Quote:
Originally Posted by peaches100
Hi Satsuma,
I'm glad your t allows the contact you need between sessions. If my t was OK with me having that same level of contact, it would work really well for me. But I'm finally at that point where I'm just not going to ask anymore, or let her lead me into thinking it's OK to contact her midweek if I need to, because there are just too many times it creates problems. She says I misread or misinterpret her meaning at times (which is true), and I say that she provides far too little to meet my needs (also true).
There are only so many times that people can cycle through the same situation and pain of unmet needs before the one with the pain/needs has to take a stand and say "Hey, this is NOT working. Reaching out for help like this, and not getting it, hurts far more than going without."
My t and I have talked quite often over the years about recognizing one's needs and getting needs met. My stand from the beginning of therapy was that the pain of reaching out and not getting needs met was worse than asking and not receiving. My t 's stand was that it is beneficial to recognize one's needs as legitimate and ask for those needs to be met, even if sometimes the answer was No.
Granted, we can't always have what we want, or even what we need at times. Asking for something from someone else in life doesn't guarantee we'll get a Yes. BUT...and here's what sticks in my craw...to reach out and ask for support at a CRITICAL moment from someone who has convinced you they will support you, and to get a NO at THAT time...there's where the damage occurs. I don't expect my t to be there 24/7 (although she has asked me that more than once!). I DO expect her to be there WHEN I TRULY NEED HER.
To me, the frequently of support my t offers, or the amount of support she offers, is NOT the sticking point. It's the TIMING of that support and WHO gets to determine if that need for support is VALID or not.
I know when I need support. If I reach out for it, it's because I've already weighed the situation, tried to talk myself out of needing the help, used coping skills, but realize it is still necessary to have some contact with my t to help ground me. Therefore, if my t decides she doesn't think my need is immediate or that I should be able to use my coping skills to soothe myself at that moment, and she decides either not to respond or to barely respond, I'm going to really resent it...especially if she has encouraged me to reach out when I need it.
Who gets to decide if my need for her support is valid? Me or her? My t spent a long time, early in my therapy, trying to convince me that my needs were valid and not wrong. At the time, I didn't feel worthy of having my needs met. I was too afraid to ask. I didn't think I deserved it. It took a long time to get me to the point where I could identify my needs and reach out to get them met without feeling intense shame. I can do that now, and perhaps that, in itself, is forward movement. It is. I can recognize that.
But what good does it do if my t worked so hard for so long to convince me that my needs are valid, and helped me build up the courage to risk asking for what I need when I need it, if she is then not going to follow through and provide it?
What good does it do if I, having already determined that my need is valid and necessary, ask for my t's support, only to have HER determine (based on her own clinical judgement) that it is not a true need (but perhaps a want), so she decides it would be best for me if she not respond, or do so very sparingly?
Doesn't that invalidate my needs? Doesn't it teach me that I can't trust my own perceptions? That I need somebody else to evaluate my thoughts, perceptions, and needs and then tell me if they are valid, acceptable, worthy of a response?
I find that very confusing, because again, that's what I experienced in my relationship with my parents. (I can't trust myself to know if what I feel is OK, if what I think is right, etc.)
I don't want anybody to misunderstand my t. She truly is VERY caring. I know for an absolute fact that she DOES NOT want to reinforce the invalidation and damaging messages my parents gave me as a child. But doesn't this situation my t and I are in right now do that very thing? Why doesn't she see it?  |
Peaches, I hear you! Very difficult and confusing situation.
I wonder whether, when your T doesn't respond, it is because she has made a clinical judgment that your need is not valid. Or is it because she has been disorganised or forgotten or crammed too much into her schedule etc.
Have you asked her about it? (Sorry if you have explained this and I missed it.)
I know the end result in either case is that you don't receive a response when you need one. For me though it would make a difference, if T was DELIBERATELY choosing not to respond vs T being imperfect and not responding whenever really she should.
I've had ruptures with my T over this issue (T not responding when I reached out). It was just as you said, that it took me a long time to trust T enough to reach out for help, and it was excruciatingly painful to finally do that and to be let down. In my case the reason I got past it was a) T was able to say sorry for letting me down, and b) T explained how he made mistakes and I truly believe that the lack of response was due to T's mistakes. If I had thought that T had known about my distress but deliberately chosen to not respond it would have been a deal breaker for me. Maybe I would not have gone back.
Somehow for me therapy has worked so well to the point that if my T occasionally doesn't reply to a text, or doesn't reply addressing what I've said (replies of the type "Sorry I couldn't reply to you because of xyz" without addressing what I said in the first place), it honestly isn't so painful any more as it used to be. I am secure on my trust of T even when he drops the ball. It definitely didn't used to be this way.
I think my T has wanted to acknowledge my pain, and apologise for times when he messes up, but also help me be able to deal with these kind of slip-ups or miscommunications because realistically in life these things are going to happen, even in close relationships with people who really care. T has encouraged me to be able to think that someone messes up or wasn't there when I needed them at a particular moment, but it doesn't mean that overall they don't care or they hate me, and it doesn't invalidate the times that they have been there.
I don't really know if this is relevant to the situation with you and your T. I guess it's all about her intentions and also about the balance of how much she meets your needs vs how much she doesn't. I'm writing it in case it is helpful.
I guess a key question for you is which is going to be more helpful and constructive in your life in the long term, and which is going to be more destructive. Continuing with this T who for whatever reason is not meeting your need for contact. Or ending therapy and not having any more support at all. I suppose a third option also would be starting again with a different therapist and seeing how that worked out.