Can't Get Past the Rupture

Yeah, I'm the same way. There are times when I will actually be telling myself, "Be here. Listen to what she's saying. This is important." But in my head I'm dissecting her words down to what I believe to be their core, but which in fact is really just me hunting for any kind of rejection that might possibly be there. When I look back I can tell myself that my thinking is way off base, but in the moment, it's really hard.

I need help in remembering the "grayness" too.

I'm not sure that's the gray area. I think T cares about you.

Maybe the gray area is this???...
I know T cares about me in the same way ALL THE TIME. For me, this is the gray area: sometimes my T's caring will be very obvious to me, sometimes he will make mistakes, sometimes he will disappoint me, sometimes he will make my day with something he says, sometimes we will feel close, sometimes we will feel distant, sometimes he will make me mad or sad, sometimes I will make him mad or sad, sometimes we will laugh together, sometimes we will have very clinical discussions....but through all of that, our relationship remains the SAME. None of that changes the fact that I care about T, that he cares about me, and that our relationship is real, true, and important.

peaches, perhaps deep down its the not so nice feelings you have about T that is the real course of your discomfort...perhaps when you wrote about how much you appricate T, another part was thinking "and yeah but I hate you also, blah,blah,blah" and its that which you feel T really saw and hence her not responding like you feel she should have?

Hi Geez,

You could be right, that she was just busy and frazzled and made a decision without giving it much thought beyond the frazzledness. My mistake was in expecting that she would be touched enough by my email that after reading it, she'd reply right then to what i said.

[quote=purple_fins;1416077]this must be very difficult for you ugh.......

I so wish you could have a "do over" and would have written all those lovely things down and given it to her face-2-face to read with you sitting right there..... then you would have had her undivided attention. I would bet my life on it that she would have said some very gratifying comments to you.
Some people, I believe, just aren't very good at email. the absence of the physical can seem to cause some to react with distance..... for some reason
I can sure understand your feeling dissed.
but I also understand your T. being in business mode away from the session..... especially with a sister in the hospital... she must have been so worried for her sister.
I wish though your T. would have said in her phone message how she appreciated your sentiments.... but you know what...... I don't think there is a person alive that is perfect... every single person will not meet our expectations all the time..... I imagine now you are thinking-- "but she knows me and she is a professional therapist-- she should have known what I needed"....... perhaps.... but again.... not a human alive is perfect. dissappointments will be part of it.... it's how we overcome/cope with those dissappointments that is the key.

Hi Purplefins,

Thanks for the understanding, and also for reminding me that nobody is perfect. Maybe sometimes i expect my t to always do and say the right thing because I always see her at her best. T's don't generally show anger or act selfish or display flaws like we are used to seeing with others we come in contact with. They seem so kind and helpful and interested, smart, calm, etc. Maybe because she seems almost perfect most of the time because i don't see her faults and flaws, then i start unconsciously expecting her to always say and do the right thing. i think that the way the t-patient relationship is set up lends itself to that illusion: that the t is somehow better than average, smarter, more capable. So when t does something that hurts me, a part of me is shocked and hurt, and thinks, "I can't believe you did that! You should have know that would be hurtful." I know it's illogical, but does anybody understand where i'm coming from on this?

Hi Rainbow,

You've known me for a long time, and what you pointed out about black and white thinking fits. I do tend to see things that way. You're right that my t has said and shown she cares in the past. I wish that i could hang onto that realization and pull up the good feelings from past experiences with her when something bad like this happens. I need to be able to say "Yes, what she did hurts and feels like she doesn't care. But remember, she did X, Y, and Z in the past, which was caring."

I'm not sure why it is so hard for me to base my feelings about the relationship on the "whole" of the relationship, and not just whatever happened at the most recent encounter between us. It must be a cognitive flaw or something about the way my brain works. Because there can be 5 good things that happened, but when a bad thing comes along, my first tendency is to doubt the authenticity of the previous 5 good things. Like, if my t told me 5 times before that she cares about me, and then she makes a comment that hurts me, I don't think, "Well, she has expressed caring 5 times, so the 1 hurtful comment can be overlooked." Instead, what my mind says is, "Since she just said that hurtful comment, then apparently when she said she cared those previous times, she didn't mean it." It is as though the bad thing cancels out everything good before it.

I do the same thing, peaches. EXACTLY. In the moment when my T shows me she cares, I believe it. But soon it starts to not feel real. Sure, she meant it then, but does she mean it NOW? And if something bad happens, well, that just "proves" it, she might have cared at one time, but she doesn't any more.

I think it's something about object permanence, but I don't really know. I wish I could fix that about myself, because it keeps me in a constant state of insecurity.

Hey Peaches - I hope it is helping some to talk about it here. I got some good feedback on my final rupture with my T by talking about it here.

