as clearly as you did. I wanted to clarify that I don't think it was wrong that I did things like google my old T and go past her house on the bus, but the part that was wrong was the obsessive quality it took on at some point, where thoughts of her replaced my real life in a big way. I also really appreciate you letting me know where to look for your posts on your experience in 2010. I am so sorry you went through that. I can only imagine how horrible it must have been With my T, like you, I don't think there were huge red flags in what she was doing. She does have more relaxed boundaries in general, and in hindsight I think I needed more firm boundaries, or, to put it differently, some structure and limits around email and phone contact. My new T agrees that my old T acted ethically, but he thinks that the limitless unconditional love she was offering was almost too much for that part of me that is so desperate for love and nurturing. He said it in a way that sounded better. Hopefully I am making sense.

Iris - Thanks for sharing your own experience with me. It helps so much to know others have felt similarly. I totally agree that to be worrying about finding a steady source to fulfill such an enormous primary need, of course it would take up a lot of our attention. I just wish it hadn't become so distressing for me and that I hadn't got stuck there in that distress. And I wish that my T could give me the long time it takes to work through this. I think part of what I'm struggling with is that I wasn't ready for her to push me to take over nurturing that part of myself or else I would have been able to handle it in small bits, right? And now I've gone from not being ready for small bits to not having any contact at all. Definitely not ready for that either!

B2W - I am sorry to have opened old wounds. I really appreciate that you were willing to share your painful story with me. A lot of your words could have been my own. My T's birthday is this week and I want to send her a note so badly. I'm scared of what she'll say if I do. And I'm more scared that she'll say nothing at all Like you, I find that pretty much everything reminds me of her, something she said, something we talked about, or I see something I know she'd love (and then comes the crushing reminder that I'll never tell her about it, never use that same in-joke or funny phrase that we shared again, etc.). It doesn't help that she and I have very similar interests. The truth is, I'm a pretty lonely person, and aside from all the attachment stuff, seeing and talking to my T so regularly was also a big part of my socializing in the world. I miss that. And sometimes I torture myself with remembering exactly how it felt to be held by her, which is enough to cause me to lose it. Thank you again for your empathy.

BLT - I hadn't really thought about how of course attachment anxiety would be more intense at a time when life was more stressful in general - which really fits with the kind of year I've had, losing several important people, the long term illness of my partner, family drama, changing careers, etc. I know that you are right that with a therapist who understands my attachment stuff and can help me regulate more, therapy could be a very different experience. But boy am I afraid to take a chance and try it again! I actually think my new T might be exactly right in that way. He's really sharp, has lots of experience, and seems very insightful into the dynamic between me and old T in just a few sessions. And I think it helps that I don't like him all that much as a person... I respect him, and like him quite a lot as a T but I know I'd never have the desire to hang out with him or anything! I think your suggestions for how to create a situation where attachment isn't so intense and consuming were really wise. It might sound weird, but I'm actually pretty capable of handling most of life's stresses and would very rarely go to my T for things like that. It was my feelings about HER that were unmanageable. I like your suggestion of spreading out the attachment figures in my real life so I'm not so fixated on my one big huge all important source of support and care. Thanks.

Somedays - Thank you for the support. I'm so sorry that you were another person who went through such a horrible loss. My heart goes out to you. It's kind of funny how I read the forum regularly for more than a year and still felt like nobody has ever felt similar to what I'm going through I think you are right that my T is worried that continuing to see me will harm me. I agree with her, to a point. But knowing that rationally doesn't stop the feelings that she gave up on me, didn't want me any more, that she abandoned me when I needed her the most because I was too much after all, and on and on. And I should clarify that my T didn't leave the door closed completely. She made a comment that was more vague but I took it to mean that she does not think she should be my T to work on this attachment stuff, and if I were ever to come back to see her we'd both need to be sure it wouldn't cause me harm... how either of us could be sure, I don't know. She talked about my therapy with finality, though and even if I could see her again years from now, the loss would feel about the same, I think.

