I’ve been seeing my T for almost a year now, two sessions a week. From day one we have had issues with me feeling completely disconnected from him in between sessions and this causing intense feelings of rejection and abandonment.
I am allowed limited out of session contact, so I can email once in between sessions and he will respond with a brief reply. However this does little to help me with the intensity of my feelings, so we have tried a couple of transitional objects; a stone and a tennis ball (we throw the ball to each other at the beginning and end of sessions to help try and stem off some of the dissociation I experience). Neither of these have really helped for more than a couple of weeks, and as the time has gone on and I have become so very deeply attached to him, the feelings of abandonment and rejection have gotten more and more intense.
Today he suggested trying him leaving a voicemail on my phone, so if I need to feel connected to him then I can listen to it. He didn’t specify what he would say except for ‘it would by no means be a masterpiece’ but he thought it may feel more personable than the tennis ball or stone. I’m really not sure how I feel about this. There is part of me that wants to try it, but I feel so needy that he has to do that. And then there is part of me that feels a bit weird about it and believes this still won’t be enough. I just want him in person.
I recall reading on here that other Ts have done this in the past, so just wondering if your T has done this has it helped and how did you feel about it? If your T hasn’t done it, do you think it might be something you would find useful if you struggled to hold on to the connection between sessions.