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Soliaree said:
Is this how people who don't have mental issues feel?

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">I think there is a great diversity in how people feel, whether they have mental issues or not. (I'm not even sure what that phrase means!) For example, there are some people who are what is called "black and white thinkers", and this is an entrenched thought pattern where people either see all good or all bad in a situation or a person. Something is either all or nothing. E.g., the therapist is either all-wise and perfect or he is a totally incompetent schmuck. Do you know what I mean? But there are many people who do not consider themselves to have mental issues who think this way.

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So, I went from idealizing/devaluing(sp?) T (mostly idealizing) to feeling both at the same time?

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">It kind of sounds that way. Maybe rather than feeling the two extremes at the same time you can instead move toward feeling the shades of gray in between, like "my T is a normal guy, a human being, he is very helpful to me, but sometimes he doesn't understand me and that's disappointing, but hey, it's also OK and normal--it just means that sometimes I have to explain things better." There are no extremes there, just the feelings "in between." Sometimes a result of giving up the black and white thinking is less anger and hurt because then you are not so disappointed when a person fails to live up to your unrealistic, extreme expectations.

I got kind of sidetracked with the B/W thinking, but overall, yes, it can be very hard to deal with multiple feelings at once! But it's a normal part of existence and something we can learn to do better. Great thing to work on in therapy.