Oh dear where is AG when we need her? She would have a perfectly intelligent answer for you. But I will try. What you are feeling is perfectly normal. Therapy is a roller coaster of emotions. You are up you are down...no gentle bumps here ... you need to fasten your seatbelt.

I am sure your T is not getting tired of you. These are your thoughts that you are projecting onto him because you are worried that this is how he is feeling. Perhaps other important people in your life have made you feel this way in the past. What your T was doing... and mine does this often... is to help us become assertive and to ask for things we need and to make our wants known to those people who have ignored our needs in the past. When you say he wants you to stand up to your mother...he wants you to assert your wants and needs. I understand how difficult this is. I still struggle with it myself but have been making tiny strides in this area.

As for his not answering your question in the email. My T rarely answers my concerns directly via email. He will say things like...thank you for sharing your feelings. we will talk about this when next we meet or I can understand you feeling this way, we will talk about it. I've also gotten responses that left me staring at the screen with a "huh?". So please don't take it to mean that he is upset or angry with you in any way. And please do go back to therapy. And if his response is still upsetting you then TELL HIM (sorry don't mean to shout). This is the work of therapy. The relationship you have with him...so you need to discuss your feelings about his email or any other thing he says or does that upsets or worries you. Personally, I'd rather get it out in the open than worry about it and try to guess what he was thinking.

Therapy is a very slow process. You do not change old thought patterns overnight. Your T knows this (if he's smart) and he does not expect that he will tell you something one week and you will be an expert at it the next week. Be patient with yourself.

Everything you described I've felt too.

I hope this helps.

TN

Thank you TN for your great response. It does help to hear that you have had feelings like this. I will try to remember that I don't have to decide anything tonight.

Incognito,
There's a good reason your T isn't rushing to reassure you. Actually there's a few good reasons. Just telling you that might make you feel better temporarily but you probably won't believe it long term. what's going to prove to you that he's not frustrated and not getting tired of you is his consistency in being there for you.

I had serious trust issues with my T, I'm still working on some of them, honestly. Not because of anything he has done, but because of my past experiences. But I have come to trust him. I remember discussing trust with him once and him telling me that saying he was trustworthy to me wouldn't have done anything because all of my experience was screaming that of course he wasn't trustworthy. I deeply believed that trusting someone and getting close to them was just setting yourself up to be severely hurt and disappointed. So the only choice he had was too remain still, and BE trustworthy until that new experience with him, over and over and over ad infinitum would eventually overpower my past experience so that I could see that he was trustworthy with real evidence to back up the belief.

The other reason a T won't reassure you, is because often when we feel these kinds of insecurities and doubts about the relationship, it's really us trying to enact or embody feelings and/or patterns that we are probably not even aware of, and if we were we couldn't articulate them. We are in a sense "forcing" our T into playing out their part in our past bad experiences. Therefore, if what you experienced in the past was the feeling that your attachment figure was dissapointed in you, that they thought you were a big loser. Which is pretty painful to realize. But you need to own and understand the disavowed experience which was too painful and difficult to face at the time because you didn't have the resources to deal with it. If you're T gives you a patch, it may make you feel better for a short while, but it ultimately won't address the real problem which is your need to mourn that these are the feeling and attitudes you received from people who should have given you so much more. There's a "frustration" to therapy. Your T will not hold out a false promise of providing something for you that he simply can't in reality provide.

I think of it this way. In therapy, a client can talk about anything, but must not act it out. A therapist will not talk about his feelings, but act them out. They can not make the pain go away, but they can provide a safe place for us to deal with it and heal from it.

And I understand you being worried about working through the transference. I've lost count of the number of times I've decided to quit therapy. But working through this, taking ALL of your feelings to your T especially about him are where the work gets done. You need to experience a new way of relating which means you need to relate. Its really hard sometimes and unbelieveably painful and this is not the last time you'll feel this way, but you will heal. Keep doing what you're doing and you'll get through it.

And last but not least, don't underestimate the effect of a good session. That means you moved closer and were able to express some of your feelings. Which more than likely triggered a "getting to close, I'm just going to get hurt again" reaction. These feelings of it being over are just an attempt to give you an excuse to leave in order to "protect" yourself. How do I know this you ask? Because I've done about 1001 variations of it over the last two years. Its strong, subtle and you will impress yourself with your own creativity.

Talk to your T about your worries about the working through the transference. That he can reassure you about.

And hang in there, I know this is really painful, but you will feel better.

AG

PS True North, thanks for the endorsement but I think your answer was quite intelligent and insightful.

Thanks AG,

I apreciate and am trying to understand your words. I've managed to stop myself from calling and cancelling my session next week. I've moved into I'm so humiliated, I can't believe I asked for something so impossible to get and exposed my neediness. I know that you are right if he had reassured me I would have instantly decided that he was lying and only saying it to make me feel better. So it's like a lose-lose he doesn't say anything I think he thinks I'm a loser, if he does I think he is a liar and he thinks I'm a loser. This therapy is so hard I don't know how I'm going to face him next, not that I actually face him because I avoid eye contact.

I hope you can work through some of your sadness with your T. This season is getting to me as well. The gap between expectations of family togetherness, happiness and joy and what my family actually is seems largest during the holidays.

Incognito,
I know that you're feelings of humliation are real but you have nothing to be ashamed of. Your neediness is natural and healthy. The problem isn't your needs, the problem was your caretakers failing to meet your needs. That's what drives most of us to therapy. I was talking to my T once in session about how needy I was, and how pathetic that made me feel. And he said it was like someone turning off the heat in the house and getting upset with you becuase you were cold, or not giving you any food, and saying you were too needy when you said you were hungry. Every human being has needs and in healthy, normal development, we move towards our attachment figures to get those needs met, but when there not met, we assume the problem is our needs when its not. And you didn't ask for something impossible to get, you asked for something you should have gotten. I know, I know you feel like you're doing things wrong, but that's your past speaking. You're actually doing exactly what you need to do. Therapy should be a safe place where you can express all this, especially the things you should have been able to, and couldn't. Your needs deserve to be heard, and your T can meet a lot of them. I'm really happy to hear that you're going back to therapy. Try and look at your T as much as you can, I think what you'll see is his care and concern, not frustration with you.

And just because you're T can't provide something doesn't mean its not good to talk about. You have a right to however you feel about wanting those things and/or not getting them. The important part is that you can be heard and understood.

I wish I could just make it better, or even easier. This is not easy to do, and your very courageous to face it. It will get better.

Although I totally get the no eye contact thing, still working on that one. But the more I can, the better it is.

AG