Pushing your Therapist away

When your therapist really connects to you and you feel cared for by them, do you push them away?

I keep trying to get mine to admit she doesn't want to work with me, i'm giving her a chance to get out and she won't take it dammit.

Her being nice and supportive actually hurts my heart. I keep thinking she doesn't like me, i'm annoying her etc etc How messed up is that? I can't deal with people being that supportive and nice.

YES, for years (although I seem to be past it now *fingers crossed*)

For me, I would WANT so badly for him to love me, think well of me, be proud of me...and then the minute I started to believe he felt those things, I wanted to run (and run and run) as far away as I could.

So I would create a rupture (unconsciously) and we'd eventually repair it, and the cycle would start again. So frustrating, scary, exhausting, confusing...you name it.

It's taken time (a lot) but things are much calmer now. T can love me and be proud of me and I can just take it in and let it fill me up and feel safe and good. I really think the only way I got here was by going back over and over and over and over again no matter how scared or freaked out I was.

Therapy can really be one of the most confusing things in the world. Hang in there.

thanks Tree, should i tell her my actions are an attempt to get her to "fire me"?

I think most of us test our T's commitment to us in one way or another. For me it's part of the trust issue. I come across initially as totally uncooperative & several Ts have bailed at that point. Fine with me. Therapy's hard work, & I want to know that my T's going to work as hard as I am.

So that's me. Don't know whether that clicks for you, but i hope things work out.

I have experienced this too. Yes, it feels like I am 'too much' or that she will realize she is being nice and supportive and caring to me, and realize what a mistake that is, how undeserving I am and she will stop being that way.

Intimacy and caring are not easy for me, and especially hard right there in the therapy room with my therapist. It doesn't feel 'right' or 'normal'. But it gets better! In time, having this happen over and over, it now feels better and I feel good about her and I can accept these wonderful things.

I am not dangerous or too much. Her being supportive and nice are genuine and not covering some hidden agenda. I am safe.

Roadrunner- yes i doubt her ability to go the whole road with me without her dumping me, it's a major trust issue for me.

Echoes- I feel like i'm too much, i need to much from her and that she won't handle it. Intimacy scares me. When people are nice to me and i can't see an agenda, i don't trust it. She bends over backwards to give me extra time and answers my emails with kindness, but i'm feeling angry at her because she won't give up on me :/

Asiablue, you are learning. Be open to that and that new things don't feel comfortable or familiar.

But also remember that everything familiar... began as something unfamiliar.

The thing I write at the top page of my journal is :
He's a professional. He can handle it. This is his choice to be here.

Somehow that makes me feel like he's got something invested in this. Before it was hard for me to see the T as more than a stranger at the dentist's office or something. The airport. Just a stranger I'd struck up conversation who could leave at any time.

Mostly though I guess it's like everyone says. Just keep going back. And back and back and back.

Can you validate this feeling a little bit for yourself? It might be scary to have a new experience of feeling cared for and safe in an intimate relationship. Not everyone is trustworthy in that kind of relationship, and I also feel that until you have tested (in an appropriate way) many of the points where you may have been disappointed in the past-- in the way most people might have experienced-- it doesn't feel safe to totally let go. Does this make sense? I felt really guilty starting therapy and being "on guard." Sometimes it relieves some of that burden to just know it is part of the process.

Take care!

I had a weird thing happen this week. T keeps changing the time of my Thursday appt, the regularly scheduled time is 2:30, but sometimes he says to come in at 4 instead. I don't see the pattern. This week I even double-checked with him on Wednesday, and it was wrong! I was there for 15 minutes and the next client arrived, a child. T says, can you come back on Saturday, I say sure, no problem. He says, are you sure it's not too much trouble? I'm like, no, no. But I'm stewing.

If I hadn't had to leave the house on Thursday in the middle of the afternoon, I could have started a long chore. Instead, I waste an afternoon, then i'm standing freezing in an ice storm waiting for a bus, and i'm supposed to do this again on Saturday? What if he messes up the schedule again on Saturday, when my usual bus doesn't run, I have to walk farther AND ride farther, it's gonna take me an hour to travel a lousy 2 miles, I should probably take the earlier bus to make sure i'm not late, so make that 2 hours just to get there - a slug travels faster - ALL BECAUSE I thought HE was the authority on when my appointments are, and what I do.

I finally realized I really did not want to, could not afford to, spend my Saturday afternoon like that. There will be other sessions. I really did not mind the little girl taking the hour, I had already seen him Monday and Wednesday. And one other time he double booked me, he sent the other people away, and that taught me a lot. But we just played it like it was the end of my session. BUT - just before I decided to cancel Saturday (walking home from the bus now!), I was moaning to myself, T hates me, that's why he keeps messing up my appointments, he doesn't want to see me anymore, i'm a fool and an idiot. Then I thought, sheesh, I sound like everybody else on PC now! What do I tell THEM when this happens, it's transference, that's your mother, not how your T feels about you. So i'm in the house now, I call him, he answers, I say I don't want to come in saturday after all. He says okay... sounding so SWEETLY concerned and gentle, he says, can you tell me now why you changed your mind, or do you want to wait till next time to tell me? So I tell him about the long bus. He apologizes again for the mixup, and i'm like really, no problem. And then we chitchat a little more, I think he just wants to make sure i'm really okay, which, thanks mostly to PC, I am.