When you are able to talk to T in person, you will be able to find out the true story in more detail, with her side included. It took my T and I a few weeks to work our that last one. He has since taken a new job - now I know what had him distracted from his best self!

If she had only written - "Oh, I am so sorry that I don't have the time right now to give this a proper response! With my sister in the hospital, I'm really "off-duty" right now. I promise to write you when I'm back at my desk and have time to think".

I do the same thing too. In your example above, I don't even think "she might have cared at one time", If I allow myself, I will take it to the extreme....".Well, that just proves it. She never really care about me, this was just her job. Who was I kidding? What would she like about me? I am not worthy for her as my therapist I am bad, I am unlovable, yada, yada, yada...." Ugh!!!

Pretty sad and pathetic, actually....I hate that about myself.

(((((((((((((( peaches, zoo, lostintermination )))))))))))))

this must be a big boat, there sure are a lot of people in it - me too

FWIW, I have great respect and admiration for every one of you.

Hi Seventyeight,

That part you quoted -- it felt caring to me when it happened. I wonder if she really wanted to do it though, or if it felt like she had to do damage repair because she knew i was upset. I dunno. Maybe i'm just being too hard on her all the way around. Maybe i don't realize how good I have it in t.

The thing is. . .i just want her to show me she cares because she wants to do it, not because i get mad and then she feels she "has" to appease me.

PS - Seventyeight, I think deep down, i just can't believe that she or anybody would "want" to be close with me, that they could care about me deep down in their heart, that i could be meaningful to anyone. even though my t has said and done nice things, i can't get rid of the feeling that it's not real, that she's just doing it because it's her job to help me feel good, and that i really don't have any significance to her at all. So when she slips and says or does something to hurt my feelings, I wonder if that's her true feelings toward me slipping out and showing. Then if i get hurt or upset, she goes back to seeming like she cares. . .until the next time something happens that makes me feel (once again) that i mean nothing. it's so confusing to me. i want so much to believe her caring is for real, but i can't seem to settle into the idea, can't seem to let myself feel good about it.

Hi Abby,

I guess the ball is in my court now. We did talk about it at my last session. But it still doesn't feel resolved to me. She's been out of town now for 10 days, and i've been trying to process this while she's away. but i still hurt inside, and i don't know what will help. I don't think I'm after an apology necessarily. I just want her to be more aware of how easily i feel unimportant and worthless, and not do things that trigger that feeling in me. i want her to think about how her words and actions will affect me. i know that she usually does do this. but it feels like every time i get feeling safe and comfortable in the relationship, then something like this happens to raise up all my insecurity and pain from the past again.

I'm just wondering.... when you said this:
was wondering..... what about your marriage? don't you feel your husband wants to be close to you? if so, he is somebody.(just trying to help you)

I get the feeling this here-- what you've said, is key.
You want her to think about how her words and actions will affect you....... Its as if YOU have no power- you give it all away to the other person in the relationship. You seem to depend on them to know what you need/want and to follow through for you. It can be very difficult to realize that every single person in every single relationship has power...(unless of course one is not of free will-- physically held captive)

fins

((((Peaches))))

...warning...if you are not in a good place, this might be a trigger....

Reading this I had a flash of you as a little girl with your abuser. Listening to an 'authority figure' tell you things to help you feel good, and then using that good feeling to hurt you. As a survival mechanism, you probably had to learn to look behind people's words and try to find their 'real meanings'.

I don't mean to say you view T as your abuser, but T is also an authority figure. You did learn at a young age to be wary of mixed messages or authority figures telling you 'everything will be fine'.

If this does not help, please disregard and just accept my support.

Peaches, you have been with your T a while, so I bet she actually does know how easily you feel unimportant and worthless. My view of therapy is pretty different than what you wrote. I don't expect the therapist to avoid a person's triggers. I think this might not be helpful to the client at all. I wouldn't want my T to walk on eggshells around me for fear of triggering me. When a trigger comes out in therapy, that is a good thing, because then it is manifest and we can work to try to understand it and lessen its ability to trigger. I wouldn't want my T to alter his way of being in the world just to make me feel better or keep from upsetting me. I prize authenticity a lot, and expecting my T to avoid my triggers would feel like I was asking him to be false. It is up to me (or us) to work on my triggers. I don't want to go through life having a boatload of triggers (yes, I have a lot!) and expecting that the way to feeling better is to get others to avoid them. That is a losing battle. I think this is a really rich area for discussion with your T. Have you told her before that you have an expectation that once she is aware of a trigger for you, that she will avoid it? I think if you don't both share this expectation, that it could be a source of some dissonance and misunderstanding.

I hope you will go see your T when she returns. I hope you can find a way to let go of your hurt over this, and that she can help you with this if you need her to.

