Hi SG... thanks for updating us. I'm really happy that you had such a good affirming session. There is nothing better than really being heard after a life time with no voice. I hope this continues for you.

TN

Hi SG,

I'm so so happy that things have worked out for you, for now at least. It is nice to hear such a positive account since I'm meeting the new T on Thursday. I'm anxious and nervous about it, particularly that I'm probably going to start talking about my ex-T and won't be able to stop, or stop crying for that matter.

Anyways, I'm getting off the point which is, you deserve this, you deserve to be heard and to work through the issues with your old T and I'm extremely glad you are being given the opportunity. Keep us posted with the good news, I hope it continues for a long time to come.

Take care,
Mrs. P

Mrs. P,

Thank you, and please let us know how the meeting with the new T goes on Thursday. And of course you need to talk about your old T, and if (I should say when - I've done a lot of crying myself) you need to cry go ahead and do it. I hope she is someone who listens well and gives you the comfort you need.

Peace,
SG

That is such an inspiring post SG. Thank you for posting. It is reassuring to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel (or should I say black hole?)

I laughed when you said about talking like an auctioneer, that was funny. But how true it is about relating to your childhood. Very insightful and helpful. It is great when you learn something and feel so safe, I can't wait til this happens for me too.

Mrs P it is such an extreme grief losing your T, especially when you had no say in it and it wasn't what you wanted. You are going to need to talk about it and work through all of those issues and find healing. And crying is great.

Hi everyone,

Thoughts of my old T are eating me up again and I just wanted to put it out there. This is partly a rehashing of some things I’ve posted before. Basically I’m having guilt feelings about having told the couples T some of the things my old T said to me in session. I think I already “know” the answer, because you’ve already given me plenty of feedback about this situation, but my emotions aren’t listening. And I will definitely bring this up with the new T, to find out what it says about me and what I need to do about it, but that’s not until Monday. So I just need a place to sort this.

What’s eating me up has to do with what I told our couples T after the last session with my old T. I went to her to try and make sense of what he was asking – I asked her the same thing I asked all of you in my first post to the “Long rant – very confused” thread. I assumed she would know what I was talking about when I said we were looking at my feelings about my T to learn more about me. But she seemed confused by this, and her response was that no one in that clinic is trained to do psychoanalysis-based therapy, and that my T is CBT. She said that developing feelings like that for the T is pretty rare, and if I have those feelings, it means something went wrong in the therapy and my T has to transfer me. I responded by saying my T had known about my feelings for quite some time. She looked skeptical, and then I felt defensive, so I repeated some of the things he had said and told her about some of the decisions he had made in order to “prove” it to her. Verbally, she made some weak excuses in response to what I said, but at the end of our session she looked and sounded worried. The most she would say is that it sounded like something strange had happened in our therapy. She was going to talk to my T, and to her review team, and get back to me.

The couple times I talked to her after that, the mask is back on and she’s a brick wall. It’s as if I never told her those things. And at the transfer meeting, my T acted very cold and distant to me, and he looked pale, no smiling (very rare for him). In his summary of our therapy, he made a point of mentioning the things I had told the couples T, but in a very minimizing way, with a roll of the eyes, implying that I had read too much into it. And the end of his summary was inaccurate and dismissive.

In my better moments I am doing okay with this. A T who ends things this way, just because I repeated some things he said to another T, is not a T who is good for me. The patient isn’t bound by confidentiality, right? A patient should be able to repeat anything their T says to another T, and if it’s embarrassing to them, then they shouldn’t have said it, right? I am better off without him. I know this.

But today the guilt is eating me up. I feel like I “betrayed” him. At the time he said these things and made these decisions, I could have taken them one of two ways. I chose to take them the better way, but from the way things turned out, it looks like reality was at least partly the other way. And by “telling” on him, I embarrassed him and hurt his pride. And I will never be forgiven for that. And I know that’s not “my problem” but I am feeling guilty just the same, and wanting his forgiveness.

Probably the best example of this is the pedestal comment, about how he said he wanted his name on the pedestal I had drawn and how he would be my transitional object. This is the only part I told the couples T. What I didn’t tell her is that he was especially warm and friendly the rest of the session, and he also made four separate comments indicating that he was single, each followed by long pause, as if he wanted me to ask about his relationship status. He had not said anything like that before. He made three more comments like that during the next session. I was almost embarrassed for him because it seemed so obvious to me that he wanted me to ask him.

At first I was alarmed by this. I wondered if he was flirting with me, but that didn’t seem likely, because he’s a T, he’s got good boundaries, I’m married…so it can’t be that, right? So I did more reading on transference and found how transference could be useful in getting to the root of the issues buried in the past…which is exactly what I had been wanting to do! And I thought, aha, so that’s what he’s doing. And I thought it was brilliant. I figured that the comments about being single were “tests” to see if transference was happening yet. The only thing I worried about was how to tell him about the reading I’d been doing without making him embarrassed that I’d “caught” him.

When I told him about this a few sessions later, he did get defensive, denying that he’d meant anything by it, that it had only been a joke. Later, he said he knows what he’s doing, and he can’t always describe ahead of time the way therapy is going to go. That worried me again…but then I twisted things again by reinterpreting his reaction this way: Oh, it’s a therapy technique, and “seeing” the technique must ruin the therapy. So I got the idea that it’s my job to cooperate with the technique as if I don’t “see” it. Even though I did.