Greeneyes - thank you for your kindness. Your suggestions of what to look for in a new T are really good ones. If I decide to continue with my new T or therapy at all, I will definitely be clear about needing lots of time to work through absences and breaks! At this point I have committed to seeing new T for 2 more sessions and then evaluating whether it's helping or not. I have never been so torn about something as I am about continuing therapy. This experience has hurt me more than I ever could have imagined, my mental health is way worse than it was when I started, I'm functioning way less than when I started, and I just kept getting worse no matter how much I tried to get better. Maybe I just can't do therapy. But part of me does have a little hope that maybe I can figure this all out some day. I just wish it could be with the T I love so much!

Okay, I deleted one novel and wrote another one instead. Thanks again to all that read and replied.

orbit

((((ORBIT)))

I missed your first post and so I can't really say much. Just wanted to say I'm sorry things got so painful and out of control for you.

quote:

but the part that was wrong was the obsessive quality it took on at some point, where thoughts of her replaced my real life in a big way.

It wasn't wrong. It just was. I have had a similar experience with my T. Thoughts of him had replaced my real life. I relied heavily on fantasy as a defense mechanism. I'm still with that T and the obsessiveness has died down.

In order to get what I wanted from my T in real life means that I have to face a lot of unwelcome and unpleasant emotions. I have a lot of obstacles to overcome. It was much easier and safer to want and hope for them from T.

I'm glad you like new T as a T and think he's sharp.

Thanks, Liese.

I am curious what do you think caused the obsessiveness to lessen? Was it your willingness to face the unpleasant emotions? (You are very brave by the way!)

I found that I was able to get my obsessive thoughts about my T under control during the 3 week break from seeing her (because I knew they were a problem, I was motivated to stop obsessing, and I was sure she would still be there to support me through it), but once I knew that things were definitely over then the obsessing came back full force and I'm really struggling again. This is so hard

orbit

Orbit... just a quick comment (no time to write much) but once I was terminated by oldT my obsession with him increased greatly. I could not focus on anything else at all except him and getting back to see him somehow someway. The only thing that helped me was talking and talking my current T to death about what happened. It's 2.5 years later and I'm still talking about what happened but much less and less obsessively than I did in those first 6 months.

TN

((((ORBIT)))

quote:

I am curious what do you think caused the obsessiveness to lessen? Was it your willingness to face the unpleasant emotions?

If I had had to leave my T, I think it would have gotten worse instead of better too. Like you, I have had A LOT of stress in my life for about, at least the last 6 years. This on top of whatever issues I was struggling with already. So part of the obsessiveness was that my life was such a mess. It was easy to believe that T had the answers.

That I'd have to fix my life myself (with T's help, of course) was hard to face. Where I'd rather be and where I am are so far apart that it seemed impossible to get anywhere close to where I'd rather be in this lifetime. The stress is still unbelievable but I think the obsessiveness lessened because I really knew on a deep level that my relationship with my T was solid. It enabled me to let go of the thoughts of him a little and explore the world. It hasn't been easy and I run back to the safety of my mind often. But as time goes on, I'm able to hold onto my connection with him and stay in reality for longer periods of time and retreat less into my mind.

I've only been able to let IN reality as my trust in T grew. The trust in T HAD to be there first before I could start to let reality in. It happened in dribs and drabs. Trust would grow and I'd process some bit of reality. Trust would grow some more and, again, more reality would get processed.

Like TN, the obsessiveness was at its worst when my T was holding me at arm's length. That makes sense when you read about preoccupied attachment. He wasn't comfortable with my dependency. Luckily we were able to work it out and I'm getting the chance to work it all through with him.

BUT, as TN has shown, even though it might be harder to have to do that with another T, it can be done. And I'm sure TN will tell you that there were many days and nights when she didn't believe she'd ever get over OldT and/or trust NewT.



Good luck and keep posting. It helps a lot!

