((((FMN))))

"I'm not sure what to make of it. But do any of you have any weird sort of, mind experiences like that where in session, a perception becomes distorted which throws you a bit?"

I've definitely lost my train of thought and panicked in session. I just don't think I'm used to having anyone's undivided attention and sometimes it can be really scary knowing that someone "sees" me. My T, luckily for me I think, never calls attention to my nervousness because it would make it worse for me.

It's very scary getting close to someone when you've been hurt a lot. I moved close to T and moved away again over and over again.

FWIW, I don't think you will turn into a sociopath. When I get angry with my T, I have really vicious thoughts, like that he is the worst therapist in the world, who the heck does he think he is, he's so in love with himself that he doesn't see how people really view him, etc. etc. I haven't shared those thoughts with him and never will but have told him that I do have vicious thoughts when I'm angry.

I used to get really caught up in the thoughts but now am able to separate out the thoughts and reflect on them. I have enough awareness now to know that all that stuff is anger directed at childhood figures. Eventually I hope that when all my anger is processed, the vicious thoughts won't be so automatic and prevalent anymore.

I don't know if this answered any of your questions. Hope you are feeling better.



Liese

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Ever been confused when starting therapy, especially to those of you who have not had a good attachment figure for most of your lives?

FMN,
ROFLMAO! I can count on one hand the number of times in 25 years I HAVEN’T been confused. Healing is messy, chaotic, scary, difficult and above all confusing. I’ve been one long stumbling mess for most of my healing. I liken therapy to going through a chain of mountains, every once in a while you climb a peak and breathe clean air with a beautiful vista that stretches a long way and gives you the world, but most of the time you’re stumbling through a muddy jungle, hacking through the bushes, fighting for every foot forward, and hardly ever able to cut a straight path. Sometimes you go around the bottom of a mountain in a circle several times. So the most important thing I want to do is reassure you that you’re not being silly and you are making sense. A lot of what you’re describing sounds familiar to me. I also know that what I just described does not sound like anything any sane person would want to do, but its worth, because eventually you get clear of the mountain range and it’s worth the work it took to leave it.

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What's not so clarified is what I feel toward my T.

Our feelings for our Ts are often very complex, because there are, at minimum, two relationships. You’re here and now real relationship between your adult self and your therapist. But there is also the symbolic relationship with your T where they stand in for any other relationships or issues you need to resolve. So it’s possible to simultaneously have multiple feelings for our Ts. This can be confusing, especially if we are not conscious of where some of those feelings are coming from. Therapy is the process whereby we talk about our feelings and show enough of ourselves and how we interact with our T so that they can identify the patterns in what we do, and we can become conscious of our unconscious beliefs and actions in order to change them. There is very little that is straightforward about this. Add to that the fact that it’s not about what you know cognitively, it’s about what you experienced in the moment with your T. And before you can do that, you have to learn how to be in the moment.

What you described in your last session sounds like you are dissociating. We dissociate when what is going on becomes intolerable. You talked about being avoidant/dismissive but it’s important to remember that it describes a behavior whose purpose is to allow you to stay close to your attachment figure. If an open expression of your needs or feelings causes an attachment figure to pull away from you, you learn to act like you don’t have any needs or feelings so that they will tolerate you in the proximity that you need. When they have tested while monitoring physiological signs, avoidant children LOOK like they don’t care when there AF comes or goes, but there blood pressure, respiration and heart rate tell another story. We adapt to our caregivers and their behaviors.
If you experienced neglect, you may have learned that to be “seen” was a bad thing. If you were doing enough to draw attention to yourself, then you would be abandoned. So how scary is it that your T is paying attention and listening? Can you see how on an unconscious level, it could feel like if that keeps happening, you’re going to lose her? And the fact that you were relating something from your childhood would bring those feelings closer to the surface.

There is a solution but it’s not much fun. It’s doing your best to stay and allow yourself to be seen and heard despite how scary that may feel. It will be about actually telling your T about your problems in staying and perceiving her and possibly arranging a signal so that when it starts to happen, you can let her know. Every time you can stay and experience her not leaving, will make it infinitesimally easier to stay next time, until eventually you will learn that it’s not dangerous to be seen and have people know your feelings and needs. But it is a LONG SLOW process. But you’ve begun it by noticing all this. I think it would be really helpful for you to talk about this with your T and explain what is happening.