All of this happened pretty early on in our therapy, so as you can see, it was based on playing a game where only he knew the rules, and I was guessing. So it’s no wonder that it derailed.

So here’s what I want to look at with the new T:
Why didn’t I ask him directly what was going on?
Why did I twist things around so much, instead of listening to my gut?
Why do I feel so guilty for “betraying” him?
Why do I want his “forgiveness”?

After typing this out, I think I see where the guilt is coming from. My initial gut reaction to his behavior during the “pedestal” session was alarm. And it turns out I should have listened to that. But I twisted it into something else, and by doing that, the therapy continued on a shaky foundation and eventually derailed. I feel that it was somehow wrong of me to tell the couples T what he said at that point. Maybe it's because I told her out of a feeling of defensiveness. I can’t quite sort it out yet but it somehow seems unfair to him.

It’s really hard to explain what I’m getting at, but it’s helped just to type this out. I’ll continue this with my new T and I’m sure we’ll get to the bottom of it.

Thanks,
SG

Hi SG,
I know you'll be shocked to hear this from me but you have nothing to feel guilty about. I think you're T behaved inappropriately and in a seductive manner (leading comments about his being a single man ESPECIALLY in the context of the power imbalance of a theraputic relationship should be a no brainer for a T.) My Ts clearest and foremost reaction to my telling him my feelings were to let me know, in a very gentle and caring way, that all and any of my feelings were welcome in his office, that he had the boundaries and nothing would happen. The closest he came to saying anything about himself was much later in the discussion to say that he was flattered, but the point was to let me know that he wasn't put off or offended by my feelings.

I think your T wasn't doing therapy, he was gratifying his own narcissistic needs (I use that in the technical, not perjorative sense) to be loved and admired, not seeing the feelings in the context of YOUR therapy. And then he got caught and totally threw you under the bus. He minimized, scoffed at or dismissed conversations that you had to protect himself from censure and then his supervisor rounded up the wagons in a classic example of "let's tell the patient she got it wrong because we're the experts and she'll believe us and won't sue us."

As for discussing and understanding the techniques, a therapist should welcome that. Half the time I've been dealing with this in therapy, I've been reading the SAME books as my T and we have extensive discussions about the underlying theory. Now, in all fairness, he's told me he doesn't talk to everyone this way but because I'm interested and it helps me to understand, he goes there. And he has also told me that earlier in his career, he might have found me a little threatening, but at this stage in the game, he welcomes knowledge wherever it comes from. I think I may have told you before that he actually read GTOL on my recommendation (and then was upset he didn't get to write it! ) So no apologies for being fully engaged in your own healing and striving to understand how it works. Most Ts would kill for a motivated patient like you; I bet your new T is estatic!

Last but not least, your list of questions. I have a theory, based on my own experience, and the feelings I've uncovered working through my transference. When you experience trauma as a child, especially long term trauma from a caregiver, you're placed in an impossible bind. You are biologically driven to stay close to your attachment figure because you would literally have died without them. A child is NOT capable of taking care of themselves. The theory is that the whole process of attachment is to ensure that the infant and caregiver stay close so the infant gets what they need to survive. It's an absolute imperative that you stay close and it's directly connected to your desire to live which runs very deep and strong. However, the very person you are drawn to is the source of your pain and injury. So how do you tolerate it?

Most children tolerate by using a set of primitive defenses, including splitting, denial, dissassociation and assuming it's their fault so they can keep mom and dad as "good." Your life literally depends on you're not seeing their "badness" so you are not driven away from them. If you look at the list of questions you asked, you were behaving that way to protect yourself. If you didn't ask directly, then you wouldn't have to know anything wrong was going on if you got the wrong answer. You twisted things around and didn't listen to your gut because it is a skill honed in you since infancy because your experience taught you that you needed to do that, to ignore your gut, to survive. You feel guilty for "betraying" him because there is usually an extremely strong imperative in abusive families, usually implanted by the active abuser, that it's not spoken of. My father threatened me with several differnt dire things happening if I let anyone know what was going on (and obviously some of it stuck or you wouldn't have read that post from me earlier in the week). As for the forgiveness. When you live with abusive parents, there's usually no predictability to what will set them off, and it's NEVER their fault. Often, the only way to restore the relationship after a disruption was to apologize even if you weren't at fault, so you could stay close. Someone had to apologize and they weren't going to, so you had only one choice.

So taken in the context of your background, all of these behaviors make perfect sense. It's what you had to do to survive and get what you needed when you were small, when your relationship template was being formed. This is the exact reason that a therapist holds such a weighty responsibility towards his clients, especially the ones who have experienced long term trauma. It is from them that we need to learn the skills, and unlearn our now maladaptive behaviors in order to function in a way that allows us to live fully, have healthy relationships and protect ourselves appropriately.

Which is why I still so badly want to hit your former T. I don't think that's going to change any time soon. I hope some of this makes sense and helps.

And you're NOT talking about it too much. There are scores of people reading this who are relieved to hear that they are not alone in their feelings and who will read the responses you receive and the insight you achieve to understand themselves better. That's the whole point of the forum. No one can listen, if no one talks.

AG

Hi SG,

Thank you for sharing. I really mean it, thank you. You are so inspiring with your honesty and I am so grateful because it does help me to understand my own feelings and emotions.

I have ended with my T, it has been a fortnight since I decided not to go anymore. I have been told repeatedly by doctors, therapists and friends and family to not see him anymore, but he is like a drug to me and I am an addict.