Hi Orbit

You asked Liese what helped her stopping obsessing about her T. I personally have found that facing my inner anguish, despair, grief and anger/ rage and having it accepted and understood by my T helpful in general. However it can lead to a primitive idealisation where we split the all good and all bad aspects of a person. Unfortunately when our T fails us (which is inevitable), the failure is very painful. So for me over time having the experience of my T being empathic and amazing as well as disappointing has helped me develop a more balanced and realistic view of him - he is a human not a god and he is going to make mistakes. The other thing that has helped has been building other relationships in my life and knowing others value me and enjoy my company. Hugs to you

Hi Liese. It sounds like what happened for you was that your life was really difficult and escaping into obsessive thoughts about your T helped you get away from the reality of what was happening in "real life." I hadn't really thought about whether there was an escape component to my obsessing about my T, but I think there was. When I think back to the period of time when my T first started doing things like holding me and when I was first expressing that really vulnerable, young part of myself, it felt so good to be nurtured like that, and I would often slip into fantasies/memories about that when life got tough. But I don't think it was always an escape, at least not consciously. Like you experienced, the obsessiveness got worse during times when there was the most distance between my T and I. I think that is part of why it built up so much over the last couple months I saw my T. She was saying more and more that I needed to nurture this part of myself on my own, but I didn't know how to do it, and I felt her pulling back emotionally (possibly because I was asking so much of her? possibly because she was trying to get me to nurture myself more?) and the distance freaked me out. And, like TN, my obsession has gone through the roof since ending with T.

So talking with everybody here has convinced me to hang in there with new T a bit longer, and try to keep working through what happened with old T even though the thought of trusting him or even liking him makes me sick to my stomach.

And like you pointed out, GreenEyes, I need to keep connecting with other people in person and online... even though I want to get in bed and not get out for a year.

Thanks everybody.

orbit

quote:

So talking with everybody here has convinced me to hang in there with new T a bit longer, and try to keep working through what happened with old T even though the thought of trusting him or even liking him makes me sick to my stomach.

Oh Orbit I truly understand this feeling. I could not even come close to imagining that I would EVER like my new T and if you told me 3 years ago that I would come to love him I would say you totally lost your mind! It has been a long tough uphill battle to get to this place but I'm in a much better, safe place now than I was with oldT who did a lot of damage to me. In the beginning with my current T I could not even "see" him. I was terrified of him and could only hear his voice, which I found somewhat comforting. But I hated him because he was not oldT (and I told him too) and I told him I would crawl on broken glass and through fire to get back to oldT if I could.

He never got angry or insulted or punished me for being so hateful towards him. He really understood and just remained steady, consistent and patient with me as we got to know each other and as my horrible story poured out all over his office floor. He never told me to trust him... how could I after what happened. He just kept BEING trustworthy. He told me that I needed to decide for myself that I could trust him and that he would never tell me to. He said I needed to evaluate the evidence of his behavior to decide if he was safe and trustworthy. He told me that our experiences together would build the foundation of our relationship and make it stronger over time and this was necesssary before we could do any real therapeutic work. With trauma patients the building the relationship and the trust is the first step and the most important one.

There were many times I posted on her in despair of ever having a good T relationship again. The hardest times were between October 2010 and August of 2011. There were also many times I wanted to go to bed and pull the covers over my head and never come out again but I had a little boy, a job, a husband and a house and I had to pull myself out of my grief and pain and keep going forward.

A few words about obsessing over your oldT. When you have an attachment figure you naturally want to be with them when life gets scary or difficult. We are biologically wired to search out our attachment figure in times of fear or danger. This is what kept little children alive in the days when wild animals roamed the earth. Even today you will see when little kids get scared they run back to mama. So it would be perfectly normal and healthy for you to want contact with your T. But in developmental terms you would not need that forever. As children develop they need to run back to mama less and less. They learn to be more independent naturally. As teens they begin to individuate from their parents. Those of us who never had secure attachments as children never learned to do this in a correct developmental way. Our development went awry along the line somewhere. And so, we need to do this again now with an attachment figure (a T).

