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Originally Posted by magicalprince
Pretty much the whole way, she consistently encouraged me to need her more, depend on her more, trust her more, be more vulnerable, be more intimate. And she acted like she was different and could be different than what I experienced with people in the past, all the while acknowledging why I might be afraid to do that. And when I actually did the real version of the things she encouraged me to do, she couldn't handle it.
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This emotional seduction and enmeshment sounds a LOT like mine. I don't think my T was following any plan or conscious process. She was mostly just reacting. And then, yea, she couldn't handle it either. Like someone said -- it's like two children playing with a live bomb.
Sorry if you already mentioned this and maybe you'd rather not say, but were there openly expressed romantic/sexual feelings going in one or both directions? For me there was a mutual emotional/spiritual/intellectual connection. But in the area of physical or sexual attraction, it
appeared to be unrequited. That was a core wound.
Quote:
Originally Posted by magicalprince
A perfect T would be able to do both--meet me at my level but lift me out of it too. My T couldn't do that, and that's my one major complaint. T ideally would not have ended the therapy once it got difficult and ideally would have recognized that it was going in the right direction. But at least I was able to do that for myself. Maybe I just outgrew my T, or the outgrew the specific combination of T and me together. It's not that T created more new harm relative to what anyone else would have created, it's just that she happened to be the person I enacted my ultimately harmful patterns with.
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How would a T lift you out? I cannot visualize how that would happen for me, or for anyone really. The thing about she was the one you enacted the harmful patterns with -- I can see that. Though for me it was very much about the individual. I don't see the pain I went through with her as inevitable. It was very much about the situation and the individual.
Quote:
Originally Posted by magicalprince
I used to resent the claims of therapy and therapists, that this was safe, that it could protect me, all that stuff, I thought it was a load of crap. And I still think that. I don't think therapy is much better than any old relationship. I don't think therapists are generally much better than normal people at it. But, most people are imperfect, most people don't have it fully together in life and learning to wade and sift through the crap is unfortunately par for the course..... if there was one good thing about therapy, it's that at least the framework of therapy prevented me from creating real-life, long-term obligations to my T, that I might have created to someone else I ended up in a similar situation with.
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I do see where you are coming from. For me circumstances make it such applying what I learned in therapy is difficult or impossible right now, and so the experience just burns in me like poison. And it was so painful and destructive on so many levels that it just overloaded the circuits. People sometimes come to therapy as a last resort or in a state of desperation, backed into a corner. And if therapy itself turns into yet
another source of pain and anguish and rejection, it really could destroy someone. And by someone, I mean me, but also others.
For me it is about accountability rather than blame. I know what I brought into the process, that is mine to own. But I came out in a much worse place. Much of my wrath is directed at the system that trained, licensed, and supervised my T. And then failed to setup safeguards or interventions for when things go bad, when the T is spiraling out of control and is wounding the client over and over. Even some of the other T's that I saw threw salt in my wounds. They were quick to invalidate to protect themselves and the institution.
I am carrying on like this thread is about me. Hope you are getting something from this dialog.