These are some of the things that happened during therapy:

He made a comment about "some men prefer larger women".

He laughed when I told him I would kill myself if I saw my family on a regular basis and asked me if I was joking.

He had my child at his house for a BBQ without me knowing about it.

He disclosed that his wife's ultimate fantasy was being raped (knowing that I had been molested for an extensive period of time).

He offered to meet me at the beachfront after telling me that he only ever saw clients in his office.

He ended abruptly knowing that I was suicidal and gave me no say in the matter and told me it was because I wouldn't look at him during sessions or meet him in his rooms. If he had said that he would only meet me in his rooms then I would have. He is the one who offered to meet at the beach.

When he let me come back to therapy he disclosed at length his feelings of counter transference (after telling me that he would never ever reveal those feelings, no matter what I said or did).

He gave me a seductive "look" but later denied it, then said it might have been inadvertent, and later denied it again.

When I told him that he needed tight boundaries and that every time he broke a boundary I took it as encouragement that I was going to get what I want - he said that he just doesn't think like that, he is not manipulative (and made it all about him).

When I told him that I did not trust him not to end again and that I was constantly terrified of him ending he said that if I stay in my chair and if he stays in his chair then I would be right. I said that makes me think that there is a chance he might get out of his chair and he ignored me.

When I left he stood way over the other side of the room (not his usual way of saying goodbye). I said "look at your standing all the way over there, I am never ever going to jump your bones" I made a joke because I was so hurt that he was scared of me and I felt like he thought I was filth. He just ignored me.

Despite all of the hurtful things that have happened I still want to go back. This is what I do - toxic dysfunctional relationships.

Hi AG,

Your theory makes perfect sense and you make it easy to understand.

When does it become easy to understand in your heart though?

Hi Halo,

I'm glad my post helped you, although reading your account makes me just hurt for you. I'm so glad you're not seeing this "T" anymore. I put that in quotes because I'm not sure why this person would even call themselves a therapist. He treated you horribly, was purposely abusive and cruel to you. Good riddance. Please do not ever go back to him. I hope you are meeting with an ethical therapist now who can help you understand why you feel the longing to go back, and where that's really coming from. I agree with you that AG's explanation was fantastic. Maybe you could take it with you to your next appointment and show it to your T, maybe it will help steer things in the right direction for you. I wish you all the best and look forward to hearing more from you.

Hugs,
SG

Hi AG,

Thank you for explaining the dynamics behind the guilt. You are always so thoughtful and thorough, addressing each detail specifically, and I want you to know I always go back and reread your replies many times. Last night I was feeling really bad about this, going back into that dark place where I just curl up into myself. I imagine how much he must hate me, that I deserve to be hated, and wish I could go back and make things right (by the way this is exactly what I do with the ex-BF too) After reading your response I am doing better. But I am definitely going to take your explanation with me to my next appointment.

I agree with Halo, your explanation makes so much sense. But her next question really gets to the "heart" of the matter, as it were. When I first started therapy I asked for hypnotherapy, electric shock therapy, lobotomy...in other words, I wanted to get at what I couldn't get at by "knowing" intellectually. I just didn't know how to ask for what I needed until I came here and read the accounts, especially yours. Once again I want to thank you and the others on this board for sharing your experiences so freely. And I love what you said about if no one talks, no one can listen. That is a much better attitude to have about posting, that it might help someone else. And I know that it does help because of how I was helped through my own "lurking" experience.

Halo, in order to get this into our hearts, I'm thinking what we will have to do is get into this with our T's in therapy and do the painful, difficult, chaotic, messy work that AG and others have posted about doing. You are right, it's not enough just to "know" the answer, although it's a very important part that allows us to find someone who can help us in the first place. But ultimately, I think our T's have to help us go back and grieve what we didn't get so we can let it go and not have to live with this longing anymore. I'm not sure, but I think we can use what triggered us in these previous therapy relationships as guideposts to where we need to go with our new T's who are, hopefully, better attuned to us. So that is good news, yes?

Sounds like the work will be hard, but it will be worth it in the end.

SG

Hi HB,

One thing I want to say before I say anything else: I just love how you always end your posts with a punch. This time it's this one: "The problem is most of us will sell our very soul to not have those feelings and so we do." WOW.

Thank you for sharing the experience you had with your first T. I really understand the part about being so "desperate for attention" that I ignore the red flags, or pretend they're geraniums, or whatever. I think that's part of why I'm feeling guilty, too, that somehow I deserve what happened because I wanted the attention. But TN answered that in another wonderful post about not feeling guilty about coming in from the cold when my T had a nice warm fire and some hot chocolate. (Thanks, TN, I'm going to remember that one always )

You are right, it was really awful to have a negative consequence for speaking up. That's why I'm leaning on you folks so hard right now. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't even be wobbling. And I have no urge to hit you for what you said about the possible lesson in all of this. But it's taking me a little while and a lot of rereading to understand this: "if we can see our fear as fear we stand a chance of learning to simply be scared without having to attack ourselves and feel bad in order to get the attention that is actually harming us." So this is kind of like a negative example of the hot chocolate analogy, right? It would be like apologizing for something when I didn't really do anything wrong, just so they would let me back in, knowing that now the hot chocolate is laced with arsenic, but being willing to drink it because some comfort is better than nothing? Sorry if I'm getting carried away with the analogies here, but I do that sometimes.

