incognito,

That sounds really horrible and tough. It sounds like he's worried that he's ?done something wrong?

When he was asking you those questions - was he trying to get you to talk about what you expected him to do? Tfella did this to me one time - he did something dumb, and then he apologized, and I had absolutely -no- idea what to do with his apology. I was like, "Um... yeah." He asked me what I expected him to do and I talked a bit about that. But, mind you, that was after a nice lil' apology and some getting-back-on-track stuff, not when I was particularly upset. I can't imagine what I would have done if he'd asked me that right after he did Stupid Thing. Probably cried, too.

I'm sorry the session sucked. Sometimes Ts drop the ball, I think. From what I understand you kinda gotta point your elbow at it and be like, "yo. over there, goob. the ball."

Though your last paragraph says that, way more eloquently.

Incognito I'm terribly sorry you had such a rough session today. It's hard to be fully present and open in a session when you are not feeling well physically and have family concerns (such as your son getting tubes in his ears) on your mind.

What I think your T was getting at was trying to find out is how your family of origin (parents) responded to your needs in the past. When you were a child and needed something from your parents were you able to ask for it? Did they make you feel that they could meet your needs and that your needs were normal and acceptable or did they make you feel that you should not ask for anything. Did they over react when you made your needs known to them? I am just guessing here (and please tell me if I'm off base) that when you were a child your parents did not respond positively to your needs and your wants. That perhaps you learned it was not a good thing to ask for stuff and you did not have emotional support. When this happens we are also unable to ask our T's for what we need from them. This is something I'm learning little by little. This all relates back to having a secure vs. unsecure attachment to our early primary caregivers. We were made to feel that making our needs known was unacceptable and wrong and we learned that going towards our primary attachment figure (a parent) was either dangerous, caused pain or was unsatisfying and so we learned to handle things on our own and became afraid to ask or depend on anyone. So when you really want to move towards your T because you DO need something from him (reassurance, caring, empathy) you feel that it is not a good thing and so you move away (shut down, want to quit, want to run). You are NOT a crazy woman you are just reactng to old tapes from childhood that are still running through your brain. Oh and I'm VERY familiar with that fear of abandonment. I struggle with it all the time. My T finally "got it" and now reassures me on a regular basis and always answers my email even if only to say that he read it and we will talk about it at session.

But this is after I was quite frank and open with him and even gave him and emailed him articles on attachment theory and why I think that I act the way I do and have the fears that I do. The end of your post says it all but you should be telling your T this so he understands. Especially this part:

***Of course, I feel awful. What I am most afraid of is him telling me to go away and this sounds a lot like that. So after I cry for seveal minutes like a crazy women I leave. I didn't have the guts to say, I want you to respond to me, to reassure me, to tell me I can stay talking to you as long as I need to. Instead I just feel abandoned.******

I don't really think that he wants you to go away but I think he is stumped as to how to help you. I think you should either email him exactly what you just posted here... that you need reassurance and that you fear abandonment. And then tell him you need a response to the email so there is no misunderstanding. Tell him that you were unable to articulate this is session but you gave it some thought and you want him to know this about you.

If our T's don't know what haunts us they have no idea how to help us. My T reminds me that keeping things from him serves both of us no purpose because then he can't help me. And he reminds me that he really cannot read minds (although I'm not too sure about this )

I know this is scary and hard. Asking for what we want is scary and hard. The threat of losing the relationship with our T is terrifying. But, unless your T is totally incompetent, he will be thrilled that you confided these things to him and you may be surprised at how your therapy will become more of what you need and you will feel a sense of empowerment by actually asking for what you need and getting it.

Good luck to you and please know we are here. I'm glad you could come here and post to let us know what happened.

True North

hi all,

thanks for all your comments. I am feeling better this morning. My son's surgery went well and I had almost 5 hours of sleep.

I think you are right about my T trying to get at my childhood. When I got angry as a child I got punished, my parents got mad at me, spanked me,etc. My older siblings made fun of me, I was "melodramatic, emotional, out of control". Still to this day my mother gets angry at me any time I get angry even if my anger is about external events or people. It is just not allowed, only she (the adult, in her mind) is allowed to get angry. Actually while I never allow myself to get angry at people in my life, I have to struggle with not expressing my anger at my kids. I seem to have totally (unknowingly) bought into the story that parents can get mad at their kids. It's the only kind of anger I am aware of most the time and I struggle not to express it to them so I don't make the same mistakes my mother did.

I don't know if I will have the guts, TN, to tell my T what I need/want. I suspect he will not reassure me by email or in words so I've avoided telling him how much I want reassurance. Of course, how much worse could this get. If its too much for him, I will have to look for a T who can handle it.

