Alexandra,

I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your concern for me and for this thread. It's complicated to try to explain the dynamics between me and my T. She sees a side of me that I don't show to everyone, at least not at the beginning of relationships. I get stuck in this pattern, where I get people to be sympathetic towards me and want to help me, which feels good, but I am addicted to the victim, I need help, please rescue me role. I never mean to hurt anyone, but I am too needy, and keep wanting more, and eventually people start to see through it and feel taken advantage of, and then they hate me and never want to have anything to do with me again. The cycle tends to take about two years, sometimes more. I reached that point with T several months ago, and she almost did quit. She used to write to me (we have done mostly e-therapy so far, but switching to f2f now) in a gentle, caring way, but now she is very short with me and mostly she picks apart what I am doing wrong, offering little or no encouragement or acceptance or praise. I am where I am now because I failed to respond properly to positive stuff when it was there, so now I have lost it.

I have been through quite a few different therapists already over something like 18 years, and the current one has tried just about every method available (a bit here and a bit there). I'm not as bad as I used to be, and I've made it farther with her than any of the others. When I get a chance I want to study DBT in depth on my own, since I think there is a lot in it that I could benefit from. But that concept that you can accept yourself where you are and still have need of change is a really hard one for me. Accepting myself is hard, period. Again, maybe not as hard as it was. I just have so many things that I need to change that I can't even keep track of them, let alone see past them. I crave acceptance, but continually reject it when offered because I can't let myself have it.

I have thought seriously about starting with a new T again, but for now I think that it is more important to work my way through the pattern I am stuck in and find a better outcome. If I started over, it would probably take another couple of years for the pattern to repeat again, and they may or may not recognize it or know what to do with it.

For now, I do appreciate the acceptance that I receive from my friends at PC, and I hope that I am giving back as much as I take. I think that it helps that there are so many of you, so that one person doesn't just get burned out from trying to deal with me.

Sincerely,
Rap