This is the next installment in my ongoing saga of my therapy adventures. H/T to Jones for the thread title.

I'm sorry I didn't post about some of this earlier but it was too painful and chaotic in the beginning to talk about and I also knew that you are all so supportive that you would have rushed to reassure me and I just couldn't bear to hear it at the time. It was a little cowardly of me. I'm writing about it now so that I don't present a misleading picture of a perfectly smooth upward journey. Especially since I can be such a mess at times.

So in my last post I talked about feeling really great about handling the sex call on my first apprenticeship shift on the crisis line. Well, I went to training the following Tuesday night (abt 9 days ago now) and at the beginning of the session we were sharing how our apprenticeship shift went. The trainer who was with me on the shift wasn't there, but the two head trainers both felt like I had hung up prematurely, that I should have stayed on the line longer. Don't get me wrong, this was not a harsh condemnation or even close to it. But it felt like this wonderful accomplishment had been yanked away. I then proceeded to mess up the answers to a number of training scenarios and by the end of the training session, I was in a full-blown self-confidence crisis, convinced that I was an idiot for ever thinking I could handle this with my issues.

I had a really bad meltdown (like I haven't had in quite a while and frankly, were hoping were permanently behind me (I should know better!)) and called a really close friend I knew would understand. I was so bad that we both decided I needed to call my T. I ended up on the phone with him an hour later totally hysterical. He calmed me down but the next three days until my session on Friday were miserable (the non-posting period). I was really activated and very fragile, and dealing with an inner critic on a rampage and incredible amounts of shame. I wanted to quit the training but my T did tell me on the phone that night that when you're so terrified you can't breathe, it's not a good time to make major decisions.

I saw my T Friday morning and REALLY didn't want to go. I really just wanted to go hide in cave so no one could see me. But I drove down to his office anyway. Part of all the horrible feelings was being convinced that he was totally fed up with me and tired of hearing it. (Again, feelings I thought I had behind me.) So I'm in the waiting room and the client in front of me (who I know is his first appt of the day) is running over and then I start to hear her laughing really hard. It was really horrible. A combination of jealously that my T had a good relationship with another client and dread that after that he would have to deal with me. I was sitting there in the waiting room struggling to not fall apart and actually considered just leaving a note on my T's door to bill me for the session and leave. I managed to stay. The other client (who let me tell you could have been me) left and just a minute or two later my T opened the door and let me in.

He asked how I was doing and I told him not so good and started crying. Then I told him that it was a REALLY bad week to sit in the waiting room and listen to another client laughing with him. He immediately zeroed in and asked about it and I told him that right now it felt like he was all I had and I hated the thought that he could share this kind of connection with other people. And my fear that he didn't want to see me anyway. He was very kind about it, in that "I can't help having other clients" kind of way. At one point I had my eyes closed and both my hands over my face and my T talked about not wanting to see or be seen and I said "well the fact that I haven't been able to open my eyes yet this session would support that" and he waited a bit and said "you do know I can still see you right?" He told me later he knew he was taking a risk but he felt like he knows me well enough to have risked a gentle poke. He said there was a pause, then I started giggling. It turned into a full laugh and with my face still covered I said to him "was that supposed to make me feel better?"

I was able to talk about feeling like here I was with this huge accomplishment, that I told him about it, I posted about it and felt really proud of myself and then it turned out to be a screwup. That I had chosen to trust something really good and it had been snatched away. That I hated myself for being so stupid as to trust that something good about myself was true. I went on for quite some time in that vein. My T recognized the pattern and said that this went back to my Dad, the choosing to trust and move close only to have it betrayed again and again. So I cried for a very long time. We spent the rest of the session talking about how intense the feelings are and understanding where they come from. And my T recognized my fear about not being welcome and the kind of thoughts that would run through my head. My favorite was when he said I would worry about not being welcome or that he was taking two valium as soon as I left. I interrupted and told him I had always thought it was three. He cracked up which was nice. He talked about our two choices to protect ourselves, perfectionism or never trying anything new because you couldn't know you would do it well. I told him that sounded boring.

By the end, I felt like I had my perspective back. That yes, I may have made a mistake handling the phone call, but that's what it was, a mistake and that's what training is all about. My T was really clear with me about a lot of positive stuff happening and that I wasn't making up all my progress. I was a lot better when I left but really wiped.

