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sister said:
I have been entertaining the idea of relying on T and getting what I need from the relationship. What this means for me is that I have to open my heart, and that is so very frightening.

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That is so scary. I understand completely. ((((sister)))) I think you are doing it already, and there will be many temptations to pull back. Maybe the disconnecting mid week is a way to protect yourself from the intensity of opening yourself up to T, and with time and practice and increasing comfort in the closeness of the relationship, you will not need to do that anymore.

I think that many people go to therapy and have to work hard with T to let him/her in, to let feelings surface that we have submerged for years and years, behind many defenses. When we let those things surface, we need a person to attach to and help fill the void and reassure against the terror. Thus, the T, standing there waiting to be the one. It just makes it easier to unravel oneself if there is someone there to be with us. This was not intuitive to me at all, but that is how it has seemed.

There has been an interesting discussion later in this thread on depending on self vs. others.
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mouse wrote:
I sometimes think, wow what do I do now with that space where I've made everyone so important to my surival? Well I use it to make myself more important to myself. I have more internal dialouge going on, instead of looking outside of me to others to depend on...

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sister wrote:
I depend heavily on others--to define me. Working on looking within now.

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I see a bit of that in myself, perhaps, but maybe even more so, I see the opposite. I am very bad at depending on others. I am an island and have even prided myself on that, on being self sufficient, on needing no one. I remember as a little girl, in the repeated firestorms of my mother screaming at the top of her lungs at me, at point blank range, with my not being allowed to go anywhere or say anything as she did this, that I had a mantra I would recite in my head, over and over, "I don't need anyone, I don't need anyone, I don't need anyone." This helped me get through my childhood, and it is still with me as an adult. I try to overcome it. Something my first counselor helped me work on was learning that I cannot do it all alone, that it is OK to reach out to other people for support. She said, as my counselor, she could not do it all, and I needed to develop an outside support network of family and friends to help me through the tough times. This was perhaps the most valuable thing I got from her--beginning to strive to not be so insular and self-contained. It doesn't come naturally for me because of my childhood history, but in the last year and a half, I have tried to cultivate my outside relationships and accept that there are other people who care and worry about me and are willing to help. If I will let them. My relationship with my 2 sisters has improved. And my mother. And some friendships too. Perhaps this was partly even the reason I left this first counselor and found an even more helpful and supportive therapist--I was building up my network and admitting to myself I couldn't do it all on my own.

Anyway, I have felt that for me in therapy, it has been somewhat the opposite, that I have needed to learn to depend on others, rather than not depending on them and focusing on myself for sole support. Because I am a very strong individual. I don't need more me, but more other. Does that make sense?