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Lamplighter · Apr 03, 2014, 04:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aloneandafraid

Just thought I would mention (probably not relevant but....) the other week I was ready to give up and I felt this intense frustration that I have made no progress in the year I have been seeing T. In fact, I am in a much worse place now than I was this time last year although I have had a lot of things happen (bereavements, job loss, illness to deal with). Anyway - my T said (on more than one session) that she thinks my frustration with her at not moving on is actually anger at not getting my needs met in RL. I dont know if this resonates at all - Im sorry if its way off topic but just thought I would share. I do actually feel angry with the world at the moment and desperately want to get past this - I want to feel empathy and connection with my T which at the moment Im not sadly. She also keeps voicing the positives to every situation which is extremely annoying. She just doesnt have any experience of what I am going through. This makes me angry but i also feel guilty for feeling angry. I am just mixed up. Please forgive stupid post!

((((((( Aloneandafraid )))))))

Not a stupid post at all, you describe pretty much what I go through, often. I’m sorry though you’re having such a hard time dealing with feeling like you’ve made no progress (I can very much sympathize with that one!) and it sounds like you’ve been having a rubbish year of it all up

What your T says about the frustration being down to not getting needs met in real world certainly does resonate, for sure I’m not and haven’t had many needs met out there and yes that’s at the bottom of a lot of my issues. BUT I’m in therapy specifically to try and get some of those needs met - which may or may not be a really stupid thing for me to be doing/expecting – and therefore I find it a tad disingenuous when a T passes the buck in that way by blaming external factors and not looking at what’s going on in the room. But I get how feeling angry, especially at the whole world (snap!) but also specifically at T, can make you feel guilty. And how much nicer and better and generally more pleasant everything would be if only we could feel warm and fuzzy and close to our Ts. Fat chance of that for me I’m afraid

I also sympathize very much with how you must feel with your T constantly pointing out the positives when in fact, you’re feeling bad about things and could do with some understanding and validation, rather than that gung ho cheerful kind of opposition (which by the way I find incredibly dismissive and invalidating, but that’s me...)

I hope you can persevere and find very soon that you have indeed made progress. I’m told (and just have to take it on faith) that change and progress in therapy is like a creeping thing, you don’t really notice it at the time. Maybe you actually are making progress and just don’t know it, yet. Got to hope haven’t we?

Thanks for your post