I had a phone call today about the feeling of not being allowed to say that I found it painful that I was not going to see him for two weeks.
I transcribed it onto my blog and am too tired to write a short version for here but feel that we have such need to understand the attachment stuff that I am going to give in and post the whole thing here so I am sorry it is long but if it is helpful - then it might be worth posting it here. I would like to have sumerised it but I just don't have the mental energy.

me: I am feeling such strong attachment stuff. I find it so hard to tell you.

sP: I want you to articulate that feeling however uncomfortably it sits with other things

me: I have been missing seeing you. I wasn't prepared for a two week break, I did not psyche myself up for that. I told you that I felt pain at hearing that I would not visually SEE you for two whole weeks and you said that I had been in india for three weeks and I heard that as " you mustn't feel like this! You don't need to feel those feelings!"

sP: I think I understand and I think I did not register enough quite what it was meaning to you. My intention was to reassure you that you CAN cope with it. My intention was NOT to say "you shouldn't be feeling that" because I think it is really important that we understand what you really DO feel at that level. And it becomes something that you can address more easily because it becomes understood and said and it is accepted. But I can see how that came across and you were not prepared for that gap too ...

The attachment is not going to suddenly not matter to you. If you did say that you are okay now and will end, I would say that is what the Freudians say is a 'Flight Into Health.'
That feeling of wanting to end, has got good bits too, as you are wanting your independence back.

We talked about having a year, to December ...

ME: I want to finish by this summer. I don't want to get to December to have you say " But I decided .."

sP: No - but hang on! There is the issue of not wanting to find yourself later on in that position and wanting to control it and control what is possible. Getting better and doing the therapy is about you getting better not about you avoiding the ending by trying to get out first ..... that would be short circuiting it wouldn't it. We talked about a 12 month contract and then a negotiated continuation if that was necessary and if that was what you felt you needed and wanted. I think that is potentially different from what you fear because it is something about a discussion about what is needed and what is helpful and secondly it is still six months away. And it is about what could happen in those six months which would make it different


Me: I can't go any faster than I am going!

sP: That is why I would be alarmed because I would not believe it if you said you are okay and are ending.

Step back to now. What has triggered this is the thought of managing a gap in our contact and between us we have not been clear what that could consist of and what that is like....

ME; You could laugh and say I was being silly

sP: It is only silly if someone did not know why you have those feelings or can feel what you are feeling...It is about you coming to terms with what you feel, your 'little you' feelings. If it still has the power to have a huge impact on you. So it needs to be brought into the fold, it needs to be said and accepted and brought into the fold and responded to in a helpful way rather than be banished as unacceptable or silly or the other things that you might expect people to say, as has been said to you before.

We try to get commitments to other people to make commitments to us, it might be marriage, relationships, friendships and there are assumptions that things will be okay and people get frightened when they get ruptured.

Part of what we are trying to do is to get to a point where you would genuinely be able to say to me, "we can end now and yes I shall miss you and it will hurt" or whatever your feelings would be at the time and you would not have to use your shutdown defense because you would feel you could handle it. It is partly about how it happens and you being able to feel in control but it is also about what an ending means to you. And the different kinds of endings that you have had in the relationships in your life and the sense that the point about an ending is that it's between two people and one or other may not be able to control what is happening. Sometimes it is mutual. The most catastrophic is someone dying. Divorces and separation and relationships ending can be very painful. And you have had experience of relationships going wrong, like NewFinder where she pulled the plug, and you have been betrayed. You have walked away to save yourself. I was thinking of your sister. You say that it was unhealthy and so you walked away. The idea I have got in my mind is of you being able to have an attachment that is good and helpful and that is felt and is genuine. It is not purely a commercial arrangement or whatever. At the same time it is something that you CAN ultimately put down and walk away from. Therapy relationships there is always some tension as it is a commercial arrangement at one level but if it is going to therapeutic it is much more than that. It is something that is not necessarily a life long relationship but at the same time it feels like it is dealing with things that are involved in life long relationships. It is a very intense and powerful thing.

