Even when it goes okay I feel terrible (possible trigger)

From my perspective, you can be connected and enjoy being connected to people without feeling "weak" and "needy." One thing is independent of the other. Authentic connection, in some if not most ways, is really the opposite of weak, it is brave, and doesn't often happen when it's just based on unidirectional need.

So I think you can still be your own island and not need anyone while also engaging in authentic connection with your T or anyone else.

I'd also like to suggest that there are not just two ways to see the role of your T, both of which are extremes and not really accurate. "Neutral third party" doesn't fly because no T with any real substance would claim that s/he was "neutral", as in their values, personal experience, and beliefs do not influence their relationships and practices with clients. As with all of us. And "bizarre obsession" is not what you get when you are connected (attached, whatever word you like) to your T. You're just in an authentic relationship and you feel close to them, and you might even feel that they feel close to you.

Anne

"you feel close to them, and you might even feel that they feel close to you."

I can only hope that never happens to me.
To quote Monty Python - That peril is too perilous.

And whether the therapist thinks they are neutral or not is less important to me than if I think they are. I am not certain the therapist gets a vote.

I am certain that it has occurred to you that perhaps having a lack of any desire to imagine that therapy could be any different in how you *insist* it must be might be something to just consider working on?

If it is important to you that a therapist be neutral, then I think you are basing therapy on a delusional belief.

I am not insisting anything. I acknowledge you and I do this very differently.
And there are certainly schools of thought teaching the therapist is to be neutral to the client.

I wish I could describe what I mean better.

I'm not interested in you or anybody else doing anything the way that I do it. What I am interested in is you being reflective or thoughtful about evaluating whether what you *are* doing is really the only way *you* could possibly do it. Maybe I'm misreading your posts, but I don't see how this approach is really working for you in any meaningful way.

I feel that I sometimes see this approach to psychotherapy here, and out in the "real world." Sometimes people don't want to consider other options and they do this without really being thoughtful about why they won't or can't change, and it seems like they have no desire to change. No willingness even to imagine doing it differently. I find it frustrating and tedious and yes, this is fully my issue, not yours. I'm just expressing it, which is my right to do so on this board. If people weren't hurting, I wouldn't find it frustrating or tedious. I find it painful to watch people be stuck. Yes, my issue.

did bad things happen to you before you had words to describe them? sorry to keep harping on you like this, but I think therapy puts us in a child-like state (my words are not very good either) and you are re-experiencing your child state feelings, if not before therapy, then during and after. Do you see any parallels between how granite perceives her T, and how you do? I see myself in granite in SO many instances in my life. I am not saying you are, I am just looking for a touchstone here, a jumping-off point.

edited: maybe I misread Anne, but I appreciate your coming here like this and being willing to discuss your session, sort of a "post-session group session". I am not feeling frustrated at all, I feel you are being open to looking at things differently and answering questions. I have to get ready for my appt, but hopefully I will catch you (and the discussion) later.

I do think you are misreading my posts.

Lots to think about here, thank you. I can tell by the strength of my reaction that something is going on.

I am trying to imagine feeling connected to someone without feeling week and needy. I think I need to forge some sort of new pathway to think that way, because I just can't get there. I do like the thought of connection actually being a brave thing to do.

Probably bad things happened to me like most people. I do not really see parallels between me and granite. I do see parallels between me and a couple of others on here, but not that specific poster.

Feeling weak and needy - while not good - is not the main thrust of my horribleness around therapy. I understand it can be to some.

Like me on the days that I storm into therapy, brandishing a flamethrower and shouting "YOU!! STAY THE HELL BACK. Keep your caring ways and therapeutic mumbo jumbo to yourself!!"

No?

Yes. Except I would leave off anything about caring. I don't even like to say the word.

For me, when the session goes well, the closeness terrifies me; when the session goes less than well, the lack of closeness terrifies me.

I end up feeling bad, exposed, shameful for having needs and wants for closeness and then I threaten to quit.

Or I feel bad, exposed, shameful for wanting to flee and I threaten to quit.

This is my pattern. Not all the time, but enough of the time to have this run my life, deplete my bank account, and alienate me from self and others. If I was not making progress (or think that I am) I would not just threaten to quit, but quit.

If this sounds at all sensible...then please post and say so, because right now it sounds downright insane (this, from me, who wrote a post about not calling myself insane).

Oy, stopdog, I love your posts.....and you are not alone.

I put a trigger on my response, because it might trigger you stopdog, and I am NOT intending it.

