[Wysteria]

Lately although I've been trying really, really hard to keep it together and to do all the right things, life just keeps dishing it out. I've gotten so fragile and depressed and have resorted to things that I'm not proud of. I get up and go for a day or two and get so much done and then another wave hits me, and I just go spinning. My pdoc and T are passing me back and forth like a f*$-ing hot potato, and both are really concerned, but are at a seeming loss to help me keep standing up. Pdoc finally just knocked me out at home on Monday after another viscious attack against me that morning.

I've lost some of my "safety nets" because of insurance issues and don't have a very good support system other than the two of them. I can't keep straining the little system that I have. I just don't have the strength to keep being brave and converting to "my business mode" to handle life. I feel like I'm too often in 'crisis' even though they seem to reflect that I'm dealing with way too much, and 'say' I'm being 'brave'. I'm afraid and afraid of myself...

I live mostly behind my walls, on the parapets or wandering the streets...but lately I feel like some of it is coming in the back gate with my therapist like when I had bad daymare about him hurting me. He's the only one really that I allow in..and if he's contaminated then my safe place is contaminated. He's trying to reconnect with me, and I've been trying to reach out...but inside I just feel him drifting further away...

He's the only one that knows I'm in here.

I feel so lonely and abandoned even though I'm the one pushing him away. And I feel like for the first time ever he kind of told a lie to me...and I'm really hurt. In 18 mo, I've never felt that way. It makes me feel really dirty. We've always been really, really honest with each other.

I just don't know if I'm disconnecting to save him or me... I'm really scared and hurting.

I don't want to ask for help anymore. They have to be getting tired..
Sorry for the depressing, weird post..
Wysteria Blue

[Gus1234U]

{{{{Wisteria}}}} it helps me to remember that feelings are things i have, not what i am... i try to just let them have their own life, like neighbors, and not let them have my life. i hope this makes some kind of sense to you,, if you can distance yourself from believing that your feelings are in control, you might be able to rest. best wishes,, Gus

[Abby]

I just want to tell you that there are so many words that you used in your post that I really related too. It is so difficult to continue to use a 'business mode' facade to cope with life - that is exhausting i agree! I understand how it feels to be afraid of yourself - i think, maybe, that is scarier that being scared of someone else (but maybe I'm wrong..)

I understand the words you used in relation to your therapist - contaminated, disgusting, dirty - I have used those words often. My therapist says I'm scared of her invading me sometimes.....and it seems, maybe, you feel the same way with your therapist?

I understand your feelings about not knowing whether you are disconnecting to protect yourself or your therapist. I have felt the same often and been equally confused. I am scared of hurting her with my evilness but equally afraid of her being evil and killing me (in a sense). I feel for you. All I can say is that you must try and keep going to therapy....I've learnt when I've felt at my worst and wanted to pull away badly, if I go to one more session and then one more session after that I get through the crisis......Until the next time. And perhaps one day the time between crises will become less? You are not too much.

take care.

[Wysteria]

I was reading another post about dissociation in therapy and I was really relating to it..

This is exactly what I've been doing, but we are calling it depersonalization. Sometimes it goes so far as daymares when I really go far away.

It's been going on a long time..but just now being identified. I like the grounding ideas..he's said something like that before..but I didn't understand him. About a month ago, I just asked to touch his fingertip so that I knew he was still there... But then I felt innapropriate beause he's a man. Are lady clients allowed to hold hands with man therapists???? Every once in a while, rarely, I ask for a safe hug, but that is done very carefully.

I don't really switch, I fade in and out, or just out all the way, and usually he doesn't know as I won't make eye contact which isn't all that unusual if I'm stressed anyway. But like the others, often I am mute and have said I feel "muzzled" but he and pdoc didn't understand me when I said this. It scares me. How else do you signal you're in trouble with your T if you can't speak and sometimes can barely move or breathe which is what happens when it is really intense like in therapy??

I can depersonalize for days or sometimes switch to "business mode" which is ALL logic and crebral and NO emotion but it is very taxing and then people see me as capable/hard and then I crash because I can't sustain it. I always feel weird seeing T in business mode..I know I won't make any real progress because in reality I'm disconnected. He's getting my mind only then. Sometimes he crashes me out of my business mode in his office. That's messy...really ugly actually.

Last week I had a daymare about my T in his office! Scared the heck out of me and made him unsafe for me. By Friday, I literally could not understand what he was saying while he was saying it!! That was freaking me out. I'm still trying to figure that out and how to get it out of my head and make him safe again although he helped me to write it down so I could read it.


I know he's been looking at me strangely and sometimes asks me if I'm there or something like that...but at least once I just couldn't answer and felt such panic inside! If he doesn't ask or doesn't notice I can stay gone the rest of the day...

This is all really, really confusing to me....

[Wysteria]

Originally Posted by Abby

I just want to tell you that there are so many words that you used in your post that I really related too. It is so difficult to continue to use a 'business mode' facade to cope with life - that is exhausting i agree! I understand how it feels to be afraid of yourself - i think, maybe, that is scarier that being scared of someone else (but maybe I'm wrong..)

I understand the words you used in relation to your therapist - contaminated, disgusting, dirty - I have used those words often. My therapist says I'm scared of her invading me sometimes.....and it seems, maybe, you feel the same way with your therapist?

