I've been seeing my t for two and a half years. The first year was really good. There was something about her that was different to anyone else I'd ever met and I felt this deep trust for her and faith in her that I've never felt for anyone before. I also felt very loved and special and important. All this time in the back of my mind I was thinking that I had finally found the person who would give me everything my mum didn't. I really believed that there was a good chance she would let me in to her life in a real way. I wasn't even consciously aware of this thought but once I saw it I realised that I'd been thinking it almost from the start. So a year and 3 months in and she says something fairly innocuous that suddenly brought it all crashing down on me. I saw what I had been secretly thinking and realised that I'd been going along feeling great but part of that was based on this lie I had been telling myself. This led to a terrible year last year of constantly telling her she didn't care which I eventually got past at the end of the year and realised that she does care.
Interspersed with this were times of trying to bury all this wanting her to be my mum stuff and trying to deal with other things, which is also what I've been trying to do since the end of last year, but it just keeps coming back up. I realised that I am holding out very strongly for this mothering that I thought I was going to get in the first year of therapy. I haven't wanted to accept that I won't get it because it's too painful to even think about. I said this to my t at our session last week and then over the last 4 days have just been crying and crying about it. So on some level I guess I am trying/beginning to accept it a little.
I saw t today wanting to talk about this, wanting her to accept where I am - to deal with the loss of the things I can't have and not focus so much on what I do have from her (the love, caring etc) but it didn't really go the way I had planned. I couldn't let her in. I talked to her about it but it was like I was there alone. She said I need to let her in but for some reason I don't want to. She thinks it's because I don't think her caring is enough (which to me it isn't enough) so I just drop down the barriers and don't let any of it in. I know from reading posts here that other people are able to let their t's be there for them, are able to let in the caring even when they're talking about wanting t to be their parent and all the feelings around that. I'm just wondering how people do that and is it really worth it? I did say to t that there was no point letting her in because I just get abandoned in my pain over and over (ie every time I leave a session) and she said that would be true if it wasn't for the fact that we have an implicit agreement that I only see her for 2 hours a week. She said if she had promised to be there 24 hours a day and then walked away after an hour that that would be abandonment but this isn't because I knew this would happen from the start. Which is true but I can just feel the little 5 year old inside of me saying 'I didn't sign up for this, I didn't know what I was signing up for'.
