Quote:
Originally Posted by peaches100
The intolerable part is how I feel when I've bitten the bullet to ask for what I need (hate to ask!)...only to be overlooked or offered a 1 or 2 line catch phrase that doesn't actually provide what I need. Instead, it makes me feel that either that my suffering/needs are not important to my t, or that she didn't deem them valid enough to give more than a 30-second glance and response. It's the exact same way I experienced my relationship with my parents, especially my mom. In fact, I can remember as a 4th grader being sternly scolded for calling my mom too much at work. My parents would threaten to spank me if I called her more than once per day. My t knows this. Yet that is how I feel in my relationship with my t as well.
I do think that I need a higher level of care; unfortunately, my husband is disabled and I work full-time as the breadwinner in the family. We don't really have the money to pay for much extra therapy.
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This made my infinitely sad about the state of things. It is so clear you deserve what you need, don't need so very much, put to good & thoughtful use what you are given. Therapy is tragic for C trauma survivors and people with very tenuous attachment bc therapist seem to be actually trained to be less giving than in other helping professions of their time. I think they see themselves as natural resources their patients threaten to deplete, rather than that doing excellent work with their patients might renew and fulfill them, as well as help us. When I was young and taught in a boarding prep school, "boundary" was a BAD word meaning lazy to my boss. It was all adults on deck, 7 days a week from 7am to 11 pm , and our time to ourselves was the long breaks/vacations . That is extreme and all consuming as a lifestyle, but to treat people suffering such anguish 50 minutes once a week seems stingy and prone to fail with some very worthwhile and worthy people who were hurt through not fault of their own. My T has young children, and I while he is so good in session, astute, attuned, bright, everything you could want, he really doesn't care to connected outside of session and nor would I dare complain about that. Nonetheless, I remember how total immersion environments like NoLS, Outward Bound, and boarding school expect from their staffs in terms of emotional availability, and I just wonder- do these people care enough , do they regard their work as a calling or a job or a career? I find the worldview/perspective of my T eludes me, and the reason it does is bc he goes to great pains to hide it! I would love to see a comparison of how much time people of the same education level put into their helping professions in terms of hours against how much they are paid. For example, if I have a PH'd and work Teach For America in an inner city school and deeply care about the kids in my classes- plan lessons, do the extras, coach a sport, grade papers with individual notes for each kid ,plus mentor younger teachers - how many more hours do I put into my job than a private practice T? In prep schools it is literally 100 plus hour weeks week after week. My neighbor is head of a nonprofit hospice and puts in crazy hours per week- 80, 90. My T definitely works harder for less money than the psychiatrist , but definitely works less hard/less hours for more money than people teaching kids , often with the same kind of credentials. I might have a bias from the good people I know in my personal life who are nurses, social workers, teachers etc and go the extra mile as a philosophy, to see Peaches ' T as being cruel to let her down.