Quote:
Originally Posted by Calilady
Here's what I question on these forums (and this isn't geared to anyone)...
Counting down the minutes to a therapy appointment.
Putting the T relationship above all other relationships.
Obsessing about the T relationship.
Repeatedly telling the T, who cannot reciprocate your feelings, how much you love and miss them- perhaps even desiring them- constantly.
Not being able to leave them, even if you haven't improved and even if it hurts too much (retraumatization?).
These are just some of the behaviors that many of us talk about and I'm guilty of as well, but this is not secure attachment. It makes me wonder if the T is aware of the client's feelings (I'd say, probably) and what they are doing about it. That's an entire other discussion, but its science that the more someone makes themselves unavailable to us, the more we want them and the T just can't reciprocate. For damaged people w/healing to do, it just is a tall order and I think that's evidenced on boards like these.
I'm totally GUILTY of these things myself...and I'm not securely attached.
I'm not saying it never works, but I don't find many people- after scouring boards- that have come out of it clean, on the other side. I'd love to read about the case studies where it as worked out and if anyone has that info, I'd be glad to take a look at it because it might help me. I wonder if some clients might be continuing a pattern of trying to get an unavailable person to love them (as in my case). I've read about people suffering for years with their T, only to be told, "You can't leave the T you're attached to, you have to work this out through them." But they are stuck in years of therapy. They can't leave because it's too painful and it's agonizing for them to stay.
When do you release the microscope that you're viewing your life through and just live it? People who are in therapy for 10+ years, can't leave their T, are too attached and living in fear that they might die or move...and the T knows about it and doesn't terminate because they have their own issues. I feel for those people and have chatted with those people. My heart goes out to them. They know what it looks like to be securely attached, but despite their best efforts, they have no idea how to accomplish this, even in years of therapy, even by doing what they were told to do and not leave their T...some even seem worse off for it.
It's a slippery slope. I'm sure it works for some, but there are so many dang variables in there, that it's tough to even gauge.
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completly agree with all of this and could not have said it better.
i do consider that i have come out the other side with the ending of my therapy and have moved past the attachment issues, but it was painfully messy and left me with new scars...some that were worse than the scars i actually showed up to therapy with in the first place. as if i traded one trauma for an entirely new one. but it wasn't the conventional methods in therapy that my ex-T was using that facilitated my ability to move through to the other side...it was more of the catalyst that ignited my desire to get the f*%$ out of there as unscathed as possible.
i find it utterly baffling, sometimes frustrating, but also completely intriguing, as to why so many of us who post here seem to have this exact same experince in therapy and why so often some people will just blindly accept that that is the way the therapy has to play out to get through this. like you said, calilady, i just don't see many who ever claim to have come out the other side unscathed and completely healed. and this is the part that frustrates me, because i don't see the evidence here, or on other online support forums, that the methods that many of the professionals are executing in therapy are helping us clients to over come our underlying early and primal fears that are the main contributors to these issues. if anything, some of their methods and beliefs are reinforcing those fears and ingraining them further.
when and where does all this unnecessary mind f*&%ing end? how much BS are people willing to continue to tolerate before they say enough is enough? these are just some questions that cross my mind when i come here and keep reading time and time again of clients going through the same crazy c*@p that i did and i can't help but to feel frustrated, sad, and angered for them.