Firstly want to say I’m REALLY sorry I haven’t been replying to all the threads that I’d like to (and there are so many) - can I give everyone a big supportive hug for now and tell you I’m thinking of you all and sending lots of good wishes from lurkdomland.

Wanted to give an update on the continuing saga of LL and the forty Ts. (Well ok it’s ‘only’ been 25 to date but I’m allowed a little poetic licence.)

Right now I’m feeling ok (as ok as it’s possible to feel given the crap in my head) so the latest on what went on between me and psychoT is more like just a bad memory at the moment.

It went like this: was having big problems trying to decide whether the work I was doing with psychoT (called that because he works psychoanalytically) was actually helping me, because seeing him was plunging me into a lot of very intense black stuff that started to feel quite dangerous to me. I seemed to be spending all my sessions trying to work out why he wasn’t doing any of the things I anticipated that a psychoanalyst would do, and therefore really unsure that the way I was seeing him wasn’t maybe a whole lot more to do with the image I had of his being a good T rather than the fact that he actually was a good (or even competent) T.

At one point when I talked to him about how dangerous it was getting for me, he suggested that I take a break - (I wrote about this in another thread). I seemed to be doing nothing in sessions except feel angry and frustrated at him for not being there, for not seeming remotely interested in anything I was saying, and for constantly talk talk talking all the time instead of hearing what I was trying to say. And was feeling like I was having to deal with all my feelings and fears entirely on my own with no understanding or even concern on his part.

Mostly I hated it, hated the long drive there, hated his coldness and the way he quoted big chunks of text book stuff at me instead of responding to what I was saying. But a big part of me realized that all this needing and fighting and demanding and criticizing that I seemed to be doing all the time WAS the therapy and that the thing that really got to me was the fact that he seemed to take it all - finally here was someone who not only put up with all this negative resentful critical stuff that I came out with, but even told me that that was what I needed to do, that the work actually did involve going with whatever was coming up for me in the moment and if that meant endlessly moaning about the long drive there, or constantly confronting him about not giving me what I was asking for, so be it. And he had been insistent that the basis of the therapy centred on what was going on between him and me (transference). So I felt safe being able to criticize and complain and pull him up on what I thought were things he wasn’t doing ‘right’ - safe in the knowledge that he wouldn’t take it personally, that he’d see it was all part of my own internal set up. I was getting to the point where I felt sure enough of him to not only accept he was there for me, but that I actually wanted to keep going further with him into expressing the bad me - it was starting to feel SO good believing I could be accepted for just being me.

So I’d come away from a session feeling yes finally I think I’ve found the right T, and the right ‘method’ that was going to let me express all the crap and bad stuff that I’ve been desperate to have heard and ok’ed. At the same time I was very aware that because his method was totally unemotional and his stance one of cold unconcern, I ran a big risk of pushing myself over the edge and having to deal with the fallout entirely on my own.

I decided to take him up on his suggestion of having a break - so I could go and see a humanistic T (gestalt/psychodynamic) whom I’d already seen once when I thought I was going to quit with psychoT after the changing chairs session (also rabbited on about this in another thread.) Because psychoT was (seemingly) giving me something I did need - the sense of acceptance of my negative feelings and demands - I was getting emotionally hooked on him, but at the same time felt I needed to try and find a T who would be more emotionally available to me because it was really scaring me knowing that if I went into the pain that is behind all my anger, I’d be having to deal with it without any emotional support.

So we agreed an open-ended break and I said I would probably be back within a week (though I didn’t tell him I was going to be seeing another T) and I left feeling like I really really didn’t want to take a break from him at all, but that in order to really commit to working with him I needed to get a perspective on whether I could deal with the stuff that would be coming up for me without having any emotional support from him. And I had become much clearer about one of the prime things I needed from a T - to be free and safe to get angry AT a T and know that that was ok - and I thought that a gestalt/psychodynamic T would not only be able to handle that easily but would provide the emotional support missing with psychoT.

Ugh this is getting long, and boring, sorry. I saw gestalt T for three sessions and got progressively angrier and angrier at her because amongst other things she flatly refused to ‘allow’ me to get angry at her - fine to feel angry about anything and anyone else, but not about her. Lots of other reasons I didn’t like her but that’s another story. And I’d realized anyway even before seeing her again that really I just wanted to stay with psychoT - that what he was giving and the way he kept himself out of the sessions was exactly what I needed.

