Just wanted to post about today’s session. I don’t know if it’s okay to post about every session, but I really want to share again so I hope you will humor me. I suppose I will quiet down in time.
I started out talking about how discouraged I’d been feeling about my marriage again. How we started therapy a year ago and not only are things not better, they’re worse.
I filled her in on how we got married, and gave her my background, that I’ve always been attracted to the “wrong” guy and I thought being married to the “right” guy for long enough would somehow change me. But it didn’t, so I started seeking therapy so I could change my heart to make it get over the old BF and love my husband instead.She had a good laugh at this (do your T's laugh at you too?), and said it doesn’t really work that way. We have to start from where the feelings really are. So I gave her the background on why and how we got married, and what that’s been like over the years with me just shutting down and running away and growing more distant, and how that finally brought me to therapy.
Then I told her more about my feelings for my former T and for my ex-BF, and also for a guy I was “in love” with for a couple of years at work. We talked about what characteristics draw me in, and how I feel and respond to those. This led to the many thoughts I’ve had this week about what happened with my former T and how it was a reenactment of my relationships with other men. There was a book I read this weekend that described the dynamics perfectly from both sides, so I brought that and read some of it to her.
I told her about how I struggled again this week over feelings of guilt and shame regarding my former T. I read her a part of General Theory of Love that described what I thought my former T was doing in therapy. It talks about how a T has to enter into a patient’s world in order to establish a limbic connection so that they will have enough influence to eventually effect change. My former T knew I wasn’t emotionally attached to my husband because I had told him that. I had also told him I often felt like running, and that I felt a connection to him (my T). On the occasions when he said things that were a little inappropriate, or when something about his manner seemed a bit seductive, I reasoned that he was indulging me a little bit in order to establish that connection so that he could influence me later on. I didn’t think it really meant anything more than that, for several reasons, one of which is because he responded positively to my reports of trying to establish connections with my husband. But in the end this was all very confusing because even though I thought I kept it straight intellectually, emotionally I began wanting to be special to him, and for the little comments and mannerisms to mean something. My reaction to the termination made that very clear.
My T repeated something she said last week, that it sounds like I was not given a chance to tell the clinic how I was hurt by what happened. And I said that’s right, not only that, but it’s as if they didn’t want to hear it. I tried to tell the couples T, then my former T and new T at the transfer meeting, then finally the couples T again, but the few things I did manage to get out were denied, minimized, or ignored. It was as if they didn’t want to hear it. And I was far too emotional and uncertain to push very much. So there was a lot I didn’t get to say.
She had two responses to this. First, she offered to accompany me on a visit back to that clinic to say what I need to say in order to heal. Not that there’s any rush to do it, or any pressure to do it at all, but she just wanted me to know that she’d be willing to go as my advocate if I ever decided I wanted to do that. Something to keep in mind. I don’t know if I’ll ever do that but I was grateful for the offer. There’s no way I could ever go back there alone. And I don’t know if it would be healing. Right now their response would mean a lot to me and would probably just result in more injury. But it feels good to know she’s there for me.
Her other response was to ask me what the clinic’s attitude about the transfer reminded me of. We talked about how it reminded me of my ex-BF and my parents, which evolved into a discussion of my longing for a father. This tied back to my former T because even though I never got to tell him, many of the feelings I was having for him were fatherly in nature. I told her how confusing that felt alongside the erotic transference. And we talked about how important fathers are, and what good fathering does for a daughter, and she validated the feelings that had come up with my former T as being good and right. And that hit a nerve about the abandonment and I then I cried and talked about how it felt to be abandoned by all of them.
When I finished crying, she told me that crying is good, that my tears were “beautiful”, that my face had the look of a little girl’s, wondering where her father was. And that there’s nothing wrong with that.
It is such a relief to be able to be real about where I’m at and be accepted right there. Not only to not be judged, but to be told that my feelings are good. That there’s a reason for them, and it doesn’t mean I’m defective. That it’s not my imagination, that there really was a need that didn’t get met. You would think that this would spark off self-pity, but it doesn’t. It just feels like relief to have verified what I’ve known deep down all along. Relief from judging myself. Relief to feel what I really feel instead of intellectualizing it away. And hope that I will pass through these feelings to true acceptance, instead of intellectualization masquerading as acceptance.
It’s been a good day.
Cheers,
SG
Like I never do anything good enough, and the harder I try, the worse it gets. I spent some time telling her how I’m doing a lot of things badly (wife, mother, employee, church member, sister, friend, etc.). And that’s not just all in my mind – there’s a lot of truth to it. So then I go into therapy to try to work on whatever it is that’s holding me back...and then I “fail” at that too, when I was working so hard to get it right. I’ve been keeping from posting on this board lately because I just keep circling back to feeling bad about what happened with my former T and I don’t want to sound like a broken record. And now I’m getting afraid that she’s going to eventually get sick of me, too.
