Quote:
Originally Posted by retro_chic
Thanks for your reply! I understand where you're coming from. I don't really think T has done anything to make me feel worse other than take a vacation/holiday over the christmas time which triggered feelings of abandonment. T is aware of my issues surrounding that and it something we talk about often. I think the problem is that the timing was really bad and all these external factors triggered me at the same time as T being away. Hopefully once I get back into my regular therapy routine everything will settle down a bit.
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Seems to me that if therapy induces feelings of dependency and then the therapist goes on holiday/vacation/leave and the client experiences this as distressing or as a virtual abandonment, the therapist has in fact done something wrong. The mistake is in provoking strong needs in a context where by design the client will be left to their own devices for long periods (even the separation between sessions). If you shower someone with attention for an hour every week, in this ritualistic fashion, people become habituated to it. If there is a forced break while the therapist lies on a beach somewhere, some clients are going to freak out and have a withdrawal experience. And judging by what I read they will usually self-blame and self-pathologize, even though the process has inflicted this cruelty on them. I went thru this.