Peaches, maybe your T is acting like your mom because you are still acting like you did while growing up? You explain how you don't want to talk to T about this stuff face to face because you are avoiding rejection. This avoiding talking to T face to face is what forces you to explain things away in your head and then be wrong in your assumptions about T because you didn't include her input. Getting beyond this fear to talk to T face to face is what will help you get out of this problem I think. How about if you talk to T about this fear of rejection deal?

Well, I went to see my t yesterday. She had been gone on vacation for 2 weeks. When she left, we weren't in such a good place. We had talked about her decision not to respond to my email, and i had expressed my hurt feelings which she accepted. But i still couldn't shake the disappointment and hurt. I finally was able to put in a nutshell the crux of my hurt: i think she chose not to reply to my message of gratitude and attachment -- not just because she was busy -- but because she wasn't comfortable with it, and she didn't want to encourage it or make me think she felt similarly. I sent her this bolded part in a message prior to my session and said i want to talk about it when i had my session. I said she needn't reply back.

She replied back, asking if i still had the email, would i send it to her? I didn't. I felt badly that she didn't keep it because she'd told me in the past that she'd kept every email i'd sent her since the beginning of our work together, in case i wanted it later on. So i find it strange she deleted that one.

Anyway, when i got to the session, she said "OK, let's talk." She said she remembered the email, so didn't need a copy. Then she paused awhile before she said, "It's probably true that i'm not always good at expressing emotions." (In my message, i had not only expressed gratitude and attachment, but also asked her how she felt about me and our work.) So her having sidestepped the question by not responding made me feel as though she hadn't wanted to tell me how she felt in return. From what she said yesterday about not being good at expressing feelings, I take that to mean that my gut feeling was right. Her reluctance to reply to my message wasn't just about her being busy. It was about her reluctance to tell me how she felt.

I appreciated her admitting this to me because i just knew there was more to it than that. I don't know how, but i did. What bothers me though is that we've been working a long time on helping me to feel OK about expressing my emotions. If i express how i feel about her, and she ignores or sidesteps what i've said, and doesn't respond, what effect does that have on me? It makes me feel bad for telling her how i feel. It makes me not want to anymore because it didn't go over well. I feel like i'm the only one being vulnerable and saying how i feel, and she's got all the power. It leaves me with the feeling that i said something i should not have said/felt something i should not have felt.

So anyway, during my session she said she would attempt to reply to my email message. She said she remembered what i'd asked. So she told me what she thought of me, that i was kind, loving, and compassionate. She said that i'm hard on myself, sometimes extremely so. She told me that our ups and downs have helped her understand better ways of helping me. And she also said that it feels good to her when i'm able to take in her caring, and if it has a good result, such as making me feel cared about.

However, she did not remark specifically on the bolded part above. She never told me if I was right or wrong in saying that she was uncomfortable about my attachment to her, and if by not responding to it, she was trying to discourage it.

My session is usually at the same day and time every week, but this week it was different. I goofed up and got the time wrong, so got there with only 20 minutes for a session. She offered me to come back today at noon, but i said No. I don't want to take up her lunch hour, it was my fault for forgetting the right time. So now i don't see her again until next week.

I don't know how i feel. i just felt locked up yesterday, like the vulnerable parts of me were pushed far, far away.

I really believe my t is doing her best to help me. But it feels like this situation has set me back. I've had so many relationships in my life where i care about and love the person, but they don't reciprocate. I'm always the one that ends up being more vulnerable and gets hurt, and realizes later that the person never really cared that much about me to start with. I built up the importance of the relationship in my mind, and thought they felt similarly, but i find out they don't. And now, i feel that it's the same with my t. On one hand, i realize she has alot of patients and can't get too emotionally connected with them and lose her objectivity. But on the other hand, i don't want to "put myself out there" and share my deep feelings or get attached to somebody who doesn't feel any true affection for me in return.

In all honesty, i don't expect her to love me, but is it too much to want her to think enough of our relationship to be a little bit touched when i compliment her or tell her what she means to me? Why didn't she want to express herself and tell me how she felt in return?

I don't know. I just don't know. Maybe i just want too much.

Also, i know that she finally answered my question yesterday and told me how she feels about me. . .but it was only after I got hurt feelings and pressed the matter. So it doesn't feel very good to me. It feels like i pulled it out of her against her will.

To me this says she does care about you. When I've felt as strongly as you do about something it normally works out that I am in a kind of emotional flashback and if talked about, and talked about with T your finally "come too", well thats my language. No T isn't going to love as like a child loves a teddy, shes actually giving you much more, shes listening to your pain, a lot of people are unable to do that without putting themselves into it, thats what shes not doing, messing up her stuff with yours. We try to pull them into our phantays, positive and negative ones, but if she does that then she won't really be there to help you, shes "holding" you whilst you are "in it" jmho

I did all my therapy with only a business relationship with my therapists. I was there to benefit from their insight and skills. My relationships were for outside of the office. I used my therapy to improve my relationships outside of therapy.

