I'm feeling generally unmotivated to work on any of my various projects this morning (writing, running, meal prep for healthy eating, working on a presentation I have to give at work in a few weeks, avoiding engagement in problem behaviours).

I think some of it has to do with the ongoing election stress, some of it is just general goal entropy (I started a few projects around the same time, and the newness/excitement is starting to wear off), and some of it has to do with the fact that T and I had a serious conversation yesterday about whether I should keep working with him.

I told him that I feel like I need to be working with someone who is more nurturing, that his hard-driving intellectual approach is too damn difficult. I brought up Kohut since that's who we were reading in my fellowship last week--"man can no more survive psychologically in a psychological milieu that does not respond empathetically to him, than he can survive physically in an atmosphere that contains no oxygen." I told him that therapy with him feels like I am gasping for air. I also told him that while I feel like his therapeutic approach may very well be wrong for me, I fear that I am too attached to leave.

And then he said something interesting. He said that all along in this therapy, he and I have had different aims--I want to be contained, soothed, comforted; he wants me to increase my capacity for reflection (particularly when emotionally activated), to engage less with problem behaviours, to end up in a healthy romantic relationship. In his mind, these aims are at cross-purposes, mutually exclusive. He said that be believes that a more nurturing therapy would be counter-helpful to me, that some kinds of therapy (e.g. empathy-based therapy as proposed by Kohut) is helpful for some people but not for people with BPD, that I have been in that kind of therapy before and it was ultimately unhelpful and paradoxically promoted engagement in problem behaviours (he's right about that last point). He said, "I absolutely care about you, and I am attached to you too. But I can't ethically engage in a treatment that is not going to benefit you. I can't feel safe with someone unless I know I am helping them, and giving you what you want would not be helpful to you."

He asked me to think about these points, so I sent him an email last night that took me like two hours to write. (It's a little long and a little, um, dramatic so I don't want to post it here but if anyone feels like reading it, PM me and I'll send it to you--I'd be interested to hear what people think) It was exhausting to write, and of course he won't respond to it so I have to wait until Monday to talk with him about it.

I dunno, I'm feeling low on self-control today anyhow so I may end up contacting him re: problem behaviours anyway (though we won't discuss the email--those calls are strictly about behavioural modification).

I know y'all think I should kick him to the curb. He can be an arrogant berk, and often leaves me to deal with my own emotions in a way that I find excruciatingly difficult. But the thing is, he *is* right about the fact that this therapy has improved my functioning more than any other therapy I've been in. My psychiatrist, who knows him well, thinks I should stick with him. Plus this dude is literally at the forefront of tx for ppl with BPD, like, regularly corresponds with Fonagy and Bateman and all those folks. So my attachment to him influences my decision, for sure, but there are actual objective reasons too.