Hi All---I’ve been wanting to update you all on how things are going in therapy but most days I feel sort of wordless and even if I can find some words I don’t seem to make a lot of sense.
We had 3 or 4 sessions where I was feeling less anxious and began to share more about my past with T. We had a session where I began to tell him of my varied and long work history hoping it would help both of us make sense of why I have been struggling so horribly with work issues over the past three years. Of course it was all too long to tell him in one session and he stopped me midway because we were out of time which then caused a really bad reaction when I was leaving him. It seems that I am overwhelmed with feelings that it was stupid to share that or that I will never now be able to finish the story or that he really was not interested or that I just didn’t talk fast enough… (We still need to address some of this) To make things worse… once again when I was leaving I saw him with his wife hanging out outside the office when I drove away. This once again had me reeling from I don’t know what. I managed not to call him about this but pretty much blocked him out of my mind for the next 3 days until I saw him again. I asked him if he could please give me a few minutes to leave the parking lot before going out with her because it’s difficult for me.
We then had a conversation where he worked to have me accept that we have a good and solid relationship and that he respects me and my hard work and he gave me examples of how well we work together, etc. But once again I was not sure we were working on the same issue and I end up frustrated and surly in session and then I leave and email T. This time I emailed him and told him I was not feeling any better after our conversation. In fact, I told him that the emotional component is missing from our work and that he does not prompt me with enough questions about how I “feel” as opposed to him telling me how good we are together because I don’t believe that is helping me. I told him this would be a right brain type of processing that we need to do but it was missing from our work and maybe because I am too scared to go there. He told me that I need to walk towards him to get through this and he would make sure I was safe. I don’t seem to be willing or able to do this.
Anyway, we exchanged 3 emails discussing this where he asked me on the last one to clarify exactly what was going on for me. So I flat out told him that having his wife on the other side of the wall and seeing them together all the time was interfering with my trying to build our own relationship because that then felt wrong and his real life in my face was causing me to shut him out completely and reject any attachment and then when I do see him again I am so anxious that he will be angry with me because I have this issue in the first place and I can’t seem to get past it and it’s causing our bond to deteriorate. And I was then afraid I would lose him and that felt like death.
He responded that he would think about what to do to get us through this issue and he thanked me for my clarity about it and that we can get through this and I am worth all the work we will have to do.
So when I saw him yesterday we tried to talk a bit about this. I do think my issues with having his wife around are so complex and multi-layered that it’s almost impossible for me to even articulate to him. I’ve tried numerous times. There are the bad experiences with oldT and his wife. There is a bad experience with “C” and his nasty ex-girlfriend. There is my Dad not protecting me from mom. There is my feelings of total worthlessness that I am always struggling with and how that becomes more magnified when I see the wife’s big “M.S.” nameplate on the door which she got just when I was also graduating with my B.S. and how stupid it was for me to celebrate that with T when he had a “real” family celebration going on and how mine seems so cheap and irrelevant. I cannot even talk to him about school because of this and how that impacts me and my grief surrounding this topic. I just feel like he cannot understand. There are a lot of topics I stop from telling him because I can’t get past her being on the other side of a thin wall and I never know if I’m going to see her when I walk out of his office. Plus, there is this feeling that I don’t really matter and what we have is fake and contrived because I get to see a glimpse of what his REAL life is REALLY all about and that does not include me and makes me realize that our is not real. I know he would argue with me about this.
So yesterday … again…. We go back to our relationship. I’m tired of talking about it. I just cannot “FEEL” anything. He reminds me of nice things he knows about me and I just nod. He tells me he cares about me and then we discussed attachment. He wants me to use our attachment to become stronger and more resilient. But I cannot even admit the attachment. Then he went on to ask me what attachment feels like and finally when I would not give him the answer he was looking for… he tells me that attachment is love. Love is a four letter word in therapy for me. I tell him that what if I do accept that and believe it… then I will just lose it like I lost all my other attachment figures. That I cannot risk accepting it because then I will lose it. He asked me “what if you don’t lose it and it helps you?”
He tells me he is attached to me. He tells me that he cannot change his attachment because it has a life of its own and that it belongs to me and he cannot take it back. So if he’s feeling attachment does that mean he’s feeling LOVE? This is really scary to me. How can this be? How can I take this in because I am really struggling to understand what he means and I cannot FEEL it. It’s like I’m blocked. I do understand that he is trying to solidify the relationship before doing any serious trauma work so that I have our relationship to contain me. But this is just SO hard to take in. It’s like I have a really thick defensive wall or even that I’m shot full of Novocain and am numb.
Meanwhile I am still frustrated because I don’t have a solution to my reactions to his wife being around and we have not processed those feelings so each time I have to go see him I’m really anxious before I even get to his office. Mostly, I’m feeling confused and hopeless. I can’t even envision a solution.
Do any of you struggle with taking in the good stuff? With seeing yourself as good and worthy with lots of attributes and talents? How does one get past those worthless feelings? And any advice on processing the wife being around would be gratefully accepted. I just don’t know what to do and I’m feeling like a total failure at therapy right now.
Thanks.
TN
Original Post
I know you know that, too! I don't know how it was worked on, time? Also I've had a ton of "therapy units" there were points for two years I saw her 3-5 days a week (an hour each) and my other T once a week. On top of that... She called me every day in the morning to check in and at night. This was mostly during a period of time I had problems needing to go to the hospital. I've been through significant chronic suicidal feelings. That's a lot of contact... Years of contact in a short time. I see her regularly now (and before the intensive time - she considered our therapy IOP by the way) 2x a week which feels like nothing now. So - it's taken a damn long time and a lot of insane effort on both sides.