The refuel outage and my husband's OT ended the day before and we went away for the weekend. I realized that I had dealt with the "I screwed up crisis" but his help and understanding sent me back to the "I want more than I can have." I was trying to reconnect with my husband (it's always a bit awkward when we haven't seen each other for a month) but I was thinking obsessively about my T. I don't know if anyone else does this, but I was wondering what he was doing, who he was with, was he thinking of me, wanting to be with him. It didn't help that the place we were at would be perfect for his family (it's at a ski resort with an indoor waterpark. Him and his wife ski and the waterpark would have been perfect for his grandkids) and being frustrated that I really couldn't tell him about it. Etc etc adinfinitum ad nauseum. I spent most of the weekend and the beginning of the week trying not to shutdown and close up because I was so tired of being in pain and feeling like "what was I thinking, letting myself feel this way about him?" I actually described it to a friend of mine (who very persistently was NOT letting me crawl into a cave and kept after me until I talked about how I felt. Did I mention she's REALLY patient? ) as trying to hold open a gargage door a few inches off the floor with an automatic opener trying to close it. Got very tiring. My husband and I had a couples appt on Tuesday night but he went to the doctor on Tuesday and it turned out he had walking pnuemonia and the doctor ordered him to stay home the rest of the week, so I ended up going alone to our couples' appt alone. I was pretty shut down and scared and really worried that my T would be disappointed that it was just me and that my husband wwasn't there but I went anyway. Felt like going off to my execution.

My T was amazing as usual. When I went in, I told him about my husband being sick and talked a little about being stressed because the outage was over and now my husband was sick. And then my T looked at me and asked me how I was doing? I told him about feeling like I been trying to hold open a garage door; that I really wanted to close up but had been trying not to. Then I talked to him about how I had felt about the other patient. About hearing her laugh and then when she came out seeing that she had been crying, and how it rubbed my face in the fact that he has close intimate relationships with his other patients. That I hated knowing that. That he opened the door so quickly that it made me wonder how fast he put me out of his mind when I left. That I had thought of him so much over the weekend and wondered what he was doing, and how obsessive it felt and how painful. He was very understanding and even told me that he knew it took a lot of courage to come and express these emotions. I was shut down when I started and then the feelings started coming until I was sobbing pretty bad and my T just kept talking to me all through it. I had talked about knowing that our relationship was real, that I am cared for and loved but not being able to reconcile that with being just another patient. That I was once again in a place where I felt like I couldn't get what I wanted. My T said it made sense if you separated the feelings in time. That moving close to him now, that experiencing loving someone and being loved, evoked these feelings of it not being enough, of not being loved unconditionally. He definitely hit it. That horrible pain that was making me want to shut down and flee therapy was what it had felt like to not feel loved. I cried for a very long time in waves, and my T stayed with me. I have this vivid memory of at one point just saying, in a very young voice "this hurts so much" and my T just said in this very tender voice "I know it hurts." He just let me cry about it until I couldn't cry any more.

At one point I had told him about feeling like he would be disappointed that it was just me. His response was a very nice "really?" in a "why in all heaven's name would you think?" that voice. Near the end of the appt as we were talking about how I had felt, I told him that I realized I not wanted to come so badly because I didn't feel welcome. That I had NEVER felt welcome anywhere. We sat with it, and I finally managed to say to my T "It's really ok I'm here." and he told me "absolutely." I've had this experience before that when I go to really deeply buried intense grief and finally let myself feel it, you come out on the other side (surprised we're still both there!) and I feel clear and at peace and lighter. It's only happened a very few times, but its distinctive when it does and it happened that night. So I just sat there letting myself feel welcome. I don't know how he does it but my T knows the difference between my being quiet because I'm avoiding and being quiet because I'm listening to myself. I finally said to him that I was sitting there feeling what it felt like to feel welcome. Then I said if he actually followed that sentence I would be very scared. I sat for a few more minutes and then something hit me between the eyes. When I have that intense a session I can really "feel" my T and I realized that he didn't feel any different than he always does. And then it hit me that I had always been welcome I had just not been able to feel it. I told him that and it was a great moment. When we hit the end of the session, I looked at him and told him I didn't want to leave. I finally felt welcome there but I wasn't so sure about anywhere else. He very gently told me that's exactly why I needed to leave at the end of the hour, or I wouldn't believe I was welcome anywhere else and that wouldn't be fair to me.