But when the child needs the attachment figure and they reject the child (patient) or are unavailable all the time, then the child clings even more and will first cry out for them, and then become inconsolable and in time if their needs are never attended then they become depressed and lethargic and even waste away and die in some dire situations (I am talking here of orphaned children with no contact with a caregiver).

If a T is not comfortable with the need for contact of a patient and does not understand how attachment works, they end up with an even more clingy client desparate to stay in contact and connected with T. It's a strange paradox that the more a T allows the attachment contact and stays totally unflappable about it, the less the patient gets scared and clingy and the less contact they will seek out because they know that their attachment figure is there for them.

How long were you with your old T? Did she understand attachment theory and was she comfortable with it? There is a fine line between being there and being a consistent stable attachment figure or being getting overly involved and trying to do too much for the patient and wanting to make all the bad stuff go away. Just like parenting can be difficult and tricky.

My T allows email and phone calls (I have to page him) at any reasonable time. But I think if I got excessive with it he would address it and rein it in. His policy is pretty clear and I know what to expect and it does not leave me guessing which does a lot to calm my attachment fears. He is basically being a good parent to me.

I think your strong attachment began to scare your oldT and she could not handle it. Has she been in practice for many years? My T said that attachment in patients can scare a lot of newer T because they don't understand it and think they have done something wrong to have such feelings in the room.

If you feel that this new T is helping in any way I would encourage you to keep seeing him because you will definitely need to spend a lot of time talking about what happened with your other T and coming to terms with that.

Thinking of you
TN

Hi TN, thanks for your thoughts.

I was with my T for about 18 months, and yes she'd been in practice for many years. And we did discuss attachment theory. My latest theory about what happened:

My T had the right idea in allowing me to contact her for reassurance whenever I needed to. She had a message line so I'd leave a message and she'd call back when she could (usually the same day, sometimes the next day) and when I emailed she'd usually reply the same day. But even after 18 months I would still panic each and every time I contacted her, thinking that she was about to get very angry with me for bothering her, and I was sure that if I kept contacting her she would get tired of me and tell me to find a new therapist. I found that fear lessening a bit right before she told me she was going on holidays last summer, but once I found out she'd be away for 3 weeks, all the progress I'd made in trusting that she'd always be there went out the window.

I think the limitlessness of what she was offering me was part of the problem. My new T thinks so too. There was no structure at all to how often I could call, email, or request extra sessions. I tried to tell her that the openness caused me anxiety. It was definitely the first thing that I began to obsess about: I want to call her. Can I call her? Am I allowed to call her? Should I call her? Do I need to call her? Will she get mad if I call her? x infinity. From her point of view, I needed to learn that it was okay to take up space and I needed to experience asking for her reassurance and have her come through consistently, like you said TN. But when that obsessive process took over my life I kept saying to her that something didn't feel right, and I wasn't sure I should keep emailing whenever I wanted to. She took that to mean that I felt I couldn't trust her to reply, which was partly true, but I was trying to tell her I found the obsession distressing.

At one point I told her that I knew I was creating emotional crises every few days in order to justify calling her. I asked if instead of having it be open-ended, could we just agree that I would call her once a week at a prearranged time, for a quick check in so I could be reassured of the connection, but then maybe I could avoid the painful anxiety of freaking out to justify calling her. She didn't seem to get what I was saying and once again said I should just always call or email when I needed to. So I went with it.

My new T thinks that I was trying to ask my old T to put some boundaries in place but she wasn't hearing me, and instead just kept pouring on unlimited nurturing, which was too much.

I don't think my feelings for my T scared her, but I do think she became weary. I was pretty much in a state of crisis for a full year and she kept telling me she was sure it was going to ease up soon but it just kept getting worse as the months wore on. She started pushing me to nurture that little part of myself on my own and no matter how much I said I wasn't able to/wasn't ready, she wouldn't let it go. Whenever she suggested it, my attachment anxiety would increase hugely and even though I was trying really hard, and as a result I would cling to her even more because I was sure she was trying to disengage from me a bit.

In hindsight I wish she had agreed to the once a week phone call I suggested and no other contact. And I wish she had heard me when I said I wasn't ready to be my own attachment figure and not pushed so hard with that.