Yes, it is hard to stay with the abandonment. So if we move into guilt, eventually it will motivate us to "fix" it, which really ends up making things worse. Fortunately I have no intention of making any kind of contact with that clinic ever again - wild horses couldn't drag me, you couldn't pay me enough, etc. - so I am stuck having to deal with the abandonment. And you say that's a good thing...say, where did AG put that HTML slapper?

I'm totally kidding...I just had to throw that in there for fun. Thanks, HB


SG

Hi all.

@ SG: I'm so sorry that you are going through the pain of thinking about your ex-T again and you ex-BF. I kinda feel like we're in this together so I can't have you beating yourself up about missing your ex-T Seriously though, you have no reason whatsoever to feel guilty. You are on the road to working through this complicated stuff with your new and helpful T. I really hope you have some Eureka moments soon and make lots of progress. I also get what you are saying about feeling bad for wanting the attention. I told myself I didn't but I desperately wanted it. I longed for our time together and his attention, any little compliment or hint of care towards me.

@ Halo. I am so so sorry about what you had to go through with this "T" of yours. It sound so confusing, hurtful and unsettling. I really hope you can move on from this. You are so strong to have gotten this far. If I had got such mixed messages, with someone blowing hot and cold I don't think I could have coped. Please keep posting and sharing because you deserve to be heard and hopefully it will help heal some of the pain.

Mrs. P

Thanks, Mrs. P. Tonight's another low spot so your words really help. HB explained staying with the abandonment feelings and that's what I'm in right now again. I hate it. Monday I see the new T again. Last week I felt really good after talking to her, so I just have to keep moving forward. Thank you again for your encouragement...I also feel like we're in this together. You're in my thoughts and prayers.

SG

@HB: Thanks, I like the geranium analogy, too. It captures what I did with the pedestal comment, the denial of what it meant, and all the other little alarms going off along the way. “Oh, look at that, another…um…another geranium! Isn’t it pretty?” I had quite the garden growing in my own mind. And geraniums are pretty, but you know what? They also stink.

@AG: Thank you for explaining why I kept trying to turn red flags into geraniums: “It's what you had to do to survive and get what you needed when you were small, when your relationship template was being formed.” You’ve explained the dynamics behind this many times, but this time, I realized something new. I’ve spent over two decades in a 12-step program where we focus on looking at our character defects, so I just assumed there must be some character defect behind my not wanting to see red flags. That’s maybe what led me to believe that my wanting the attention must somehow be “bad” and there comes the guilty feeling. Seeing it as a “relationship template” that badly needs to be recast, frees me from the guilty feeling, at least as long as I can remember that (which isn’t very long right now, but it will come). Thank you for reminding me of this, again. I think I’m finally starting to begin to get ready to get it, a little.

The question still remains as to why I find certain kinds of attention so compelling. I mean, I don’t turn red flags into geraniums for just anyone. My kryptonite is men who are “charming and funny”. It doesn’t even matter much what the guy looks like, as long as he’s got basic personal hygiene down. For example, yesterday I took my daughter to urgent care because her toe is injured. The doctor who treated her is someone we’ve never met before, but as soon as he started talking, I was drawn to him. Why? Because he’s charming and funny, just like my ex-T. I asked him if he’s a family doctor, and he is. We’ve been looking for a new one since our last one left her practice, so now I’ve already decided I want this guy as our family doctor. I am SO sucked in by charming and funny.

One explanation for this is that my first BF was charming and funny. But why was I so drawn to him? Well, I’m a serious introvert by nature. Maybe it’s just that simple. Being around someone charming and funny is such a nice break from myself, but it also means I don’t have to do any work. Maybe it’s just a sign of laziness on my part. So it means I’d better work on my own people skills and my own sense of humor so I don’t become so entranced by (and dependent on?) Mr. Charming and Funny whenever, and wherever, I run into him.

Oh, my T is going to get an earful tomorrow. Thanks, everyone. You are the BEST.

SG

quote:

When does it become easy to understand in your heart though?

Hi Halo, I don't have an easy answer for that one although SG came close (thanks SG!) when she said you have to do the messy chaotic hard work. This is implicit learning, not explicit. If it were explicit you could read my explanation and be like, oh, there you go, all better. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. We have to be with another person and experience something different, over and over again, while they limbicallly pass along their abilities. This DROVE ME CRAZY. One of my chief defenses is to intellectualize. Can I please, please, please stay in my left brain where I can just think and not have to feel!

But I found out that I had a good, very reasonable, reason to feel that way. I experienced intense overwhelming emotions as a child that an adult with good support would have been hard pressed to handle. I was a child, with no resources and no one teaching me how to handle those emotions (one of the primary things your attachment figure provides). I experienced a profound sense of abandonment. Human beings only know themselves in relationship and with no one on the other end, especially as a child, we dissappear. A fear of annihilation and destruction is actually very common in long term trauma victims. So feelings were intensely terrifying. I didn't know what to do with them and it felt like my "self" couldn't survive them. So of course I don't want to go near them.

So healing has been a series of difficult scary staying with my feelings in my Ts presence while he contained me, and showed me that he wasn't scared of my emotions so I didn't have to be. And as I've experienced my feelings I've been able to make more sense of myself and why I do what I do which has in turn led to more of a sense of acceptance. But it was a long slow process and was often extremely terrifying and difficult. My T once told me that he's seen me as scared as he thinks its possible for a human being to be. But something happened. Each time I faced that fear, and something good came out of it, the fear lessened just a little. Until eventually wihtout really being able to explain how I learned it, I can let the feelings come and I can handle them. But it takes a lot of a different kind of experience.