I understand your feelings about not knowing whether you are disconnecting to protect yourself or your therapist. I have felt the same often and been equally confused. I am scared of hurting her with my evilness but equally afraid of her being evil and killing me (in a sense). I feel for you. All I can say is that you must try and keep going to therapy....I've learnt when I've felt at my worst and wanted to pull away badly, if I go to one more session and then one more session after that I get through the crisis......Until the next time. And perhaps one day the time between crises will become less? You are not too much.

take care.

Hi Abby,
I'm so glad you responded...yes, being afraid of myself is more scary, kind of like emotional abuse is sometimes more scary than physical abuse..Does that make sense? And the lack of control on whether or not I abuse myself is more scary than my lack of ability to control someone else abusing me...

Yes, I always felt the blackness inside and in the beginning I was quite up front with him about my fear of contaminating him. I think of him as being really kind of "pure." It had quieted some. But something about MY associating him hitting me with his right hand scared me because it was so unlike him, and I forced it on him and I made him scary and dirty to me...

He said it was because he made me feel unsafe on Tuesday when he scared me and my mind was just re-acting to that... I just cannot have the one person in the whole world that knows me be unsafe to me... I'm really angry at myself and feel out of control and dark for doing that to him.. He said to keep thinking that the image is not really him..but it looks like him and felt like him in my daymare!! I still shuddered when I saw his right hand yesterday...

I feel like I need to "fix" his right hand...I wonder how I could do that..maybe I could "wash" it or something? Or put a band aid on it or something stupid or make ammends to it?? Maybe that's an idea..Do you have any ideas on how I could honour and make it "safe" again??? Don't really want to touch it if I don't have to...but I guess I would...???

hmmmmmm.

Wysteria Blue

There are times I've had to be very forward with my T and really spell out what's going on.

Example: "I am struggling with this really big issue and any time either of us get near it, I freeze/shut down and it's incredibly frustrating to me. I need you to be in tune with what's going on with me during session so if you see me dazing off, or if I verbalize 'freezing', I need you to help pull me out to where you are."

Then it's kind of trial and error for you both. T should be able to explore grounding skills and what works for you. If that's having you get up and move, or take so many deep breaths, or identify objects in the room, or touching finger tips, you both should try to maintain which things work best for you. Touching is something that you can discuss with your T. Some are fine with it and do a lot of touch because it can be grounding, but some feel it's not appropriate and that there needs to be other means of staying in the present and connection. Something worth exploring with your T, since all T's respond differently to it.

Can you print out this thread and show it to him? About being 'gone' most of the day if he doesn't notice? Maybe you can work on trying to identify clues that would alert yourself that you're 'leaving', and then also think of things that may alert T (i.e. I look out the window, I stop talking, I seem dazed, etc).

I think it makes sense about the daymare. If you have had a lot of interactions in whic people made you feel responsible for relationships feeling contaminated. Or if any time you felt remotely safe with someone, something falls through. We feel vulnerable with our T. And when they are approaching a piece that most people find to be dirty and gross, we project that on to T.

Please keep in mind things you say or do in therapy will not make T dirty or contaminated, because YOU are not dirty or contaminated. Maybe what happened to you was, maybe the people who did things to you are, but YOU are NOT.

[lastyearisblank]

Ah I totally get what you mean with being afraid of burning out the RL support network. I hope you can let T in though and allow him to see it all.. you won't contiminate him and maybe talking him about that would help with getting some reassurance. It's impossible to be business business business all the time, no wonder you're crashing and in crisis! Can you talk to him about all this and maybe even like bring in the post, like some others said?
Big hugs

[Wysteria]

Thank you all for responding to my posts...I have listened carefully and I have taken your advice to heart and sent T some emails and had an incredibly powerful, intimidating, terrifying and honest session with him today. I cried the whole way through it but stayed with him and he was very supportive and "heard" me and probably heard all of ya'll through me.

I think we healed parts of the damage I had done and opened new doors for healing in the future although it was incredibly painful and I feel very vulnerable even now..

So your advice and wisdom do not go unheeded or unrealized or un-"heard" where I am concerned...I am very grateful to you all...

Most Respectfully,

Wysteria Blue

[Abby]

I'm really glad that you managed to make him more safe. I can understand how it still feels scary though. Maybe it'll be a while before you start to feel as safe as you did before?

I float away in therapy sometimes too, i describe it like being frozen, or sometimes I become far too aware of my face (which is really disconcerting! - like i'm looking through my eyes or I can feel every feature individually), or sometimes it is like static is in my head. I often cannot speak either during some of these times, but my therapist generally can tell and asks me where i've gone and tries to make me come back. Maybe when you are having a logical business mode session one time you can talk about these feelings and how he can recognise when it happens so when it does you're both more prepared? Business mode sessions can be useful because you can talk about things in a detached practical way which may be too scary or embarrassing to do at other times.

You are not alone in making your therapist 'dirty'. I think I do that often too but then I go a step further and blame her for trying to contaminate me rather than being angry at myself. I get confused about who is the dirty one a lot, it flips on a minute by minute basis! I like what your therapist said about how you may be reacting to him making you feel unsafe...I hope you talked about this more today at your session.

I know you have managed to talk about your fears and feelings today in session re: his hand. But I wanted to say I completely get that need to fix it and make it safe again. Did you talk about this as visually as you did in your post?

take care.