Dear Liese,

Mind-blowing indeed! I am so surprised- and gratified- that your T was so incredibly honest with you, about how he has experienced you. I have never heard of that happening before. Doesn't it make it easier to accept, and take the pressure of guilt off? I'm glad that he told you that you were the only one who stuck it out. I think that what most people do, when they hit that wall, is leave because it feels pointless and too painful to continue. But you have found a way, through yes, incredible strength and commitment to yourself- to push through that "CBT wall." At the same time- I do not balme anyone for walking away. It's what I had to do when I hit that wall, and I don't really regret it, but- there is something left, something lingering that I know I will never be able to address, since Cowboy T doesn't really work with transference either, I don't think.

It's clear that you have really given your T something to think about, and caused him to have to really think about what he offers. I'm sad, but glad, that he addmitted that the acceptance he offered was not unconditional. AT least you can stop feeling like a crazy person for having felt that, while being told that you were wrong for feeling that. I think that what you got from your T here, was what I was always hoping for from guru T. It seems like a really positive step- and it has to vlaidate all of your previous doubts and fears- you were right, but it seems like you and T have moved past that, now?

I think you have been doing amazing work with this T- personally. I think you are one of the few who has managed to change your T's perspective on how he works. but I'll be interested to see if others agree with me on this...I could be wrong, but it just made me relieved for you, in some way.

Wow. I think that is really something. There is nothing wrong with you- your T is right- it is all down to your strength and perseverence. Keep on plugging!

Love hugs,

BB

ps-

quote:

He told me that he knows he's part of my pain now. The truth is that the stuff that happened between the two of us wasn't because of the way he felt about me, that I was repulsive. It was that he didn't know how to deal with it and wasn't taking it out and looking at it for himself.

wow, wow, wow. I imagine this must be an incredibly healing thing to hear.

Wow, I think that's amazing, Liese. It made me proud of both you and your T. I don't think there is anything at all wrong with you for not leaving. It seems like your T is actually a very, brave, solid person and maybe you could sense that in your heart somewhere, which is why you kept on with it. But you have accomplished something great by bravely hanging in there- you helped him become a better T! I think that's pretty cool, and I hope you can feel some satisfaction over it.

Hi Liese,

Sorry I haven't been around. My son has strep throat and had me up most of the night taking care of him. At least now we have a prescription and he is resting on the couch.

I just wanted to say that there is nothing wrong in you that you stayed. I stayed too (with oldT) and my T says that is because I knew enough about therapy to manage my own therapy and pull oldT along with me. I actually managed to make progress and to try to teach him as well. He is still astounded that I could do that and he said that the others left when they were not getting better but the difference was probably that THEY did not have and/or understand the attachment and transference process and were not ready/able for that kind of attachment relationship. He told me I was courageous enough to let the attachment form and to form a deep and intimate relationship in the therapy.

I think the difference between us is really the T's we were dealing with. I tried to educate oldT and explain what was happening with us and what I needed from him and why. You did the same. My oldT did not and would not step up and educate himself and he was afraid of the relationship for whatever reason. He was not strong, or courageous and did not have integrity. Your T apparently has a strong enough sense of self that learning about new ways to do therapy did not scare him away from you. He was smart enough (with your help) to realize that what he had in his current tool box was not helping you and not what you needed and he had the desire to help you and to do the right thing for you. I think he should be commended for stepping up and even for disclosing this to you so that you could better understand the journey you have both been on.

Don't forget your role in this... you brought him scholarly articles and you did your research and found the information you needed. He was willing to read and learn. You are a great therapeutic dyad. My current T says he is always open to learning from his patients. He encouraged me to bring him anything I feel he should read and when I brought him General Theory of Love he bought it and read it. That was an amazing difference for me between my oldT and him. And one I badly needed to experience. OldT never read anything I gave him.

Back to your staying.... I think if you had continued to stay and he continued to cause you harm over time it would be a concern. But things began to change slowly and for the better and so it was the right thing you did to stay. The therapeutic relationship is very important and you already had that part down.

You should be proud of yourself that you actually changed the way your T looks at dependence and transference and he is educating himself to further help you. You have wrought huge change in a T who was practicing a long time and that is pretty impressive! One day there will be another patient who will thank you for this... for being a trailblazer with your T.

