I can relate to Moxie's situation, I think. And I just didn't/don't have the agency or response-ability or whatever-it-is to manage/handle/whatever-it-is a two-way relationship is very well.

I could/can do it on the level of rules (what am I supposed to do here) and rules, but not on the level of what seems to be call an "authentic" personality. I think there is still the potential for that in me, but the way I think of it sometimes is that the "healthy ego" which might have formed got stomped into the ground when I was a kid. The last T had said at the beginning of the therapy that she ultimately bailed on, that I was "narcissistically wounded and fragmented". In my view she may have helped with the fragmentation, but not the wounding.

I'm not so "defended" as I was 10 years ago, maybe, but whatever might have developed, if I had been in a healthy social environment growing up, still feels raw, like I'm totally burned and without skin. Have I mentioned intolerable feelings before?

I'm doing a little better than 10 years ago, maybe, but not at the level of a realistically functional adult.

Maybe there are some psychoanalytically inclined therapists who can deal with this kind of thing if people come to them in the beginning, before being re-traumatized by therapists who are NOT able to deal with it. But, how can we, the clients, know how to do that? How is it our responsibility on our side of the a two-way street? The therapists are the LICENSED PROFESSIONALS. And we can't know what we have numbed out, until it's not numb any more. But when it's not numb, it's also too activated or distressed or whatever-word-you want-to-use to function in any kind of "healthy" two-person "relationship". I just haven't had the experience of such a thing, I don't have the soothing of anybody giving a damn. I have the POTENTIAL for loving and caring about people and have done that, I think, within the context of a role or rules. But "authentically" -- what the heck is that? When I am "authentic" then other people, most especially therapists, can't tolerate it. Evidence, here -- there were others but the most recent example was the trauma-specialist T who terminated me 5 years ago, after 6 years of "therapy", because she didn't "have the emotional resources" to continue.

If some of you can't relate to this kind of situation, then you can't relate. You can't imagine it because your world of two-way relationships isn't like the world I live in.

And no matter how much it's a real world reality currently that we can't make these T's be able to help us, it's also true for me that I don't have the capacity to deal with that horrendous disappointment, and the way I used to deal with that situation in my family of origin was to dissociate. And that option is not a good one any more. It's a dead end, one-way street. Survival. But at this point in my life, for what.

I continue to believe that the best way to help people like me, if there are any, is in a support group of people with similar situations. DBT did NOT help, because my situation is different even if some people might say that I present like someone with BPD when that "wounded narcissism" is exposed. It was very rarely around when I was a young adult, mostly numbed out and covered over by a "good girl" who outwardly followed the rules.

The mental heath profession has failed. It has hurt and misled me. There is no two-way relationship on that -- I did do my best, in terms of "work" in therapy, researching potential therapists, research ABOUT therapy, etc.

Moxie's suggestion is one approach. It's an attempt, from her side of the street. I appreciate it.

I hope the ex-T you're going back to see can help, Moxie.