I'm sorry for how your "therapist" behaved. I really think that he wasn't actually doing therapy, because there were too many of his needs intruding on the relationship. The therapy relationship needs to be all about your needs, much like it should have been all about our needs with our parents. When it's not, you're only repeating what you've had happen so often before to your detriment. You need to find a trustworthy T who will hold clear boundaries so you have a safe place to face this stuff.

But I will tell you that I know that healing is possible. That the end of the story is not being trapped in fear, doubt and darkness. We are not meant to live that way and you don't have to. I hope some of this helps.

SG,
Turning red flags into red geraniums? ROFLMAO!! How very perfect!

And please let us know how it goes tomorrow, I'm having good vibes from this new T!

HB,

quote:

It is bizarre how strong the craving for poison is even when we know it is poison and believe me i have endless problems with this exact thing in my own life and struggle endlessly to do what i am suggesting.

Just had to throw in one of my odd facts. They have done research on rats and studies on human beings that show that a rat or human exposed to long term trauma when young will take the more painful of two choices IF it's also more familiar. Because your primitive hindbrain seeks familarity because although it's painful, you know what to do with it. So we honestly have trouble "seeing" the more healthy alternatives. So, honestly, the feeling you described makes absolute sense. It sucks, but it makes sense.

I ran into this when I realized that moving closer to my T but keeping intact boundaries was profoundly uncomfortable because it was so unfamiliar. So I kept trying to either move away (into abandonment) or change it into a sexual relationship (abusive) so that I would be in familiar territory. So here I was experiencing one of the safest, deepest, most connected relationships I've ever had and all I was trying to do was go back to the badness I knew. Can anyone say irony?

AG

Hi AG, thank you for your reply. I have been reading through your posts and I do believe you when you say that healing is possible.

I am terrified of feeling the emotions in a safe environment because how do you cope when you leave and go home and have to function until the next session? If I let out a tiny bit even I fall apart beyond belief. Maybe it was because my T never ever made me feel safe?

I totally get what you are saying about the rat study and choosing what is familiar. The relationship with my T definitely mirrors the relationship with my family. Extremely dysfunctional and abusive.

Mrs P, thank you for your kind words, I love reading your posts, you are very insightful.

Hi everyone.

I wanna start off by saying we have a seriously intelligent bunch of people one this forum! Just reading through the posts on this topic has shed some light on many of my difficulties! And all embellished with some wonderful metaphors

Halo: I think it is very likely that your current fear of opening yourself up has been worsened by your T. The root of all the dread? Perhaps not the root but whatever trust you began to build up when you started therapy must have been thrown out the window when you were dealing with someone so unpredictable. He seemed to punish you for being honest and brave a lot of the time rather than encouraging you. So it's perfectly natural to feel how you are. However, IMHO you did not choose the abusive relationship with your T. It happened due to his lack of boundaries and lack of professionalism and compassion. From what I have read I don't see how you were complicit in the abuse or lack of trust. So please don't think that you're the problem in this. I think you deserve much much better and you should strive to get that with another T. Believe me, there are some wonderful Ts out there-I had one. He kept the boundaries rigid and while I did not push him I would have liked if he had broken them down. However, I know in my heart that he did the right thing, that he cared for me so much that he kept his feelings almost entirely out of our sessions together so that he could give me everything. What love, what care I was lucky to work with someone like him. I can only hope that you get the same kind of care and support.

I also know what you mean about the "after therapy" time where you're not cushioned by the walls of your Ts office and their supportive words (if you are so lucky). It is one thing that I think of quite a lot before entering my session every week....this is great but I'm going to be in bits afterwards with nowhere to go for help. In that sense I think I try to get the most I can out of each session and try to work through it in the time before the next session. It can be incredibly hard though. I have only scratched the surface with my new T and it feels quite frustrating.

AG: When you describe the fear that you faced in your work with your T I can only reiterate how much I admire your strength and courage. I feel like it puts things into perspective for me and gives me inspiration to face my own fears and discomfort. That's for sharing about the rat study, I am always interested in the sciency side of things, particularly when it's to do with the fundamentals of animal instincts.

SG: Every session is like a trigger. I won't bore you here with the details of my session, I'll post it in the other thread. But I miss my "kind and protective" T too. I so have a kryptonite as well I do the same thing of falling for any guy who shows some care, warmth or compassion towards people and I'm a sucker for a protective male in my life. That's why my old T was so addictive. I felt very safe with him.It's so irritating as it seems to override your rational senses so regardless of how little you know about the person or their interests or personality, once they tick boxes x and y then that's it, they're perfect.

Mrs. P

Hi everyone,

Yesterday’s session was good. I thought I would talk more about what happened with the ex-T, but instead ended up talking about what happened with the ex-BF and my parents. She keeps pointing out that I was not cared for, that I was used and abandoned by all three. And she told me again that this is a safe space to feel and to be cared for.

Now if I could just remember how to feel. In this safe space it is glaring how shut down I am. It is very weird. AG, you hit the nail on the head:

quote:

One of my chief defenses is to intellectualize. Can I please, please, please stay in my left brain where I can just think and not have to feel!

