When one session flops and spills over to the next

Yes! I had a boyfriend who decided that when I wasn't with him, I was with another man! Now, after a zillion years of therapy that wouldn't bother me if it happened but I was desperate to figure out how to get out of that double bind at that time, didn't realize I could just realize it wasn't mine and I wasn't part of it in the first place. Reminds me of when I was young and my next older brother told me I was "wrong-handed" (I am left-handed) and I couldn't figure out about multiple opposites and just knew I wasn't right-handed

This is a good insight.......I sense something similar in myself perhaps. I have no trouble with boundaries with those not so close to me (and I don't allow too many close to me, though I have a handful of dear friends who I feel glad to have) but when the relationship has grown closer/my own attachment has grown greater, I feel boundaries shift and it's harder to deal both with the desire for the connection and yet the fear of the intimacy...

Kids are so perceptive! (I'm assuming your son was younger when he said that....unless my perception isn't correct! ) But I find myself thinking that because I AM perceptive, my perceptions are usually right - eh, maybe that perception is the perception that's off base!

Exactly!

THe safer one is the less important one?

Echoes, this is a great thread, it soooo how i feel in therapy.

Some times it is like t has never once in his life ever felt vulnerable and afraid so he doesn't understand that i feel vulnerable and i am scared and afraid of him....

and afriad of my thoughts and feelings and people....

i think i could get sooo much further if just once i could sit in his chair and he sat on the damn couch....

so ask for it. Others have. you might both be surprised & interested at what happens next

your afraid T will only dran that conclusion that you were angry and put the phone down like your father could only draw the conclusion you were hiding cigs? That fits...plus perhaps you wsih you could have put the phone down on your father at those times and are a bit afraid you've displaced the original fristration onto T and she will respond or tell you off when inside theres this whole other thing going on? Maybe? Dunno.

Thank you everyone

In the middle of this discussion yesterday with ya'll, I got up to take some tylenol for my arthritis pain. Only I grabbed the tylenol PM so I have had a looong night's sleep and I'm feeling better from that for sure.

But also I'm feeling better because of all the caring and support that was here for me. I don't post much about me, and I didn't expect much in the way of responses but I hoped putting in down in writing might help the panic that kept washing over me in waves. Each of your replies helped so much. I now feel like I can handle the next session and that the discussion about last session and about the phone call are needed and even desired now. I want to explore all this and I feel like I could even handle it if my truth doesn't match her truth. ... Maybe it will even be interesting if they don't match

((((((((((Echoes)))))))))))))

Yay for a good night's sleep and some clarity and hope

Very good Echoes! I was thinking the same thing last night, that usually we all don't get into this deep of a discussion on your thread. I guess you were ready?

Echoes, I am glad you had a good night's rest and are feeling better! I enjoyed the discussion too!

Quote:

Originally Posted by ECHOES I'd had a really rough weekend. I was home all weekend, nothing out of the ordinary for me. I was feeling really lonely, but could hardly acknowledge it. But I kept getting glimpses of what I want, people in my life, someone to go places with, a close friend who feels comfortable. Casualness. Contentedness.

Echoes, I so relate to what you have said here. I could have written it myself. My problem is that I have never said any of this to T even though it is such a big problem for me. I get so caught up in this cycle but no one knows. I just keep it all to myself. I’m just wondering if your T know about how you feel? Does anyone else know of your pain?

Quote:

Originally Posted by ECHOES So I am really really nervous about going back. To be honest, I am very afraid she will think I hung up on her and declare no more phone calls even though I rarely call now. I wonder if she's going to believe me that I didn't hang up. Worse, though, is that I know that most of this next session is going to be about this, so .. there goes another hour! *pouts* Ugh, it's making me feel so anxious!!!!

I think I would feel the same way as you, but I am sure that T will not respond in the way you are predicting. Even if she does think that you hung up on her, there is no reason for her to completely ban all phone calls. Could you go into next session saying that you want to briefly discuss this at the beginning because you want to make sure that she knows you didn’t hang up on her and you want to know that she won’t ban your calls, but that you don’t want to dwell too much on this situation and want to get on with therapy.

I have had these kind of sessions and have not really told T how I have felt- to my detriment and I haven’t been able to let go of it- so I really hope you can talk to T about this

Oh, and I'm glad you managed to get some rest!

Thank you Chronic.
I have not said out loud in therapy that I am lonely. I talk about the people I do have connections with and the difficulties there. I have said that my life feels like nothing but going to work all week then all weekend waiting for the work week to resume, yet resenting work because it is not fulfilling. That there is nothing social about work, at this company I now work for. I have worked for other companies that filled some of my social needs, but this one doesn't. I think the session that flopped, the last session, is why I haven't said a lot. Because she will just jump into what to do, like she did. I felt like an idiot to be 57 years old and having a therapist tell me where to make friends. Part of my call to her was to tell her that I'm not stupid, I have had friends, and I talk to people out in public, etc.

I don't know how she will respond about the phone call stuff. She can re-draw boundaries anytime she wants to, as we all can, to better reflect what we want, how we want to be treated. She can believe or not believe that I didn't hang up on her, but I can't make her believe something. I don't have the power to make her believe something. No one does. But I fully expect the next session to be about the last session and the phone call and that's how it should be. I'm calmer now and I can see that this needs to be talked about. What would be worse, for me, would be to sweep it under the rug and move on without resolving anything. This is the way I grew up: people raged and stomped away and when they reappeared, nothing was mentioned about what had happened. It was awful, and it felt like the issue could erupt again at any moment. So, although I dread it, I know I need to talk about it.