Hugs
TN

Liese & TN,
You both seem to have amazing T's and you are both so brave with the things you have both been working thru. Somehow I understand these things I guess because I must want to have such honest conversations but not likely to happen here. Seems like you are having to push them so hard to be understood but they are coming along...funny how that happens. I think you are both almost doing a lot of the healing for yourselves in a sense. Anyways, you both and everyone are such fighters. Keep moving it along!
Hopeful

Liese,
When I first read your message I was really impressed with the honestly and openess with both you and your T. When you mentioned that you feel ok with him I thought "good", because as I was reading up to that point I was feeling like you have stayed not only for yourself, but to help him along on his journey as a healer. What a gift you have given him!

Thanks for all the great replies and support. I was hoping to have my computer back by tonight but I am still working from my phone, which is frustrating.

((((BB)))) so glad To hear from you and I hope that my story gives you a little comfort in that maybe guruT just didn't know how To handle it all. It seems as though as my t reflected about it all and realized his part in others leaving therapy, that maybe now was just the right time for him to change. Maybe he wasn't ready before now or mature enough.

It did feel very good when he told me that he knew he was part of my pain now. That statement Alone told me that he really got it. And of course this validation was something I never got from my parents and always wanted so that too is really healing.

(((Alpaca)))

Yes I do think I sensed
That deep down he was a good person. He never blamed me for anything so that's the good news. He was just a bit insensitive at times when dealing with the transference and that led To some deep hurt. I just wonder why he was so threatened by it all if it's something that's commonplace? But he was always very encouraging and positive and there were a lot of good things.

(((TN))))

I love it when they get antibiotics. My 12 year old had a sore throat a month ago but It wasn't strep. She was really sick for s long time and missed four days of school. I kept calling the doctor asking, are you sure it wasn't strep? I finally insisted they check her for mono which showed that she had it in the past (who knew?) but didn't have it presently.

Thanks for being so supportive of both me and t. I do agree with your t about all the reasons you stayed and they were probably why I stayed also. If it wasn't for the information on the Internet and this website, I would have in fact left him about 15 months ago. If I was younger and less confident (although I am not feeling that confident now) I probably would have left him also. And even though he was uncomfortable with it all, it was never that big of an issue where he felt he couldn't treat me anymore. So I wasn't picking up on those vibes. The sometimes insensitive vibes yes. But he always reassured me that he could help me and I was welcome to stay as long as I want to. So there were positives.

Thanks for saying he and I are s great dyad. That's a great way of looking at it. I do feel quite a bit jarred by the whole disclosure but hope I will be able to resolve any doubts i have.

(((HOPEFUL))))

Thanks for saying I am so strong. Ive been with my t for four years now and couldn't imagine having had any of these conversations even 15 months ago. The first one was so hard and the second one really hard too. They are all really hard actually even now but at least I am not as afraid anymore that he's going Ti terminate therapy or laugh at me. The emotional content still hurts. So maybe when you are ready you too will be having these conversations.
It is getting easier to identify what it is I am feeling. And I am also realizing that it helps me and my therapy so much more if I talk to t about things. I was doing therapy kind of parallel Ti Him for a very long time. I would pick his brain, go home and read some books and then decide for myself how and what I needed Ti do in order Ti heal - all without talking to t about it. Sometimes I was right but sometimes I came Ti faulty conclusions. Much better to work with someone.

((()RAVEN))))

Yes t has said that I helped him grow. I just wish his growth didn't hurt me so much. But honestly, I am a professional who has been home with my kids for 16 years. Right before I left my job, I made a people pleasing mistake. I didn't want To say no Ti someone about something. I had the work done. It wasn't a matter if that. It was am assertion problem. So this other person didnt file the papers on time and my client wound up Losing her house. Thank goodness she only had $8,000.00 in equity in it and she probably would have lost it eventually anyway. But I got sued for malpractice very early in my career. My people pleasing has had some very disastrous consequences for me. Ive beaten myself up mercilessly for years because of it.

And so in a big way, t is teaching me something. That we all make mistakes. And no one, literally no one, is Perfect. And when we avoid the mistake and try To cover it up and not own up to it, that's where the real problem is. So its been a mutual Learning experience For both t and I Oh but it doesn't take the pain away. It's all still there unfortunately. Thanks for your support.