Hi Incognito,
I'm really sorry for what you're going through with your T. Your description of how anger was handled sounds so familiar to me. My father was the ONLY person allowed to get angry in my home. Getting angry was unthinkable, it was just a fast track to getting hurt. But I never made the connection with only the parent being able to get mad and my behavior. My girls are now 15 and 17 but what first drove me to go into individual therapy was the fact that when my older daughter was four (I later figured out that was how old I was when the sexual abuse started) I started having what I considered were serious anger problems with my kids. At the time I didn't remember the sexual abuse, but my dad was also pretty violent and that I consciously remembered. I was TERRIFIED that I would become him and do to my children what had been done with me. So I went to therapy because I was afraid I would beat my kids. Thank you for making that connection for me.

The good news is that you're getting the help you need. I have never crossed that line with my children and have, I think, been a decent mother (of course, you should probably check with my kids on that. ). I'm really glad that you've chosen to handle it the way you have, it's how the chain of abuse gets broken.

As for your T. Here's what I see as the bottom line. You're not asking for reassurance that you really feel like you need (for the record, I think its extremely reasonable and even healthy that you want that reassurance. Recieving an unending stream of reassurance from my T has been a big part of my healing.).
If you ask one of two things will happen. Your T will totally miss the boat and you won't be in a worse place, because you're already not getting the reassurance that you need. But then you can address that lack with him and why he thinks its not necessary. Or as you said, you need to look for a T who can handle it.

On the other hand, you could ask and he'll give it to you and then you'll be in a much better place. But you need to know that its a good thing to want and you have every right to ask for it.

Some Ts don't handle dependence very well. They've been trained and taught that all dependencies are unhealthy and I don't believe that's true and I know my T doesn't. For people struggling with trauma and attachment issues (and attachment issues pretty much go hand in hand with childhood trauma) you NEED to be dependent on your T to learn how to stand on your own.

A quote from General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis et al:

quote:

Some therapists recoil from the pivotal power of relatedness. They have been told to deliver insight--a job description evocative of estate planning or financial consulting, the calm dispensation of tidy data packets from the other side of an imposing desk. A therapist who fears dependence will tell his patient, sometimes openly, that the urge to rely is pathologic. In doing so he denigrates a cardinal tool. A parent who rejects a child's desire to depend raises a fragile person. Those children, grown to adulthood, are frequently among those who come for help. Shall we tell them again that no one can find an arm to lean on, that each alone must work to ease a private sorrow? Then we shall repeat an experiment already conducted; many know its result only too well. If patient and therapist are to proceed together down a curative path, they must allow limbic regulation and its companion moon, dependence, to make their revolutionary magic.

Thank you for posting about this, I know it can be difficult to talk about this stuff when you're going through it. We'll be here.

AG

So I called me T and told him I knew that he was probably pretty busy between now and the holidays but if he had time I would like to come in a see him. He wrote me to say he had 11am tomorrow. I feel like I have to tell him in person how I feel and what I need (even if my needs are unreasonable and can't be met by him). I also feel like if I wait too long I will lose my nerve, it will seem less urgent and I'll smooth it over in my head and decide not to say anything too big.

So I'm off to write out what I want to say (because I want a script I can read off if I can't figure out how to speak).

AG, I got most of your post but the following

As for your T. Here's what I see as the bottom line. You're not asking for reassurance that you really feel like you need (for the record, I think its extremely reasonable and even healthy that you want that reassurance. Recieving an unending stream of reassurance from my T has been a big part of my healing.).

I'm not sure are you saying I'm not asking for reassurance, I don't really need reassurance, or something else I don't get.

Sorry, incognito but re-reading that sentence I can see where you got lost. Definitely not an example of clarity of expression.

I meant to say that right now you want and need reassurance but you're not asking for it. With an aside to make it clear that I thought the fact that you wanted reassurance was a good thing and healthy. And if you asked for reassurance and didn't get it, you really wouldn't be worse off.

I'm glad you have an appointment with your T tomorrow and that you were brave enough to ask. And I think a script is a great idea. When we're really activated it gets hard to think, having it there in front of you will help you to say what you need to. I hope it goes well; let us know.