(Peaches) >>> What bothers me though is that we've been working a long time on helping me to feel OK about expressing my emotions. If i express how i feel about her, and she ignores or sidesteps what i've said, and doesn't respond, what effect does that have on me? It makes me feel bad for telling her how i feel. It makes me not want to anymore because it didn't go over well. I feel like i'm the only one being vulnerable and saying how i feel, and she's got all the power. It leaves me with the feeling that i said something i should not have said/felt something i should not have felt.
Wow, all of this is excellent !! - you don't say that you said all this to yr T, I wonder if you did? (or if not, could you?) It's so clearly expressed, and really deserves to be examined by the two of you. don't let the topic slip away until you feel that you have your answers.

>>> she told me what she thought of me, that i was kind, loving, and compassionate.
think about the people you've met in your life who could be described that way, Peaches... do they leave you cold? Or on the contrary, do you esteem them? are you happy to see them, to be with them? T is a human being too (and a well-adjusted one, or you'd know it by now), and will have a normal response to a kind, loving and compassionate person.

>>> She said that i'm hard on myself, sometimes extremely so.
Yup... But just because she doesn't effuse, doesn't at all mean she doesn't respect, like, admire, or feel a fondness for you, and want your real good. That conclusion (that she doesn't) is drawn by Peaches, who is sometimes extremely hard on herself. Now I realize that that sounds harsh, but it's just the kind of conclusion I would draw, and I am known to be hard on myself too...

>>> She never told me if I was right or wrong in saying that she was uncomfortable about my attachment to her
Attachment, from what I read, is almost an essential part of the therapeutic process; it's not equal in type or intensity on both sides, and can't be... some Ts are indeed uncomfortable with it; some like Yalom are so focused on it that it's downright tiresome. You may remember that our own Treehouse jokingly (OK, maybe half jokingly, Tree? ) accused her own T of being a narcissist for bringing the discussion around to that attachment so much

>>> I really believe my t is doing her best to help me. ..[...] In all honesty, i don't expect her to love me, but is it too much to want her to think enough of our relationship to be a little bit touched when i compliment her or tell her what she means to me?
not in my opinion, dear Peaches..
Believe that she is doing her best; and you do the same. I'm sorry it hurts, therapy is not to make us feel good... my T said, the ability to tolerate [anxiety, fear, not knowing, etc] is healing. Stinks though, don't it.

Hi Treehouse,

I would love to think that's the whole story. I really would. But something was eating at me in a nonverbal way. I knew something more was going on. It is rare when t is too busy to reply, and I've discovered that the times she is too busy, it seems to always be right after i've emailed her a message where i express my attachment feelings with her. That hurts!!! I told her I'd noticed this pattern, and she didn't deny it. She said i could be right and she's sometimes not good at expressing emotions. So it wasn't just busyness, she didn't want to respond to my email. She didn't want to tell me how she felt about me and our work together. It bothers me that I'm supposed to share my innermost feelings, when she doesn't share anything in return. I don't expect it to be like a reciprocal friendship at all, but it would be nice for t to respond in an accepting, kindly way when i've just put my heart out there and told her how i feel about her. It's not just the adult side of me that is bothered by this. It's the part of me that feels so unimportant and insignificant in general, and is so afraid of rejection. My t knows about this. So i just find her "I'm too busy to respond" kind of callous. It's hard for me to actually bond with someone. It takes alot of effort to tell her how i feel. I guess I'd hoped what i said would touch her heart and it might result in a small bonding moment. But instead, i keep getting this visual of a little kid running to her with arms open, and t ducking away.

Hi Bloom,

I know my t has done things in the past to show she cares. She really has. So why when she does something like this does it hurt so, so badly??? I guess that when she does something that feels like a brushoff, i become afraid that yes, she used to care, but maybe things have changed because her actions seem to have become not caring. Does that make sense?

What you said about being so hurt in life that we don't know how to receive love even when it is there hits a chord with me. Even when my t has shown caring, it has been very, very hard for me to feel it inside. The words are nice, but i don't get the comfort from it.

I'm realizing that it is sometimes scary for the T to be loved by us, even though they intellectually know that it is part of the relationship for us. I think it activates their fight-flight mechanism, and we sense it.
So, we often lie about our feelings so we don't have to see or know the therapist's discomfort.

Here's a great cartoon about it: http://talesoftherapy.wordpress.com/...erapy-tales-5/

I understand your visual. With my T, I would sense that he'd put up a fence - sometimes a waist-high white picket fence, sometimes a 12 ft stockade fence, other times a gently weathered split-rail fence. The fence kept him safe from my intense feelings but I felt shut out.

it's so hard, and it does hurt, you are so right.