Quote:
Originally Posted by PreacherHeckler
From my perspective you still seem to be doing this work out of fear, because you are afraid of losing the relationship with your therapist. I still see your focus as being primarily on the relationship -- on making sure you comply -- so that she doesn't refer you to another therapist.
Several years ago I had a therapist whose boundaries changed, and I was always the one who was blamed for not respecting those boundaries, and I tried very hard to comply because I didn't want to lose her. But the rules changed arbitrarily, and sometimes she broke her own rules "for my benefit" and other times one rule contradicted another, so if I followed one rule I was inadvertently breaking another. What you are doing reminds me very much of my own process when I desperately wanted to salvage the relationship. The problem is, it never worked because the therapist was the one who couldn't keep consistent boundaries, but somehow I was supposed to be able to respect those boundaries even as they kept changing.
You are working very hard, no doubt. But you'll never be on steady ground unless she stops shifting it beneath your feet.
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Thanks, PH. I see where you're coming from and it makes sense. The initial reason for starting all this processing was that fear. For the past couple of days, I've been doing it because I want to do it for ME and it's changed my perspective of things. That's why I'm going to initiate a conversation about boundaries Wednesday. It MUST be discussed before I go any further. If it continues, I know what I must do; it's not what I want to do, but I have to be prepared for that possibility. Like I keep saying; I believe everything happens for a reason. I'm starting to see that boundaries are like fences; they delineate "personal property" (what we will/will not do/put up with), and fences have gates. So mild flexibility in one's boundaries is okay, but as of late, T's boundaries seem to be comprised of rubber. It has to stop.