I thought if I had a safe space it would all just come out. Funny thing is, I suddenly feel emotionally constipated. What is the deal? I told her I spent the better part of 2008 sobbing over the ex-BF, rocking myself back and forth...maybe “keening” would be a better word. It is the weirdest crying I’ve ever done and it kind of scared me. It was all done in private...I spent a LOT of 2008 in the bathroom. But now, in front of someone else who's paying attention...nothing. Does that mean I’m done?

I asked her, do I need to learn how to go back and feel these things? She said she is sure that we’ll go wherever we need to go, but that one thing I need to remember, is to relax. We’re not on a time table and we can get messy if we need to. She said that before. Must be important.

And that is another one of my chief defenses: Can I please, please, do it “right” and be “good”?
(I still want that emoticon with angel wings and halo )

Cheers,
SG

quote:

But now, in front of someone else who's paying attention...nothing. Does that mean I’m done?

SG, ROFLMAO! Nice try.

I went through this and like you I spent a lot of time in bathrooms crying. My other favorite place is in the car on the way back and forth to work. Only time I can be sure of being alone. As I worked with my T it was a real shock to understand how emotionally shut down I was as I came across like such an emotional person. But when I started to try and stay and experience and even worse express my emotions it was very difficult to do in the presense of my T.

As we worked through it, I realized as a child I never got a good reaction to my feelings. I was either chastised for them or they were ignored. It was never about my feelings and having them at the wrong time could get me in a lot of trouble. So I learned that the only time it was safe to have feelings was when I was alone. The lessons stuck really well.

This became evident when I was planning on going alone to a couples session on Wednesday night because my husband had to work and I was not in a good place alhtough I was also scheduled for an individual session the following Tuesday. My T called me at the office and asked if I could move the appt to Thurs night because he had a conflict. I realized I had a hair appt (which I had already rescheduled from Wed night to accomodate the session) so I told him that was fine, I'd just see him next Tuesday. My T was being careful and checked to make sure I was ok and I assured him I was and honestly thought I was. We said goodbye, I hung up the phone and burst out into hysterical tears. So two minutes later I picked the phone up, left an emergency message and emailed him that my reaction after I got off the phone made me change my mind about coming in. When I saw him and we were discussing what happened, I told him that I didn't lie to him on the phone, I really thought I was fine. He told me he believed me but that it was really difficult for me to know how I'm feeling when I'm around other people. My relationships when I was little were always concentrated on other people's needs not mine, so I had learned to focus on them and ignore my own feelings. So trust me when I say I understand.

But I love your Ts attitude and she's right, it can take time. You have to learn to stay and let the feelings come and it's very scary work because you have to trust her to accept and understand how you're feeling, something all your experience tells you isn't going to happen. But if you continue to do that, after enough time and effort, you'll learn from her how to feel your feelings. For me it was like the a frozen river slowly breaking up until there was actually a flow and my feelings move through me now instead of getting all blocked up. And as I told my T sometimes they're like a lovely little stream meandering through a beautiful flower strewn meadow and sometimes they're like a raging flooded river sweeping everything before it and that's when he heard from me.

I like the sound of this T!

AG

Hi AG,

Sounds like we belong to a strange kind of club...crying in bathrooms, cars...hey, have you ever tried the basement?

So I’m not unique in this, either...it is a relief, again, to know I’m not alone and there are reasons for my behavior. Just like you, when I was a kid my emotions were ignored or I was told not to feel them. One big example is that my mom used to yell at my dad not to comfort me if I was crying because I was just doing it to “get attention.” So I learned to be “good” and not need anything. The resistance to feeling in front of my T feels very familiar, but I’m also seeing it for the first time. Kind of a weird combination.

Thanks for sharing the example of what just happened with your T. I love how you were able to realize so quickly how you really felt, and then you were able to call him back right away and tell him. So often especially in my marriage I do not do this and that’s one big reason why we have problems now. So thank you for the example, it is very helpful to know what it looks like when emotions are “flowing” rather than stuck.

And, speaking of which, I LOVE your frozen river analogy, how it eventually broke up and started to move, and the resulting stream, sometimes a flood, of emotions. I referred to it as emotional constipation, but I like your visual MUCH better.

Thanks, AG!

Hugs,
SG

AG, I want to thank you again for describing the connection between how your emotions were handled (or not handled) by your parents, and how it trained you to shut down. It took a couple of days, but something my 8-year-old daughter said to me just last weekend made me realize that I’m passing down the same legacy to her. And I’m really, really ashamed of this. But I’m also grateful that I might still have the chance to turn this around.

My 8-year-old is a lot like me in many ways, except for one: she is very extroverted, in that she gets “energized” by being around other people. I am the opposite, in that my energy gets restored by being alone. She also talks more than anyone I’ve ever met. She literally verbalizes ALL her thoughts and feelings. This is very challenging to me as an introvert because being around other people generally runs my batteries down, partly depending on how many people there are, and how much they talk. It also depends on how well I can respond to what they’re saying. Responding to my daughter’s expression of feelings is extremely challenging because, obviously, I don’t handle mine all that well. So if the way I deal with my own feelings is to shut down and feel them only in isolation, you can imagine that my response encourages her to do just that. As I’m writing this, I’m ashamed to say that I’ve wished many times that she would learn the concept of “internal dialogue”. Now I’m thinking, why, so she can learn to stuff her feelings the way I have?

