Quote:
Originally Posted by Perna
You are not learning to trust yourself and practice learning your own self-soothing skills (babies have to be left to cry before sleep so they can learn to make the transition into sleep by themselves) and you are collaborating with the dangerous twin fantasies that you can have T anytime you want and that T is her voice.
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I have to respectfully disagree. My three boys learned to sleep on their own without ever being left to cry. I was able to meet their needs for nighttime parenting, and they were able to transition to sleeping through the night, in their rooms, on their own and in their own time.
In the same way, I think that as we are learning to self-soothe, it is okay to ask T to meet some needs that T is able to meet. Can T come home with me and take care of me 24/7? No. But he can leave me a phone message to help me hang onto the connection between sessions. I know I can't have T anytime I want, and I know that T is not his voice. And I also know that, for me, learning to hang onto the safety of the connection has been a process, and T has been more than willing to leave me phone messages to help me through that process.
I am really of the belief that when our needs are met, we will come to a point of being able to meet our own needs in our own time. When I started therapy, I was "independent" to the point of ridiculousness. I was SO independent that it made me sick enough to have to go to therapy because I was slipping quickly into an abyss I didn't think I could pull myself out of. Over time, as I developed trust in T, I became quite dependent. I couldn't "have" T all of the time, but I did rely on him quite a bit to meet needs I never even knew I had. It didn't happen overnight, but I am gradually becoming interdependent. I am able to live in the world now in a much more gentle and authentic way. I am better able to identify what I can handle myself and what I need help with. I am willing to let myself be vulnerable enough to admit to the people around me that just as they need my help, I need theirs. Allowing T to care for me with gentleness and authenticity is part of how I learned that.
I do think that asking to have my needs met is one of the biggest lessons I learned in therapy. Zoo, I totally get needing a message from T, and being scared to ask for it. Asking is taking a risk. I wonder if next time, you will feel safe enough to take that risk? For me, asking to have my needs met is very empowering.