Xoxoxoxoxoxoxox
Love
Liese

Liese - I am so encouraged by your T's willingness to admit the challenges he has faced. My T has done the same at times, admitted where he feels he mis-stepped, talked about the way our work together is changing either his perspective or his methodology. I have such a dreadful ambivalence about it, feeling really good that someone might change the way they do things to help me, while at the same time, dreadful for having affected someone else (not something that was ever allowed without shame or punishment). But, there is no shame here. T is owning the part that is his and genuinely seeking your best, I feel.

As far as why someone else would leave and you would stay and work through it, I don't think either decision is really wrong. I do think, however, staying and fighting to be heard, understood and accepted is a very brave choice. I have been tempted to run away time after time in therapy, so I know what it means to stay through it. I don't think there is anything bad about it. You made your best effort to understand what was happening through outside research and consultation. You brought T into your experience and both of you were able to grow individually and in the therapeutic relationship as a result. It probably brought you closer to that pain more quickly than just finding someone who already worked in the way you and T are doing now, but the fact that you have a successful therapeutic experience is largely due to your resilience and perseverance and that is something to be proud of, probably something your T is both proud of and grateful for. (((Liese))) Thank you so much for sharing.

((((YAKU))))

Thank you for your thoughts. It was helpful to hear your story. I had forgotten that your T has made changes to meet your needs.

I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that I'm in therapy to change myself and not to change the world but then what winds up happening is that my T does in fact change to meet my needs. It seems paradoxical. Maybe the answer is that we are humans and can't help but have an effect on people that we interact with.

I do feel like a lot of pressure is now off and I can relax and be who I am. I don't have to feel ashamed or embarrassed of my feelings for him or hide them or cry alone at home trying to cope. That should be a really positive benefit of all of this. And since I've always felt like I didn't exist, wasn't important, like garbage to be kicked out of the way, the fact that I have had an impact on someone else's life in such a positive way should be really healing for me. It might just take time to appreciate it.

I am feeling better about staying. Aside from my emotional tether to my T that kept me there, he was always supportive and optimistic (except when dealing with the transference) and he has been there for me and went through a lot of life stressors with me since I started therapy with him. So there are a lot of positives. I also had done some reading on transference and attachment so I knew I wasn't a total freak and just kind of hung in there, hoping that it would all resolve at some point.

Thanks again for sharing with me.

xoxo

Liese

Wow, Liese. This is huge!

I can relate to what a relief it is when you don't have to hide your feelings or feel ashamed of them. I'm glad you are in a place where you can relax and not worry about that.

Thanks LG,

It's so nice to see you around. You've been missed. How have things been?

Xoxo
Liese

Ohhh I am so late to this thread, but couldn’t not comment. Wow! is the first thing I have to say, that your T not only didn’t know how to work with transference, but more importantly, that he’s been HONEST about it to you. That’s mindblowing on many fronts and I expect has turned your world (or at least your therapy world) upside down.

I love the way you are seeing it all so positively though – you really do have a strong bond with your T . If it were me I’d be seriously doubting everything so I have to admire that you can continue to see the good points in all of this.

Have you had a session since this disclosure? How did it go? How are you feeling about it all now?

Hugs to you ((((( Liese ))))))

LL

Hi LL,

So nice to see you. I'm still really trying to understand it all intellectually. The problem, *I think*, might be related to something that I just found out yesterday during my session and that is that T has never had feelings for someone that have not been reciprocated. And, so he does not have an emotional template for what I have been going through, the pain and the longing and the neediness.

And I think what happened was that he was responding to my questions about how he felt about me in a purely intellectual, cover-my-butt kind of way. Like, of course, I don't love you, that would be wrong. BUT, he never counterbalanced it with, but I really like working with you, I really want the best for you, I care about you. And, so, as I said somewhere else, I felt as though my head just cracked open on the sidewalk. He didn't seem to know that he needed to catch me or let me down more gently. It was just flat out REJECTION.