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I'm not sure what to make of it. But do any of you have any weird sort of, mind experiences like that where in session, a perception becomes distorted which throws you a bit?

A lot. It’s a very good sign that you are able to start being aware that you’re doing this (it took me years not months, I had gotten really used to covering up my lapses in attention. I just thought I had a short attention span. )

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Sometimes I feel I love her so much like a lover. Other times I'm not sure. I'm confused by the nature of all this.

One of the things that we’re supposed to learn as children is to sort out and understand our feelings. One of the first things we have to learn is that we are a separate person. Becoming separate can be scary, so we will want to return to a relationship where there are no boundaries between us and our caregiver. The closest thing to a relationship like this as an adult is a romantic one because we let down our boundaries and let someone in, so when our unprocessed childhood longings that we were not taught to understand and work through, come back we will often channel them into erotic/romantic feelings. That is why it is not unknown for someone with a heterosexual orientation to feel a sexual/romantic attraction to a same sex therapist. It’s not really about sex, it’s about a desire for merger.

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What worries me most is 'am I THAT worried about letting people in?'. Will I turn into a sociopath? Will I get violent if I get intimate or too close to someone? I've never had a relationship of love. I've not yet been in love with someone who I've been with so I don't know. I'm just worried that there is this a mini me that is a monster that will turn into a big monster if she is too intimate with someone. I don't want to recreate the cycle of violence that I experienced. I don't want my mind to start doing weird things and start registering T as weird things and then me not knowing how to react to her or reacting to her badly. I don't want to hurt her. She is lovely. And I'm worried.

FMN, these are the classic fears of an abused/neglected child. The problem is NOT something within you that is missing or some deformation that you carry, what is missing is what you were supposed to be given and taught. It’s like looking at someone who was never taught to read and saying “what an idiot, what the hell’s wrong with you” when they can make no sense of a book. The reparative part of therapy is that your relationship with your T is a place where you can learn the skills you need in order to be intimate and learn that it’s not actually a scary or dangerous thing to do.

You might find this post on my blog helpful: Disorganized Attachment or Why You Think You're Crazy But Really Aren't

AG

Thanks for the responses everyone. They really have helped

Liese:

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like that he is the worst therapist in the world, who the heck does he think he is, he's so in love with himself that he doesn't see how people really view him, etc. etc

Ha! Yes I'm starting to get this as well. I keep thinking that my T is this self-involved, impatient, distant, unempathetic, unqualified, shouldnt-be-in-the-job person. I try and reaon with it. I try and see the good times there have been which at best right now, makes me uncertain of her. I swing between 'I love you - I hate you' thoughts. I guess its normal. Thanks Liese. Your post has answered questions. I can see similar experiences I had with you and relaxing about it more. Knowing that this is all the normal process of getting close to someone and not being scared of it.

AG:

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I liken therapy to going through a chain of mountains, every once in a while you climb a peak and breathe clean air with a beautiful vista that stretches a long way and gives you the world, but most of the time you’re stumbling through a muddy jungle

AG, I'm starting to see that for myself too! Lol. I have 'ah ha!' moments. The last ah ha! moment was when I was in the shower and I was thinking things through. Something clicked. Well, the first of I hope, many more to come. I simply realized that the reason I struggle to move in an adult world is because there is a very lost child in me. So I'm simultaneously trying to fit into a world of maturity and responsibility whilst at the same time this little kid in me doesn't want that. Not yet anywho!

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What you described in your last session sounds like you are dissociating. We dissociate when what is going on becomes intolerable

I think you are right about the intolerable aspect of it all. If historically my whole family has never listened to me compassionately with emotion, then this is something so brand new to me that my mind cannot handle it so good right now. When I was younger I had the signs of a child not being given enough attention; I used to run up to strangers and show them things. I think my Mum once told me that I ran up to strangers and showed them a ring. And since 15 (though it's subsided now), I had this inner need to be in a perfect romantic relationship and be world famous. All signs of desperate attention seeking to me. I'm glad it hasn't turned into NPD or the like. I keep a watchful eye on what I do.