Just last weekend, she was telling me about something upsetting that happened in school. Her teacher is enforcing her classroom rules, and it’s hard for my daughter because she takes it really hard when she gets in trouble. Our conversation started out okay, I listened empathetically (I think), I hugged her and told her it’s hard for me too, when I get in trouble. I asked her if other kids ever get in trouble, and she said they did, but none of them ever seem to get embarrassed. Finally I told her I would meet with her teacher to see if there was anything more that could be done. But then she kept going back and repeating what she’d already said and was getting worked up about it again, and finally I said that for now, we needed to be done with this. And she said to me, Are you saying that I’m not supposed to talk about my feelings? Then she stormed off, and came back a few minutes later with a notebook, saying she was going to write them down. Later I looked and all it said was that “3rd grade was the worst ever.”

It is awful to realize that this is actually one of the better examples I could give you, and I still missed the main point, which would have been teaching her how to cope with her feelings of embarrassment. And I’m much too ashamed to describe in detail how I usually respond. In general, I don’t know how to help her at all, and I’ve responded with exasperation, irritation, and dismissal...exactly those attitudes that hurt me so much coming from my ex-T, and earlier on, my own parents. She is learning the same coping strategy I did and I feel terrible for it. I don’t want her to have to cry in bathrooms, cars, or basements. I want so much to be able to help her while she can still talk about how she feels, so that she doesn’t have to go to therapy someday in order to figure out what she already knew how to do at one time.

I don’t think there’s a worse feeling than knowing I’ve hurt my kids. Especially when it’s the same way I’ve been hurt. I wasn’t even going to have kids because I knew I wouldn’t be a good parent. I know that I’m doing everything I can to turn this around now, and all I can do is keep going, and change my parenting as I’m “re-parented” by my T. That’s an important point to keep in mind, that change doesn’t have to wait until I’m “done” with therapy. It can happen step-by-step. I want to be able to teach my kids how to let their feelings flow like that stream you described, AG. Not frozen, but also not a flood. Did I tell you I love that analogy? Well, I do.

Thank you
SG

SG-I just want to say how brave you are to admit how you feel about your relationship with your daughter. It must have been a very hard thing to do to admit it to yourself, let alone sharing it with those on this forum. You are so strong to try to tackle this and I wish you all the best with it. Recognizing the pattern is the hardest part in my opinion. You shouldn't be ashamed, just try to focus your attention on feeling better and changing the pattern. I know you have it in you. You have so much control right now and you're doing the right thing. If more people had the strength you do there would be a lot less problems for people.

Mrs. P

Hi SG... reading your post has interrupted my own beating myself up for getting angry with my 9 year old who is having many troubles in 4th grade and is feeling a lot of anxiety.. he didn't need me adding to it. So... you are not alone in trying to deal with a challenging child and what makes it even more challenging is our own backgrounds. I could never express my feelings as a child. I would be punished for saying anything after my mother already decided I had done something "bad". I was never allowed to tell my side or explain. So the problems never got fixed or dealt with because my parents had no idea what they were. The legacy is that I have such a hard time getting past the shame to tell my T what is troubling me. And when I am "too" honest and open with him I feel utter panic. I am going against everything I was ever trained to do, which was to shut up and go away.

BUT what I want to say to you is that because you are EVEN THINKING of what you are doing and what effect you are having on your daughter puts you miles ahead of your parents. I believe this is called "mindfulness". Just by that very thing your daughter won't learn to deal the same way you have. And I think it's a great idea for your daughter to write down her emotions (aside from also telling you) because it allows her to think about them and to name them. I have had the hardest time even learning to identify what I am feeling when I'm with my T. I don't even have the words.

So I think you should praise her for "journaling" and tell her it's a good thing but that she is always welcome to share her feelings with you. What we all need to learn and practice is the "repair" part of the relationship. Don't know about you but when I was "in trouble" and got abused for it there was never any repair or discussion about it. There was never any forgiveness. I have just started taking baby steps in learning to forgive people. I forgave my T for something hurtful he did for me and, at my direction, turned it into a session about forgiveness. It was SO hard to even say the words. But it was important enough for me to do because of how I feel about him. So I pushed myself to do it. What my T emphasized about this was that he hoped eventually I could learn to forgive myself too. And stop turning the anger inward.

AG, in her wisdom, recommended a book to me...Parenting from the Inside Out, which talks about parenting with keeping our own attachment histories in mind. That we need to recognize and understand why we do what we do based on our own childhood experiences. I've only read a little of it so far (school keeps me busy) but I think it's interesting and helpful.

BTW, my son also talks non-stop all day and even in his sleep!! Has done this since he's a toddler. I would beg him to be quiet or my head would explode. He cheerfully ignores me and keeps talking. And while I'm fairly extroverted I also need my quiet times to recharge and they get harder to come by.

About the crying... I am either in the bathroom or my car in some deserted parking lot somewhere. When I'm home and upset I have to hold it all inside and hide it and I get so used to doing this that I get numb and then cannot release my emotions even when I'm safe in my T's office. Stuffing my emotions has been life long and not easy to change. Sometimes when I do feel I can release it all I wish I could just drive quickly to my T and let it all come out.

FWIW, I think you are doing very well.

TN

Mrs. P and TN, thank you both for all your encouragement. It means a lot to me to hear you say these things.

TN, I loved what you said about praising my daughter for journaling, but also reminding her that she is always welcome to share her feelings with me. It sounds like something a T would say! And thank you for reminding me that the "repair" part of the relationship is important. Good thing, since there's no such thing as a perfect relationship. It's when we give up on the repairs that we're in trouble. That was something my ex-T said about marriages, too. Back when we first started therapy with him and we were still going as a couple.

