Quote:
Originally Posted by bpd2
Therapy for me has largely been reparenting by a stable adult who "sees" me and who accepts me even at my most volatile. Once we established the accepting, the parenting job, just like the natal one, is to give me the tools I need to be independent. When your therapist took you on, they accepted the job of helping you to help yourself...think of it as physical therapy...they give you the excercises you need in order to heal properly and as completely as properly. In the end, they aren't our parents...they are our therapists. ...........Doesn't mean I won't be sending Christmas cards (and Halloween cards) for the rest of my life, and calling up every once in awhile to ask for a few sessions about a particular problem.......
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I think this is very true. There is a natural progression from external soothing (from the therapist) to internal soothing and regulation (from me). It's what children naturally do - evolve into adulthood.
It doesn't mean that we stop loving our therapists, or those charged with modeling and parenting for us, but we learn to love ourselves more and better. It's a step that we must take to be truly free and have agency of our own.
I know it took several years and several rounds of "trying on" the adult me before that progression could fruitfully proceed. The lure of instant gratification and soothing from the therapist can be a powerful, but ultimately self-defeating action for me at least.
I'm grateful that my therapist doesn't have email, or an immediate form of communication other than talking. If I wanted to get something out, I would have to write a letter, take it to his office, and invariably no matter how I wanted to anonymously leave it and slurk away - he would appear and I had to face him. He's terrible on the phone - utterly completely terrible. Perhaps by design, I don't know. The end result was that I had to sit with feelings, work them, wrangle them to the ground. Looking back, it helped a lot.