Do you find that to get through this trauma, it's constant question and a lot of deep thought. I do an awful lot of thinking about everything. I could easily write 100 pages on what goes through my mind. It goes in lapses. I mean, it becomes intense one moment and then relaxes another. So life becomes simple for a little while, then I'll start thinking and the thinking will wind and wind and wind and sometimes will be combined with existential thoughts and intellectual discourse along with thoughts on myself. It's then that I have to practically do something simply to help the rushing thoughts.

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The closest thing to a relationship like this as an adult is a romantic one because we let down our boundaries and let someone in, so when our unprocessed childhood longings that we were not taught to understand and work through, come back we will often channel them into erotic/romantic feelings

I touched with T about how I confuse attachment with sexual feelings to people I get close to. I haven't yet had the guts to tell her outright 'I sometimes want to be close to you like a lover' but I think if she's clever enough, she's definitely guessed. I'm glad I've noticed this though because for years I was confused into the nature of my short relationships or flings and I just didn't get it at all.

Thanks AG for your responses here. They have definitely helped. Oh question, are you still in therapy? Just out of random curiosity

xoxo:

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Well, when I'd try to think back-i'd say I felt confused. At the end i asked him-but confused isn't really an emotion, is it??? That's what happens when your mind can't process emotions. And you feel emotions really intense, that's part of it.

Thats very true xoxo! When I feel emotions, even if it's just something seemingly so small, it feels huge to me. And unfortunately a tendency to panic/escape at such feelings. They overwhelm easily which is why I'm akin to secluding myself more and more...something I don't want to keep doing now. Confused is right..I feel the same way and I guess after a while you start working through the confusion and clarity comes?

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When you start feeling really comfy and safe with your T, they should go away for the most part.

I hope so. Thank you for your words xoxo.

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Do you find that to get through this trauma, it's constant question and a lot of deep thought.

FMN,
I think it's really hard work to get through trauma and what you are describing sounds a lot like what I did. Therapy does not take place for just 50 minutes a week (or more if you have multiple sessions, but you get my drift). The real work is done in the processing you do in between. As you have those "aha" moments and gain new insight and understanding, you often end up going back through your past and processing all over again bringing the new understanding to bear. For me, this would sometimes feel like it was happening just out of conscious range but i would get a sense it was going on. I called it "re-arranging the furniture" 'cause that's usually how tired it made me.

Healing from trauma can also feel like some kind of complex puzzle that you need to keep going over, thinking deeply, trying to see things from new angles and constantly looking for new connections and understanding. I had times in my life where is was the background because life was so busy but at other times it would be the main focus of my thoughts and energy.

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Oh question, are you still in therapy?

Kinda. I decided to stop seeing my T on a regular basis (making my next appointment at the end of an appointment) in September of 2011. We had been processing my leaving and dealing with everything that leaving kicked up for about a year before I made the decision to go. We had a very significant "last" appointment (there are a couple of threads about my last sessions, if you're interested, let me know, I'll post links). The best way to describe it was that it was an end of an important phase of our work. I felt healed enough to want to venture out. The flavor was very much of being grown up enough to leave home.

My T has a very generous contact policy of 24/7 phone and email contact. For the phone, he uses an answering service. When I asked him what his policy was for after I ended, he quite calmly looked at me and said "I'm still your therapist, call or email if you need to." So his door is still open to me, I call or email when I need to, and if I feel the need for some help with an issue, I contact him and make an appointment. That's worked out to about 10 appts in the last 16 months. But I find that our focus is shifting away from our relationship and towards things I am attempting to do, and how do I handle the new territory I am venturing into. My T is a very significant figure in my life and always will be, and I carry a deep sense of connection. I am becoming comfortable with not needing him the way I used to, and with seeing him as someone I can reach out to when I need to. I occasionally run into a pocket of woundedness that I need help with or new situations can trigger me in ways I am struggling to understand. He has been especially helpful with issues that I have run into being moderator here and volunteering on the Crisis Line.

I'm not sure that I'll ever completely stop seeing him, the relationship is too good to give up. But I'm open to seeing where it goes.

AG