Thanks for passing on the book recommendation. I will definitely check it out. Thank you for sharing your own parenting experiences. I hope that your son is feeling better. And I hear what you mean about the timing of therapy sessions regarding letting emotions out. I have also wished I could just go in when the emotions are at the surface. Because I know that's what I need to show someone. But they just don't seem to want to come out on demand.

Take care,
SG

SG,
Sorry I haven't replied sooner, life continues to be interesting around here which right now is manifesting itself as a sinus infection. Reading your post was incredibly timely for me as I had just taken my second daughter to her first therapy appointment. Yes, that's correct, I managed to put both my kids in therapy by the age of 16. I was really struggling not to get on my own case too hard and I read your post and thought "no way, anyone that worried about what kind of mother are is not a bad mother!"
Show me a bad mother and I'll show you a woman confident she's getting it all right!

I know that struggling with our own injuries makes it more difficult to parent our children, but the truth is that by being self-aware and reflective, we can provide what they need. And they don't need perfect parents (thank Heaven, because there's no such thing) but just "good enough" parenting. That means you get it right more often than you get it wrong.

When I was first learning about attachment I asked my T to recommend a book about attachment from a layman's point of view. He recommended "Parenting from the Inside Out" I highly recommend it because it's a very clearly written book (there is some deeper neurobiology in it but its clearly marked in separate skippable sections if that's not your cup of tea.) The book deals with being able to give your children what they need even if you didn't get it, The most important factor in a parent with an insecure attachment providing secure attachment for their children is their ability to self-reflect. You've got that in spades.

And as you heal, it will make things even better for your daughter. I've seen it in my family. You can only do the best you can with what you have, no one can do more than that. And you're working on what you can do to make it better. Practice the same compassion and understanding on yourself that I see you extend all the time to others here.

And last but not least, I know you believe in a loving God. We all stand in need of grace, especially as parents and He will provide what you cannot.

AG

PS Glad you liked the river analogy. I can, for once, claim it for my own, not my Ts!

SG... how are you and your daughter doing? I hope things are going smoother for you. I know how hard it is to do deep therapy and then come home and be "mom" for the rest of the evening. It's a real test of my ability to switch gears and turn off the emotions. My son is doing better, thanks for asking.

TN

Hi TN,

Thanks for asking about how things are going with my daughter. The particular issue I discussed is about the same, she still feels singled out by the teacher when rules are enforced. We discussed it again, more calmly this time, but reasoning with her about the need for rules in the classroom doesn't seem to cut it. So I said, since we can't change the rules, we will need to find a way for her to cope with her feelings of embarrassment at the moment she is corrected by the teacher. She said, "Huh?" and I didn't have more of an answer for her at that point. I've got to get my hands on that book AG recommended - maybe there are some ideas in there. And I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks for understanding how hard it is to switch gears. I'm not real good at it and end up grinding them just as bad as I would on a stick-shift (I never could learn how to drive a clutch ). Although I don't think I'm into "deep" therapy just yet. But the therapy with the new T is going very well. Very different from that with the ex-T. She is doing all the things I kept wanting the ex-T to do, mainly, creating a safe space for me to feel whatever I need to feel, no matter how messy or ugly.

Last Monday, I told her about my grama who died on Sunday morning, and about how the interactions with my mom were going, and then spent the rest of the time talking about what happened with my ex-T because I had been really down about it again. She hasn't really gotten a clear picture yet because I jump around and think I've told her things I haven't, probably because I've been talking about it so much here. She asked me to help her understand what went wrong, so I tried to fill her in on more of the details. Her responses are very affirming, that some of the things he said were inappropriate, and that he kept making the therapy about himself and his needs.

But it's the therapy that she's giving me, the space that she's creating in there, that really brings it home and makes me realize that whatever my ex-T was doing, it definitely wasn't therapeutic. I'm seeing much more clearly how he almost always responded to my feelings with defensiveness (fear of what I thought about him), and to my thoughts with dismissiveness (if he didn't agree, then it was tossed aside). And I'm seeing that the negative transference I thought I was having was really me picking up on his negative counter-transference. And I'm so grateful not to be seeing him anymore that the sadness I was feeling about him last week has not returned since Monday. So it is getting better.

As an example of the space she is creating in there, when I was recounting the last session with my ex-T, I got emotional and started to cry. When I went to change the subject, she said not to go so fast, not to be in a hurry, make sure I stayed with that feeling until I was done. I think I still moved on - old habits are hard to break - but it was good to know I can stay if I need to. It's also affirming that I really did understand what I was reading about therapy, and that I wasn't "getting it wrong" or just "getting confused" like the T's at the clinic tried to tell me.

I talk about you and others on this board every session, about all the support you've given me, and how I never would have found her without you. I would have curled up into that corner and never come out, which in my case would have meant going back to drinking or something equally destructive. I was in that much pain before starting therapy, never mind when it derailed. I'm deeply grateful for you and others on this board for your support. I'd never have made it without you.

Good luck tomorrow

Hugs,
SG

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to post here to say "thank you" to everyone for the condolences on my Grama. This year has been a hard one for deaths in the family - first my FIL in May, then my Grampa in June, and now my Grama (his wife, not a different Grama). And my Grama on my dad's side and my Grampa's sister are not in good health, either. A whole generation seems to be disappearing in a short amount of time, and it is sad, and disorienting. So thank you for thinking of me.

SG