Breaking the frame

I may have had an important session this past week. My therapist took a more active stance with me and encouraged me to stick with a relaxation exercise that we have tried and failed, tried and failed, a couple of times in the past. I felt myself growing more and more distressed as we persevered. Then, the session ended, and while I was waiting for her to schedule my next appointment, I just got really reactive and tearful and shaky and couldn't concentrate on what she was saying to me. I ended up sitting down in the lobby to wait and then by the time she came back I was weeping. She invited me to sit in her office a few minutes. I broke down and sobbed for a minute and then we worked together to help me get to a more controlled place.

She tried to ask me a few things -- whether there were words (other than "****," which I muttered once, lol) to go with how I was feeling, whether it'd be helpful if she put her hand on my knee, whether this is what happens when I "slow down". I didn't have any answers or words -- just cried and said "I don't know" and "I'm sorry" until finally I noticed something funny in her office and started laughing. My head felt a little light from hyperventilating a bit. I calmed, said I need to breathe for a minute, she told me something funny, and then finally I left in a better place.

There is a tiny part of me that worries one of us did something bad or wrong because our interaction was really different and also because I demanded such a response from her and also couldn't really say what was going on. But most of me is just appreciative for a sweet, compassionate moment from her where she treated me like a human being and offered me comfort when I was having such an intense reaction (yet still a little detached). It was all very strange.

When I left, I thought, "that was very strange." But I didn't feel really scared or like I needed to do anything destructive or anything else. And maybe that's what makes difference. I hope things will be okay and am curious to see what my therapist thinks of what happened.

Just wanted to share. Am curious if anyone has had a therapist reach out like this and if it turned out okay.

That never happened to me. I once said to T, "How can you just sit there and watch me crying without reaching out to me?"

She said there were two kinds of sitting with someone who was crying, and hers was the good kind.

Grrr! I'm still angry about tha!

You know, CantExplain, I think I would have punched your T already and gotten myself kicked out of treatment. I can't deal with that kind of distance. Then again, I haven't cried in front of T yet, so I don't know how she's going to react.

skycastle, I don't think your T did anything unusual. I can see mine doing the same. Sometimes there is one "moment" where two people really connect for the first time. I could imagine the experience you describe with your T is where you both connected.

That's kind of a witty but evasive response by your T, CantExplain. I'd be upset if I actually asked for comfort and didn't get it! I'd never ask for it, though--one of my issues, I guess.

Huh. I wonder if it's because I have been with this therapist for years and have never really openly had this kind of reaction with her. Or, if I did, it must have been 3 years ago when I really first started meeting with her. I've had tearful moments but I've always been very controlled and put the burden of keeping myself safe on me. It actually seems a little sad to me now becaue I bet in the past she could have helped me at times when I felt distressed but wouldn't say anything. I really don't know what happened this past week or what was going on with me. It felt like grief, maybe, or panic. It was so weird. Maybe both of us were surprised! I just know that even though it was weird and scary and hard and felt out of my control, having her there to comfort me at the very end helped me ultimately to feel more in control when I did leave. I hope that's okay and I want to use this knowlege to act more appropriately in the future. I'm so scared to find out I'm doing something wrong or that she regrets how she reacted. Eek.

I hope so, chopin. I think there's a tiny part of me that will remain nervous abut it, but there's this other part of me that feels the moment was human and helpful. Hopefully where we go from here is to figure out how I was feeling & why & what to do about it, not to have her tell me that I was manipulating her or making things up or I'm broken or she made a mistake or something. Ah, the old fears! They are so persistent. I hope we recognize what happened this past week. I hope I'm brave enough to do so.

If you don't ask, you'll never know what she thinks. My curiosity (a clever disguise for OCD) helps me be brave enough to ask in most situations!

One time I was stomping out very angry and T put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed. He'd never done it before or since. It was very odd. It made me feel better but it was just... different. In fact it killed my anger because I became so proccupied with trying to figure out what felt so ... off.. but not in a bad way.

It sounds like a pretty normal response from a T. Doesn't sound like anything "wrong" happened at all. Nothing to worry about.

Once before we did touch, my T reached her hand out and placed it on my arm while we were disagreeing about my self-destructive behavior. She rested it there as she tried to connect to me and get me to listen to what she's saying. I remember feeling so shocked. I just stared at her hand on my arm. Now she asks me almost every time she touches but she didn't ask me then. But she mentioned it the next session. She just said something like, "I put my hand on your arm." I responded, "I remember." And that was the end of the discussion.

Huh, crazycanbegood..what an interesting thing to have happen! It souns like, maybe between you and pbutton, its kind of a connecting/grounding type of thing?

I wasn't sure what to tell my therapist when she asked if it would helped if she put her hand on me. I said I didn't know, which really I guess in that situation was a "no," and that's how she took it. I guess I both really wanted that connection but also though that maybe at that moment I was a little too overloaded to handle the vulnerability/itimacy that might come with it.

Saw my therapist today. We tried HYPNOSIS for the first time together. Before we started, I asked her if hypnosis was going to make me "go crazy again." She asked me if that's what I thought happened last time because she didn't see it that way. She thought I had just gotten more in touch with what I was feeling at the time. But then she said it should have happened earlier in the session and it was like "C'mon skycastle, it's time to go now" ((waves arms)) <--That's what she actually said/did.

I'm not sure if she meant that to be expressing what she felt or what she thought I felt or what. But... I felt kind of bad afterwards Because there was a point in the last session when I told her I wasn't sure I should do anymore relaxation exercises because I needed to get myself together for work, but she pushed me to keep going, and I went along with it. I should've know I'd react by breaking down and I should've said no and I should've stopped myself from crying

I feel kind of separated from the ME that was crying, then. I feel like a bad person because her comfort made me feel better and I thought her inviting me into her office meant it was sort of okay... but now it's clear that I let myself get upset and it was bad timing and she was just reluctantly helping me. And part of me is angry and sad because last week I felt that SHE pushed ME, and SHE didn't time things well, and I was really scared and crying and disconnected from it and I was on auto-pilot and probably woul have gone and done something stupid if she hadn't been there.

Mleh.