ME: I know you are going to say no but I could get to a bit where I say I will see you in a month's time and then two months and then three and then six months.

sP: Almost like a weaning off

Me: I can't imagine a complete break but I could imagine that I could send you a letter once a year so that I could tell you how I am doing so it is not like: ended forever

sP: those are all possibilities.

Me: This is SUch scary stuff

sP: Yes, it is scary to even contemplate and whilst you contemplate it you are looking for ways to protect yourself and not hurt.

Me: I want to protect myself.

sP: Yes, and that makes absolute sense with what has gone on before, both as a child and an adult, but as a child most of all.

Me: I find this so scary. Surely it is dangerously stupid of me to TELL you these things. But I can't keep hiding it.

sweetP: I think it is because it is at the centre of it, S, I really think it is at the centre of it.

Me: I SAID that when I first met you! I said that the attachment stuff was the main thing, and is covered up with the trauma stuff was on top of it.

sp: The traumas, they were bad enough in their own right and they were worse for you because of where you were coming from and that made you more vulnerable.

Me: It is good that I tell you this attachment stuff?

sp: I think it is brave of you to try and approach it.
And in the end there are other possibilities for something could happen to me or I could be sacked and not be able to work with you. there are all sorts of things that are beyond just how we manage the relationship. I say this because attachment IS risky and human beings are human and stuff happens.

Me: If you died it would be awful but it would be a clean break. You would not have done it on purpose, you would not have done it to hurt me, it would be grief

sP: : it would not feel like a rejection. It is grief and you work through it. the rejection bit is something else because that is what you have been struggling with, feeling from early on that when you needed it there was nobody there, or not enough or reliably.

Me: Or you had to work out HOW to be in order to get them to be there for you a bit.

sP: It was not there as children need, as unconditional and reliable.
when we talk about THIS relationship and how it might end, it is very difficult for you to think about that without it feeling like some kind of rejection and dismissal of your needs because that is how it's been and I suppose therapy is about working towards something very different from that.

Me: I could imagine getting to a stage where I feel secure that you are there, and I am busy and feeling good and not needing you so much. I can only do that if I feel you are truly really securely there.

sP: for the panic and that dreadful feeling to be softened and eased is partly about being able to look at it squarely and you are at that stage where you can voice it and articulate it and I don't think it makes it easier right now but it is a way forward.

One of the ways that things could change is if there is a sense if there is an AFTER.

As your confidence in your inner strength and stability grows, you will feel a sense that you will be okay and you will get through. I think the resources, the strength is already there, but it depends on how you think about it at the time - but when the panic sets in and the threat of dismissal looms larger it takes you back into that state where you feel you have no control and you are desperate for someone to make it alright and your connection to your own resources have been lost, like they have gone.

The terror that somebody feels of annihilation, an abandoned infant and what that means is that you are going to die. So it is not surprizing that you feel pretty damn scared.

Me: It is physical, palms sweat and my mouth goes dry and I shake and my teeth chatter and I feel like a hand has plunged into my belly and is churning around my very guts and I feel sick.

sP: Yes, and that must feel horrible and it must feel like it undoes all the grown up you. but your grown up self doesn't count for nothing. It is who you are and who you will be, that strong you.

You are shaking?

[My teeth chattering and I am shaking. My mouth dries up.]
Me: It is like looking down a chasm and backing off.

sP: We have gone into something that's quite difficult to do in a phone call and I might have been unwise to be so explicit about it.

Can you reach for a blanket? good.

ME: How do you understand all this? You seem to have some psychological understanding of this. May be because you are a psychologist?

sP: [amused] Yes, maybe it counts for something that I am a psychologist.

Me: You have seen other people come through it?

sP: Yes, that real deep dread of annihilation and they have been okay and come to be able to function well and do what they want to do with their lives. It is not that they have become invulnerable or immune and are not troubled by memories or triggers because we are all open to that to some extent.