And, so it's been a bit hard to accept his *caring* when I don't know what that feels like for him. I don't have HIS template. Months ago, I had asked him if he couldn't just love me like he loves his dog and he said no. I didn't think that was asking too much but apparently he did. I brought that up yesterday and told him what I was really needing from him that day and where I get confused and I don't know what his caring feels like and he did finally tell me (after much badgering and quoting AG's T and TN's T) that he cares about me more than he cares about his dog. So, I'm very confused. I don't know what the distinction is.

He said that it's not about quantity. It's about quality. (OR maybe type?)


I think my emotional repertoire consists of desire, pain, longing, grief and maybe some hate and anger thrown in there too. And that is what I have experienced with him. I don't know what his emotional world feels like. And so how do I trust his *caring*. If he doesn't feel desire, then it has to be one of those other emotions, right? Well, at least that's the way my brain works. Or, it could all be out of a textbook and very detached and clinical. Oh, this is what Liese needs to feel and this is how we make her feel this way.

I dunno, LL, I'm getting screwed up somewhere. Maybe it's because I just don't have that new template yet.

The important thing for me now is that he knows and he's sensitive to catching me before my head hits the sidewalk. He said he is.

Sorry if I sound all twisted. It's because I feel all twisted.

xoxoxo

Love,

Liese

quote:

Maybe the answer is that we are humans and can't help but have an effect on people that we interact with.

Liese, you are an inspiration!

AWWWW, NINN, that was really nice! I came back to add that I also have fear, shame, disgust,annoyance, and sadness in my emotional repertoire. Oh, gosh, I'm seeing a huge absence of positive emotions, except for desire, which I'm not so sure is positive.

Ack Liese I can see why you are confused if your T has been doing the ‘but of course I don’t love you I’m a T’ routine and has been unwilling to admit to even innocuous feelings towards you, and now is trying to convince you that he does care and is capable of understanding your feelings and being there to stop you cracking your head open on the sidewalk. So you’re quite rightly wondering whether you and he are talking about the same thing.

When you say you don’t know what the distinction is, do you mean between what his caring for his dog feels like and what his caring for you feels like? As in, they are two different things? I have to say I don’t really get what he means by the difference between quantity and quality. I suppose it sort of makes sense on an intellectual level but I’m damned if I can really understand it. Did that comment make sense to you?

Oh lol reading your list of feelings that you are familiar with and can label, that’s me too. Got me thinking though about the dearth of positive feelings so I wondered if I could come up with some to add to your list. I take it by desire you mean ‘wanting’ generally and not just restricted to sexual desire? How about, excitement, satisfaction, achievement, pleasure, pride, love, liking, finding something funny (humour?), calm, confidence (all of which I’m using in their emotional meaning, as fleeting and changing feelings rather than an ongoing emotional state – so with confidence for instance, you could feel confident once in a while about certain things or your own capabilities vis a vis specific things, as opposed to BEING in a state of ongoing confidence.) The trouble is there seem to be infinitely more negative feelings than positive (makes sense when you think that of the four primary feelings, three of them are negative – the odds are stacked against us .)

Sorry for the sidetrack, I really meant to say that I can really relate to having a limited repertoire of recognized and easy to identify feelings. Maybe part of your task now is to learn from T and his template what the others feel like? Just a thought.

Anyway I am glad you are still feeling relatively positive and have confidence that he will catch you before you hit the concrete. At least, as you said, he now KNOWS.

((((( Liese ))))

LL

Hi LL, Yes it is all very confusing and I'm confused myself. He loves his dog more than me but cares more about me than he does about his dog. And yes, by desire, I do mean wanting generally and not necessarily related to sexual feelings. I'm sorry to say, LL, that not that many of those positive feelings are in my toolbox as of the present moment. I do get excited occassionally and sometimes feel liking or maybe even love. Sometimes humor. But they are all fleeting and unfortunately, the negative ones predominate my being.

Monte, Always nice to see you no matter how late to the party you are! I figured you would understand. What DOES it feel like? And, yes, are they just making a decision to act a certain way? And, yes, I want affection too. I want to FEEL that he has affection for me. And that's aside from the physcial comfort I want.

So many needs, Monte.

xoxo

Liese

Liese, I just want to add that although you might not realize it, you already have compassion in your emotional repertoire. It's obvious based on your responses to other people on this board.

Alpaca, those are tears of gratitude. Oh, I can add gratitude to my list.

quote:

Oh, I can add gratitude to my list.