AG

AG

Incognito your needs are NOT unreasonable, they are perfectly normal. I am so happy to hear that you took charge and called your T for another appt. Good for you!!! Now write down all you want to say because it will help you when you sit down in front of him and he smiles at you and your mind goes totally blank. Just look down and read the paper. It works for me. And BTW, once my T (who had not been very reassuring previously, although we had a pretty good relationship) knew how I felt and why, he became super-reassuring, telling me to call him, to email him all the time. And he made the effort to always answer my emails and return calls promptly. He now understands because I TOLD him and explained to him that I had terrible fears of abandonment, I was afraid he would send me away if I took a chance and asked him for things, like reassurance, and emails, and phone calls and to read articles I wanted to give him.

Taking the chance to be honest and open with him about these fears has turned out so much better than I ever thought it would. It has been great. And I feel so much better since he has told me that he would never ask me to leave and that it was up to me to decide when to go. That took enormous pressure off of me and now I'm free to focus on therapy instead of worrying about him leaving me or telling me to go.

I wish you much luck with your session. Please let us know how it goes. You are strong and brave and you can do it.

TN

quote:

And I feel so much better since he has told me that he would never ask me to leave and that it was up to me to decide when to go. That took enormous pressure off of me and now I'm free to focus on therapy instead of worrying about him leaving me or telling me to go.

I have had this conversation many times with my T. She convinces me that she will never leave me or dump me and then a few weeks later my little pea brain needs to hear it again.

Incognito - You have every right to ask for reassurance. And, ask for it again, and again, and even again if you need to. Those of us who have abandonment issues got there for a reason. Good luck tomorrow. You are very brave to tackle this head on.

PL

Oh, PL, my abandonment issues have not been solved at all but I do feel a lot better about things than I did before my T and I had this conversation. And yes, he still needs to reassure me and reassure me again. It's because even though we "hear" them tell us we have to "feel" it somewhere inside to actually believe it. I think when our emotions get painful or too strong to handle we are afraid they will drive our T's away from us because that's what happened with our first attachment figures (our parents). We need to retrain our little brains to accept that THIS relationship will be different and we will not drive our T's away from us because we need things from them, like reassurance, and for them to know us... the real us is okay. That we are valuable human beings that deserve to have what we need. It's a slow process but I have to believe we will eventually heal.

TN

incognito,

How did the session go with your T today? I really hope you were able to ask him for more of what you need from him.

quote:

That we are valuable human beings that deserve to have what we need.

TN

My T is trying to hammer this into my head. I told her that I feel guilty for being "needy." She says that I'm not needy, but that I have needs. I have a really hard time asking for help for myself. I've always thought I should do everything on my own. If I want it done right, then I must do it myself. Whew, lots of craziness there! And so therapy continues.

The thing about our first attachment figures (our parents) is a little bit complicated for me. I was adopted and I have no knowledge of my first 10 weeks of life. I'm trying to figure out how that relates to what is going on in my life right now. I've done a lot of research on the "primal wound" and it has been an eye opening experience. Therefore, my T does need to keep reassuring me that she won't abandon me. She is very good at that, I just have to get better at asking for it.

PL

PL,
I wanted to share something my T told me when I was struggling with feeling guilty about my "extreme neediness." He told me that it was like not giving someone any food, then saying they were overreacting by saying they were hungry, or turning off the heat in winter, and being suprised when someone said they were cold. For some reason that one sunk in really deep with me.

AG

quote:

I wanted to share something my T told me when I was struggling with feeling guilty about my "extreme neediness." He told me that it was like not giving someone any food, then saying they were overreacting by saying they were hungry, or turning off the heat in winter, and being suprised when someone said they were cold. For some reason that one sunk in really deep with me.

This is something I still have a really hard time getting my head around, AG. Like, I just don't feel the same way about people needing food as I do about them needing love, caring, and affection. i just can't get it to sink in that it's a -right-, like the other things...

Thanks AG. That is a good visual for me.

PL

Wynne,
Would it help to know that newborn human baby dies without physical contact and affection? There was a pope in the 15th century who thought there was some kind of alpha language humans would speak if they weren't taught a language. So to find out was it was he took a large group of newborn orphans and forbade their caretakers to do anything beyond feed them and diaper changes. None of the children made it a year. Fast forward to the 30s when hygiene became so important because of the new awareness of germ theory. Orphanages followed the policy of handling the babies as little as possible to prevent the spread of disease. Not long after, they named a new condition "failure to thrive." Research later proved that children who were hugged and cuddled were stronger and healthier. I get feeling like food is in a different category because it's so clear that we die without it. But, especially when we're children and our brain is still developing those other things are almost as important to our survival. We deserve them just as surely.

PL, glad it resonated, my T is smart guy.

AG

River,

I posted an thread on today's session under the title "Update on today's session". The short answer is that it was better than Wednesday night because I was able to express myself and what I think I need.