And actually, the bus ride IN on thursday was the best bus ride of my life. it was a little crowded, with a good mix of young and old and races in the middle of the bus, and actually we were talking about Ygrec! because the next town over starts with the letter Y, and we were wondering if the name was of French or Native American origin, as most locales here are - well, I had my dumbphone in hand, looked it up -- the town founder WAS GREEK - thence the ee-grec? So take THAT, 4G! Yeah, doesn't take much to amuse me.

I can so relate to this - I think T will get fed up with me and say he doesn't want to work with me. I tell myself this is transference and I am just being irrational, but I reply to myself that not I am really not being irrational, I can see it in his face and I just wait for the day.

I know no amount of reassurance can persuade me otherwise, the most I can manage is to hope it is not true.

For me T's kindness felt scary because it reawakened all my desires that To survive growing up I had to suppress, it also was about trying to get the outside to fit the inside. I wanted all the self hatred to be outside of me and have T hate me so I could be free of it inside. I think there's also a case of wanting what is familiar. Having to keep turning up to therapy and feeling those old desires reawakened has been the hardest for me. Its like I have no skin and kindness was like an acid because I'd had to grow immune to unkindness that I had no way to defend against its oppersiten which of course normally shouldn't have to be defended against, but if people have expereinced abuse from those who were supposed to be the safest person then it makes sense our emotional thermostats will be out of skilter. We turn it low when near toxic people and turn it up high when we safe people. Totally needs resetting.

my T says i dont let her in at all.i can see that so i have nothing to run from .if i think about it she is awsome.she still sees me even though most times i will say nothing.she is willing to hang out on the floor with me because it is more comfortable for me(who does that)but i can only let her in my head in little doses or else i do want to run away.i am getting better because i useto not even let her in a little.im kind of a bit more relaxed about that.

This is really hard to find a "work around". If you keep going to therapy then, damn them, your therapist is going to be there. Waiting.

I used to dream that my therapist was a snake - boy that dream was a solid month of therapy right there.

In the end, your therapist will "win" if you let them. You will allow a tiny bit of connection and hope in. Then, if you are anything like I was, you will shut it down completely and run, become wildly defensive, angry.

Then, a moment of connection will happen again, and you will be slightly less apt to run.

Then, guess what! it will happen again and again and again.

The walls have to weakened from within and without, but they can and will come down if you let them.

You just gotta keep going, and gotta keep trying. It's worth it.

Thank you for all the replies, i'm so glad a lot of you "get it". You've all describe pretty accurately how it feels.
I'm just so angry with her. Why won't she just tell me she can't deal with me? I want her to say " Asiablue, your level of need is much more than i can give, i can't work with you" Ok i don't want to hear that, it would break me but if she's feeling that i want to stop now before we get any further down the road.

Can we say abandonment issues?

I remember when my therapist told me that I wasn't "too much" for her and that she is pretty resiliant. This was after I went through a wkend of emailing her, feeling as if I couldn't stop needing her and terrified I was destroying her. Of course this was how it was with my mother, my needs as a baby were to much for her, she couldn't contain my emotions, she certainly wasn't resiliant. Hearing my therapist confirm she was and that my emailing all wkend wasn't destroying her helped a lot eventually.

I've needed her help and she's given it but i'm scared to see her again, thru shame and fear that i'm going to get in to trouble for asking for help outside of therapy.

Isn't that your mother telling you to grow up and leave her alone, stop bothering her? I know it's MY mother. She always told me kids were a pain in the you-know-what only she used the word! Your T gets paid not to say that out loud to you! I wonder if they have as much need for T's in Sweden, where they have "free" (tax-paid) childcare, so kids don't grow up feeling like a burden?

Who is "we"? (I don't remember you being DID.)

Y-Grec is the French name for the letter "Y".

Ooooooo! That's deep. And 100% convincing.

Sounds all pretty familiar... I am with my T 2,5 months now and that was just one up and down and struggle. Feeling angry, feeling sad and afraid. Wishing he would go away while desperately hoping he wouldn't... and in the next moment closing up again and pushing him away. It even got to the point that I was convinced he had said to me that I am not allowed to mail him and that I am hopeless. I was so afraid that session that I was dissociating not remembering what he said anymore and left with those negative thoughts.
I had asked him for an extra appointment... because I was really doing so bad I could not stay that way for a week... but at the same moment expecting that he would say no. When he said yes I thought he saw it as a chance to finally tell me I should go away.
What happened was that he told me what had happened last session. And that none of that was said what I thought it was.
He was able to remember everything in detail and explain it to me in a way that it really got to me. He went on in telling me some other things about our relationship and sais it all with such a sincerity that it really got through to me.
It confused me, it made me happy while at the same time frightened. But I DID feel connected in that moment and I do have the feeling now that something from that has stuck with me. That I am able to trust him now somewhat...
It wouldn't surprise me if my feelings of being scared or angry will return sometime again but I am sure now he will be able to handle it... and that he will not give up on me that easily... which is all kinda new to me.