Oh maybe I'm talking crap. I hope some of this makes sense?

orbit

It makes sense to me, orbit. In fact you could have been describing a lot of what happened between me and oldT. I think I wanted her to put a limit on how often I could contact her, so that I would feel more safe, but she wouldn't do that. This stuff is all a very delicate balance, isn't it?

(((ORBIT)))

You actually sound very wise and like you have a lot of insight into yourself and what you need.

quote:

From her point of view, I needed to learn that it was okay to take up space and I needed to experience asking for her reassurance and have her come through consistently,

I think my T had the same thought at one point but most people suffering from CPTSD actually need transparency and clear boundaries. And by clear boundaries, I don't mean lots of them but the therapist explaining what the boundaries are before we bump into them (ouch) and/or so we don't have that anxiety worrying if we are annoying them or not.

When things aren't clear or transparent, it leaves a lot of space in between for our minds to fill in what it always filled in. The point of therapy is change.

She may have been knowledgeable about attachment but maybe not CPTSD as much? It sounds like she just didn't get it and didn't push herself to get it either. I was with my T for well over 18 months but he didn't refer me like yours did. Instead I suffered for almost 4 years until a crisis caused him to take a better look at himself. He did some reading and changed how he was relating to me and things got so much better. So, as painful as this has been for you, maybe she spared you years of pain. I was too paralyzed to leave him.

I just want to note something about worrying if we are being annoying to our T's. My T has told me more than once that I annoy him MORE by being so worried that I annoyed him (by contacting him or needing him). He said to call if I need to or email and to stop second guessing his boundaries and his offer. He told me to take what he offers and to use it and if I do that things will get easier and I won't be so frantic about the attachment/connection.

The darn guy was right. I have learned that he is much happier if I use what he offers to regulate my emotions and then I don't worry that I'm annoying or a burden because it's obvious that I am not. I am doing what I'm supposed to do. And when I am less worried about annoying him I have more space to do therapy. And I feel good about the relationship.

TN

Yes the balance between being there consistently and being there too much does seem really delicate. I find it all very confusing.

TN, I'm glad that it worked out so well with you and your T. My T used to say similar things about how she wouldn't offer the support if she didn't mean it, and actually if I stopped worrying about whether or not I was bothering her (because it wouldn't ever happen) and just take the support, things would get easier... except that's not what happened, for whatever reason(s). But I am glad to know that it's not just in principle that this does work out well for people.

Liese, you gave me a lot to think about.

quote:

And by clear boundaries, I don't mean lots of them but the therapist explaining what the boundaries are before we bump into them (ouch) and/or so we don't have that anxiety worrying if we are annoying them or not.

Since I read that I've been wondering what would have happened if my T hadn't kept promising unlimited everything. In my anxious obsessing, I did spend most of my time worrying about whether this would finally be the email or phone call that was too much and would cause me to be abandoned by her. You're right that my mind was very busy filling in the unlimited space the same way it always has - by anticipating rejection.

I am so sorry that you went through such pain and confusion for 4 years before your T made some changes. I can't even imagine. There is a realistic part of me that knows that if all of my problems were getting much worse instead of better, and I wasn't being heard when I expressed concerns, then my T was not the right fit for me, so it probably is for the best that everything blew up and I don't see her any more. But the rest of me is just so unbelievably sad and missing my T so much.

I see my new T tomorrow and I am dreading it. All week I just kept comparing him to my old T and hating him for not measuring up.

Thanks for all the input, everybody.

orbit

Hey everybody - I didn't want to post all of this and then disappear after all of your thoughts and support, so I wanted to say I'm still around but not I'm not able to post an update right now. I had a sort of rough T appointment and then fell apart and had a really rough week. I'm doing better now, but feeling really shaky and every time I think about my old T or my new T it all gets triggered again so I'm trying to take a break from thinking about it and just get on with my life a bit. I know others on here are having a bad time too and just wanted to say you're in my thoughts

orbit