Sannah, this discussion was like one of those therapy sessions where I think I have nothing to say and then it just flows. Yeah, I guess I was ready

ECHOES, I didn't get back to your thread until now and I'm smiling because of what developed for you here. I think you will have a very productive session!

Echoes,
I am just catching this thread now and I am still thinking about what I can exactly contribute but in the meantime I did want to say, "Hey thanks for sharing, it made me feel that I know a little more of you now." It is great that you could be vulnerable and show us some of your struggles. You do a great job caretaking a lot of us here on PC and I am glad that you were able to open up and get some support for yourself!

Kacey, what a very nice post. Thank you so much!

Echoes,
How are you feeling about all of this now? When is your next t appointment and do you know if you are going to talk about this? I am sure your t will bring it up.

I can totally understand the whole rupture thing. I pull back as well after connected sessions. I know that it is thoughts like, "this is a fake relationship," "I am so disgusted in myself for needing my therapist," etc. etc... Now I am not saying by any means that this is what you say to yourself but might there be some other sort of self talk that goes on for you as well?

I get frustrated with my t as well when he takes one thing and strings it out for nearly all of the session. I sometimes say, "your doing it again, that thing I don't like." and he will laugh and say, "ok I do get caught up on one thing sometimes." Does your t ask you at the beginning of your sessions if there are things that you want to talk about? Sometimes it helps them to manage the time if you have specifics other times it is true, we are sometimes at the mercy of their lead.

I totally thought of you this weekend. I was on a phone coaching call with my t when the call just disconnected. Dejavu huh? Well he never called back and I didn't either. He has a prepaid card for it and I am guessing it ran out of minutes, that has happened before. I just wanted to let you know that my t will be mentioning the phone thing too. So in a sense we will be in therapy together this week. How fun! Now are you going to share with us how it goes? Hope so!

Kacey my session is tonight. I am sure I will bring it up if she doesn't. My therapy is self-directed but she will bring up phone calls (sometimes I forget I've called) when there is something in them she want's to respond to.

She has what she once referred to as 'a tendency to bring out the marching band' when she does this, focuses (she say encourages!...I say harps! lol) on something intensely. She just hammers at it; I refer to it as feeling like she is 'rapid-firing' at me. Tomato/tomahto.

I love this exchange. My T and I do this with a "look" she gets, an intense look that I now know is her intensely thinking look, but I don't like it and I tell her "you have that look again" and her face relaxes and we both laugh. Sometimes she exaggeratedly rolls her eyes at being caught at it.

I think when we connect, I feel like it 'just happens' and it's nice, and then I decide it was manipulated and I feel like I have no control, that she has malicious motives, that anything I say can be used against me, etc.

I'll let you know how it goes.

will be thinking of you, echoes, and hoping you do have a good session!

I'll be thinking of you tonight too, ECHOES. Want pocket riders? If so, I'm in!

on the contrary, when I read that I remembered an old saying "whether the pitcher hits the stone, or the stone hits the pitcher, either way it isn't very good for the pitcher". It seems a lot more than tomoato/tomahto... hammering and being hammered on struck home with me I guess.
I hope you have room for me too Echoes, I;m going to be thinking about you.

let us know how you are OK?

I wasn't nervous going in because I was in a "I don't need you or anyone else!" place. I was untouchable. Sometimes that leads to good things, it makes my other defenses not so needed. The ones that keep me from talking. I'm sure that having pocket riders helped!! Thanks!!

Her reaction to the phone call stuff (you're gonna laugh):
"We were disconnected? I thought the call ended naturally."

We still talked about it, about my fear that she hung up on me, my fear that she thought I hung up on her, my fear that if I called to say I didn't hang up on her it would sound untrue or she wouldn't believe me, my fear that she would announce at the beginning of the session "No more phone calls" (or worse, no more therapy), my feeling of shame at having been angry, and having been angry with her, and at 'falling apart' (being emotional) yet again in reaction to a session. How I tried to stop myself from reaching for the phone (I called on the way home) but my self wouldn't listen , about my experiencing her as someone who would hang up on me, about the possibility of my harboring a secret desire to hang up on her.

We went back to some of the socializing/making friends stuff that I couldn't participate in last week. I told her that she kept saying things that I had forgotten until that moment that I had said to myself over the weekend when I was feeling so lonely and thinking about 'getting out there' to find people to be in my life. I told her I feel so unlike others, that I feel odd, or younger than my years, because I haven't had life experiences like others have had. She told me she doesn't experience me that way at all.

At some point she told me that she thought I was brave for the things I will say in therapy. And she said I keep her honest. She said before that I kept her on her toes (I wasn't sure how I felt about that one at the time!). I like that she takes my questioning seriously and takes time to think and look within and respond with honesty. She told me again that she knows about herself that she has a rapid-fire tendency. She even apologized for doing that last session.

We talked about the push/pull and how I retreat after a couple of sessions where I am relaxed and engaged. How that comes from my history of experiencing closeness that becoming overbearing and that it happened with unpredictability. This is a new area we are beginning to explore. Part of the unpredictability is of just from being a child in a family that didn't communicate and part of it for me is that I was a child with hearing loss that went unnoticed until age 5. I was nervous a lot, not knowing what was going on around me. A lot was unpredictable and for me, things assumed to be generally known through overhearing or even direct communication were not known because I couldn't do that.

We explored a lot in an hour.

It sounds good, ECHOES!

oh Echoes, I did have to chuckle! she thought the call ended naturally!?....and all the while you were worrying about her hanging up/thinking you hung up. well, I'm glad that it sounds like you had an open, productive session.