How my t explained a trigger is when you have an out of proportionate emotional reaction to a situation that may not warrant such an extreme reaction. To me, the above quote screams it loud and clear, and I can see what you say here makes a lot of sense to how you've responded to others' posts in regards to a relationship with their T.

What about your T (all T's/humans?) is so perilous? I remember you said in one thread that you are afraid your T will mock you if you cry (i think this was you!). No T, much less a non-sociopathic human being would mock someone for crying. When I can't agree with statements like these in regards to myself, I try to put myself out of the situation. If you were listening to a friend/sig other talk about whatever and they started crying would you sit there and mock them?

Anyway--what I quoted concerns me greatly. You would rather endure physical pain to avoid a connection with someone. TO me I hear GREAT pain from the past. I have no idea what your past is like, but if forming an attachment with your family members was dangerous (ie: abused/beaten), then it makes perfect sense that you would avoid that at all costs as an adult. These things that happen to us in childhood hold such a powerful impact on us as adults, and it may not even be horrible, awful things (it wasn't for me). But these "traumas" (i hate that word!) get frozen inside you and keep you stuck in feeling whatever you felt as a child in relation to the trauma. And you WILL keep re-living it until you can get that "unstuck."

I hope I am not overstepping my bounds in what I am saying, but I see a person in so much pain that you have completely turned off ANY feeling even closely related to feeling emotionally vulnerable to somebody. And in therapy, the T usually gets the brunt of how you react in the outside world. Does your T know any of these reactions you have?

why did you start therapy in the first place? Was it a specific goal(s) in mind? I generally am curious and really want to see you feel better.

You know I'm only half serious here....when I'm in bad moments therapy feels really scary but there are other moments when it does not.

Stopdog, are there those other moments?

I find that things change like the weather, but others have more stable feelings.....

I can relate to much of what you've said here. Of course that doesn't mean it's sensible but you're not alone.

thank you...I needed to hear that!

Sensible, it seems to me, is over-rated!

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. It seems sensible to me. I think about it often: how long could I go on what I have saved, how little I would actual need to survive, whether I would eventually communicate to people I left behind when I bolted...

...and it hurts no one to have this "escape plan/option" in the back of our minds!

mcl6136 -it does make sense to me what you are saying.
I do not have a feeling of it working yet nor do I have times when therapy does not feel bad. That is what prompted the post. I always leave feeling more awful than before I went in. It does not matter whether it was chatting, or memories, or intense other things or I was angry or I was not having an unpleasant interaction with the therapist. I do not, except when I am very angry and frustrated at what is supposed to be happening, experience the being with the therapist and talking as intense or difficult in terms of me actually talking- even though the therapist will sometimes refer back to the appointment as having been difficult or heavy - I usually do not remember experiencing it as having been particularly so.

yeah, that's how I know a lot of it really is internal for me, and that these feelings of distress get stirred up by the very act of being in therapy....right now, though, after several real melt-downs, I am trying to determine whether this is in fact a healthy endeavor for me.

right around the time I feel better, it's time to go back. Sheesh!

I have, for the last month or so, been in a fair amount of distress about the whole thing. I think SOME has to do with the issues that are coming to the fore (new ones...money...intimacy and life/work balance. However, some of it goes back, for me, to the blank slate thread. My t's are NOT AT ALL disclosing, and I feel like I am stripping in front of someone who is sober, fully dressed and taking my money. What's wrong with that picture??? I never pictured myself as a pole dancer but thought...if I had ever gone that route, wouldn't it be ME who was turning the buck?

I know....gross!

I know what this is like.

The one I see is not a blank slate.

Anyone who quotes Monty Python is OK by me.

I quoted Monty Python ("The Argument Sketch") to the the Bad Group and they didn't know what I was talking about. That was the last straw, I think.

It would have been for me too. It might have even been the only straw for me. I have standards where monty python is concerned.

My response may trigger.
Thank you for your concern. No need to worry about your post triggering me.
The t does know about the reactions. She either calls it resistance or attachment issues. There has also been mention that my response to humiliation is extreme. I don't think I was whipped that out of the norm as a child and the csa was not really bad. If you could not take some rough teasing in my family,you had a difficult time, so I did learn how not to let that get to me.
I started therapy because I had endured about a year of this intense horribleness/anxiety/on edge all the time (like I feel weekly with t) in response to a promotion that was not in question on any real level, and my feelings had absolutely no reason and I knew it had no basis but could not get rid of the feeling, and it was so bad others were beginning to notice. I have had the feeling at a low level forever and it can wax and wane, but this had gone on for over a year with no waning in sight. I went in order to figure out how to get it to stop. And now I pay someone to make it worse.