Bleh. So there I was totally committed now to psychoT and naively assuming I could just walk back into sessions a week later. Hahahahahaha boy I should have known. LL’s law reigns supreme. Even before I phoned him to leave a message asking if I could come back, I was getting these really bad feelings about his not wanting me back. I put it down to my own paranoia. So I left a message and didn’t hear back from him. Left another message two days later and still didn’t hear back from him. You can guess at the way I was feeling - went all the way from outrage to black fear and back again. The sheer intolerable state of utter powerlessness... and that inner certainty that I wasn’t going to hear back from him. And the fact that emotionally I’d committed to him, had let myself experience getting something I desperately needed and was like - I NEED to be with this guy, I’m desperate to be back with him - and he wasn’t responding.

So I phoned up another T whom I’d already contacted at the same time as I was first getting in touch with psychoT (she had been going on holiday and I ended up seeing psychoT in that time so I never got back to her) and made an appointment - luckily! - for the next day. That first session went really well and I drove home feeling a whole lot better than I had done for weeks - and there in the letterbox was a letter...

Wow did I flip out. Even now that I’m feeling ok the memory of how that letter floored me makes me want to run away and hide - it was just horrible. It was from psychoT and it was just two short paragraphs and I’m going to quote the sentences which made me re-experience in the space of a few minutes all the rejections and abandonments and judgements of me-as-bad-and-unacceptable of my entire life.

He started by thanking me for my message. Then says:

quote:

I know it is only just over a week since you ended our work, but I am afraid that I currently do not have any spaces available. Nor can I see any becoming available for some months.

In between trying to keep breathing because of the sheer force of the feelings that hit me when I read those sentences, I was absolutely furious that he’d resorted to lying about his reasons for not taking me back. I was caught between two totally opposite sets of feelings and it was really spinning me out big time.

The second paragraph in the letter was giving me a website address and telling me to see if I can’t find the name of a psychoanalyst in my area. And that was it. And that was the end of me for a while.

I was so devastated - old patterns old feelings old fears and beliefs all coming home to roost. And all my fault, of course, because I’d been so negative and critical and demanding blah blah and of course that’s not acceptable and of course he didn’t want me and was pleased to be able to get rid of me and it gave the lie to the trust and faith that I was placing in him and made me re-experience all over again how could I possibly believe that anyone could tolerate me I am so bad. Given my track record with Ts it gets a bit difficult for me to maintain any sense that it’s not something terribly wrong with me that I can’t seem to find or keep a T.

Later I realized that I was glad that he’d come up with this pathetic and obviously untrue excuse and glad that he hadn’t given me the usual cop out spiel about ‘not being able to help me’ (read ‘doesn’t want to’ rather than ‘can’t’), because this way he’s shown me exactly the kind of person he really is - weak, cowardly, dishonest and basically, a lousy T.

I still know it was my fault, and it’s really knocked me back in terms of believing that a T can take my negative feelings. At the same time, and this is why I can feel relatively ok about it all - I’m glad I gave him the chance to show what he was really like, that he couldn’t be trusted at all - and I now know that my fears were totally founded - that had I continued working with him sooner or later his cowardice and inconsistency would have done some serious damage - really bad damage because I would have continued getting more and more emotionally committed, to a fantasy image of a good T that existed only in my head.

I’m also feeling ok because the new T I went to see, whom I’ve seen twice more since, is fantastic. And that’s not something I’ve ever said before lol. So I’m feeling pretty confident that I can finally get down to doing some serious therapy with a lovely woman, and for that I have to thank this jerk of a psychoT for giving me the boot because if he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have found her and I’d still be going through hell trying to make sense of the therapy with him.

So sorry for this post being SO long - when I was really going down during the last few weeks I just couldn’t post at all, and now that I’m able to post again I don’t feel anywhere near as bad about things, so really this is more of an update to let you guys know what’s been going on.

Lol also I thought it would make a nice change for me to post that I’ve found a therapist I really like - after all the dramas and complaints I’ve posted about all my other Ts. (Shh touch wood, I’m so freaked out by Ts not working that I’m really terrified this T will send me away too - so I had better not take anything for granted

Thanks for bearing with my posting such a tediously long message.

LL