T emailed me last Friday to see how I was after the hard session I'd had on Tuesday. I was surprised to get her email and it felt nice to know she was concerned enough to contact me to ask. It's nice to feel cared for when I try to not remember that it is just a professional duty.
I wrote back telling her things weren't good and that I was scared. That was a week ago and I haven't heard back from her. Now I feel hurt and disappointed and confused. I wondered if I was being irrational to expect a response but when I told Ad about it he too felt that she should have gotten back to me at least to acknowledge my response.
I have been trying to figure out why she didn't write back or contact me. I have come up with several theories as to why she didn't get in touch again and none of them make me feel any better about it. Maybe she's busy (too busy to take one minute to reply?). Maybe she is trying to punish me? Maybe all she wanted to do was check I was still alive and by my response she made a psychological assessment that I would survive until the next session? Maybe she just didn't think it required a response? Maybe she's trying to prepare me for her impending abandonment. Maybe she just thinks I am looking for attention and that I'm exaggerating? Maybe she was just hoping I would say I was fine and had never planned to send more than one email and having that fixed view stuck with it even though I wasn't fine. Maybe she didn't get the email? Maybe she hates me? Maybe she just doesn't care.
I wish now that she hadn't contacted me at all. I don't know what I wanted but some kind of acknowledgement would have been appropriate I think. When things like this happen, someone inside screams at me with anger, for allowing us to be affected. It reminds me that I really am alone. It's an overreaction of feeling because it reflects the times I asked for help as a child or wished to be cared for by someone, only to see them turn away from me or hurt me. I'm SO angry at myself now for feeling so strongly about T. I'm angry at T and I'm angry at me. I hate being stuck in this pathetic endless and incurable state of wanting someone and wanting to run away at the same time; hoping for someone to care but knowing that they are going to hurt you.
Therapeutic relationships are so unnatural and unequal. Well, for me anyway. Maybe other people are much less affected by all of this. This is what I wanted to prevent after last time when the psychologist I saw before T left whom, I was only with for a few months. I was devastated by him leaving and I knew I never wanted to be affected by someone again that way. I did well to not feel for a while, but it's been two and a half years now with T and long ago I stopped being able to not allow myself to feel anything positive.
And the worst part? These feelings are over a stupid email that she probably hasn't even thought twice about since. What am I going to be like when she leaves? I know what it will be like. If I am honest and reflecting on how it was last. It's going to be really, really, really bad.
6 comments:
To be honest, I would feel the same. I'm sorry you are losing your current therapist. How is she planning to transition you to a new one?
I've been struggling with how I feel about my therapist. We have a much better relationship than my previous Tx, and I do trust her. But recently she has been tearing / crying in response to my emotions, and then she hugged me 2 sessions ago at the door when I was leaving, and last session she tried to hug me to calm me down when I was in distress but I said no (in a not so very nice way).
I feel sad, because I know she honestly cares, but I can't really make sense of the knowledge that it's just therapy, she's only caring for me in an hour once a week. I don't want to need her. And I know I'm pushing her out as 'punishment' for her attempts to bring us closer.
"I hate being stuck in this pathetic endless and incurable state of wanting someone and wanting to run away at the same time; hoping for someone to care but knowing that they are going to hurt you." ...that's pretty well on the money.
Can you ask your Tx why she didn't reply to your email? I think mine would want me to be honest how I felt, as helping to build trust is very important. After I rejected her attempt to hug me, she asked me if I was still okay to come to therapy next week, checking that I wasn't planning to bolt... (her words). I was so disconnected that I hadn't even realised that's how I felt -- like I wanted to run away, hurt myself, give up, die.
Maybe having some control over your transition would help you. Can you ask to meet the new person and arrange the transition to happen sooner rather than later? This waiting might be the worst part.
Do you not think that it's quite unprofessional for your therapist to try to hug you? Everything I've read says that phsyical contact of any kind is not recommended.
Feeling as I do about my T I would love to give her a hug sometimes yet at the same time I can't even manage to make eye contact with her most of the time and if she comes near to me I feel my body cringe.
Is it offputting that your T gets tearful? I read a study the other day about somatic countertransferance (goodness knows how I ended up on that one) and it surveyed clinical psychologists and I can't remember the statistic but it was something like 50-70% of therapists surveyed had experienced tearfulness in response to trauma patients. I guess they are humans at the end of the day.
The whole topic of her impending departure is confusing. We have only talked about it once since she told me last Dec and that was when I had a meltdown at Easter because she said she'd be away for three weeks. For the most part I 'forget' that she is going and it's only when things like Easter or this week happen that it reminds me that it will be happening. When we talked at easter she suggested we should come up with some kind of plan for an ending date and discuss the options. She also said we should do some work on the whys about my feelings of abandonment etc, but then when she tried to ask me about it at the next session I ended up dissociating really badly and since then, there has been so much going on in the sessions that we never came back to it. I feel like there is so much going on for me that the focus of our sessions changes so often and so it has gotten left behind again. I think the acknowledgment and acceptance that she is going is limited to not all of my parts too. Mostly it is just blanked out. I don't know that any of that makes sense.
"Can you ask your Tx why she didn't reply to your email?"
I find confrontation REALLY hard and I don't know if I would be able to do it. I think I could maybe ask but I imagine I couldn't express how it made me feel. Plus, I fear she might get defensive and I just feel too fragile for that.
It makes sense -- I can totally tell now when I'm dissociating to avoid a hard question and it makes me angry at myself, but in the end I'm just protecting myself from something that is too hard to handle. Everyone has to work at a pace that is safe to them and a good therapist will be able to manage your distress effectively.
I often use dissociation in order to communicate hard stuff to the therapist. I write it down also because saying the words is harder than writing it. This is working okay so far when I can't really touch on the feelings. I also try to dissociate my fears about her getting defensive and/or rejecting me. Hey, if we have the ability, might as well use it in our favour. Do you have that level of control yet? Mine isn't great, but I am definitely coping better this way.
I'll write about the hugs/tears in an entry. Been meaning to, but just have had a lot more on my mind.
PS: I left my last Tx rather than confront her and I'm still not sure I could do it. It's a totally different feeling with my current therapist and one I'm grateful for, despite her seeming lack of interest/belief in dissociative disorders. Feeling safe and trusting your therapist, even a little bit, is such an incredibly important part of therapy. Being able to confront her is a huge bridge towards healing yourself. I hope you'll be able to develop a trusting, safe relationship with your new therapist.
I just realised I didn't answer your question:
"I also try to dissociate my fears about her getting defensive and/or rejecting me. Hey, if we have the ability, might as well use it in our favour. Do you have that level of control yet? Mine isn't great, but I am definitely coping better this way."
In some ways I can control when I dissociate, but in other ways it's completely beyond my control. Sometimes I can choose to switch to another alter but at other times I wish one of the others would take over but they don't. I don't feel I can control other types of dissociation. I guess it is all subconsciously under control otherwise it wouldn't happen. I just don't feel I have the choice. I'd be interested to hear more about how you experience dissociation and how you go about controlling it, either here or in your blog at some point. C
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