I had my regular appt scheduled for this morning and he asked if I still wanted to keep it and I actually said yes! So I saw him this morning and had an amazing session, the kind that make it all worth it. We had the last training session for the crisis line on Wednesday night and it just so happened that the subject that night was sex calls. So, although it was pretty scary, I brought up what had happened with my call and that I had been bothered about what happened and worried that I hung up on someone who really needed help and what should I have done? It was really good because they made it clear that they could understand where red flags had gone off for me but that staying on the line longer to make sure what was going on would have been good, but that would come with experience. They also told me that the guy was regular caller who had a strange sense of humor and they got how I could have misunderstood it. And that he's already called back several times, so that was a relief. So I was able to get past all the horrible messages from my past and put what happened in perspective. I felt really good about that. As I was leaving I was saying goodbye to the head trainer and thanking her and she held her arms open and said she was a very huggy person and gave me the BEST hug. I LOVE people who can give me hugs! So I left realizing that I was really going to do this. I have two more apprentice shifts then I'll be greenlighted, but I'm not really worried at this point.

I was planning on telling my T about this morning thinking it would take 5 minutes and it turned into a much longer discussion. He was able to talk to me about what had happened and we ended up in this very intense discussion about brain structure and neurobiology (including a hand puppet visual based on Dan Seigal's writing) and at one point he was talking about how you have to process all this raw data coming up from the primitive parts of your brain. That human beings do that by telling a story but if your story is "I suck" you get into trouble. When he said your story is I suck, I TOTALLY lost it. I started laughing so hard I could NOT breathe and had to ask him for a minute. It was so succinct, yet so accurate that it cracked me up.

He was very encouraging about what was going on with the training, that even though I was going to improve with experience, that I possessed the necessary elements to do well. Which was very nice to hear.

Did I mention I was grinning like an idiot for most of the session? I was able to tell him that I was so glad I was able to come back so soon because I was really enjoying feeling welcome. I talked about how moving through that intense grief, especially when I was able to realize it was a memory was so incredible. That while it was extremely painful, there was also a deep sense of relief in being able to FEEL in, in not having to hold it away from me. And the shock of coming out on the other side because I never believed there was one. And when I get there, there was an amazing sense of peace and quiet, and in that place I had a sense of... and I asked him if he had ever seen a stop-motion film of a seed germinating? That the sense of being welcome was like a tender shoot coming up out of the soil of that peace and gently unfurling and sending roots down. That it would need protection and nurturing but that there was new life. He told me he thought that was beautiful way to describe it. It was an awesomely connected moment. And then I told him that the more comfortable I was getting about being there, the closer I realized I was to being ready to leave. We both have a love of the paradoxes at the heart of therapy.

I had gotten really wonderful Mother's Day cards from both my daughter's and I asked my T if I could read them to him. As we discussed it, I told him that I had wanted him to hear them because I really feel like part of the credit should go to him. That my ability to be present for my kids was in large measure due to him. He of course pointed out that other people had also helped me (that would be you guys!!) and that I had worked.

So I told him that there was one thing that was bothering me about leaving. That it felt like no matter how hard I tried to express it or put it into words that I could NOT convey to him how much he had done for me, and how important this relationship was to me. That my life had changed so much and it was because of him. That it ran so deep that it felt like there was no way to actually make it known. I was tearing up by then and he was looking a little misty eyed (I think). He answered me in such a way that it was clear that he understood and he told me that I he had heard my gratitude and appreciation and how much it meant to him to see my grow. It was unspeakably amazing. I realized that I felt good, I felt like it was a good thing that I loved him, I felt good about volunteering and I wasn't trying to push any of it away. That I could trust that the good things were true. How very astounding.

And I hope it wasn't impossibly stupid of me but I made my next appt 12 days out and skipped a week. When I did it, he asked me how I felt about it and I told him scared but I needed to do it sometime, I had just seen him twice and I was in a good place. And he started to say, well, if anything comes up...and I interrupted and said, "don't worry, I'll call."

If you actually haven't died from old age by reading to this point, thank you!! I actually feel so good that if I wasn't able to talk about it, I think I'd burst!

AG