connection thingy

Why?

Seeing connections between things in your life is really important for healing.

this whole thing is just frustrating and maddening to you, isn't it, stopdog? the fact that you appear to want (or to have) connection and even attachment or to feel the need and act on it, too, really yanks your chain!

I like what theBunny said about your fantasy ..... maybe there is some part of you you'd like to be able to dynamite out of existence so you could walk away and be free, and be you without being burdened either by your own expectations/needs or by thoughts of what those expectations/needs should or shouldn't be according to what fits into so-called normal parameters ..... just what part it is that you actually want to destroy, I wonder. The part that wants connection/attachment, so you didn't have to have it or all that goes with it; or the part that fights it, so you could actually be able to be free to have and to enjoy connection/attachment ...

To me connection is another word for the therapeutic relationship that should exist between T and client. The trusting bond that allows for disclosure, the sharing of secrets that puts shame to rest. Knowing that when I talk he can rephrase what I've shared - that's he's been listening and understands what my heart and mind are saying, or trying to say. That he can then "connect" the missing pieces for me. I think all of that comes under the heading of connection.

I wonder if this has to do with dependence and/or control.

Being independent and not relying on anyone else is a big thing for me. I have learnt in the past when you depend on someone it allows them the opportunity to let us down. I feel that if I keep stuff internal I have more control over it. I hate feeling that I need to tell someone or even worse that I can't handle stuff on my own, its a power struggle for me. I also don't like the fact that sometimes between sessions I feel like I want to contact my T to tell her something, I usually resist the urge and it passes.

These are just my thoughts, they may not be relevant to you.

Because it was silly to tell the therapist. I did not need to do so and it was a stupid want to indulge.
Okay - but I am clueless as to how so. I don't disbelieve you, I just don't know how it helps.

Absolutely.

I dislike not being in control of myself. It was silly to give in to the urge to tell the therapist and I did not really need to do it. If I had waited longer it would have passed and if I had waited longer, I would have been more in control of the situation and could have told friends and been able to deflect them appropriately.

It makes perfect sense to me that you are angry and on edge. You tried something new and different. It feels awful. All your defenses are challenged.

It's especially maddening that you know you are just setting yourself up here. Well, at least it feels that way.

I think we all have fantasies where we are just gone. I think it's more normal than you think, as is this anger you are experiencing now.

Try to sit with it for awhile and see how you feel about it a few days or weeks. Might turn out not to be so bad.

When I get depressed I usually lie in bed for days thinking of cartoonish ways to brutalize myself without actually dying. It will eventually pass until it comes back.
I do understand I am not unique in the least.

why wouldn't you tell the T about it?
why was it silly to give in? and what is the point of telling friends just to deflect any questions?

I have a HUGE problem with thinking my childhood was anything but happy and "normal", so it pisses me off that i am the way i am today. there is no reason for it! my T has been telling me for 4 years that it is not the case, that there is reasons why i am depressed, isolate myself, don't see a future, avoid relationships..etc. I always say "Well yeah, i suck at being an adult."

We were talking more about that today and she said its hard because my biggest road blocks to feeling better is this belief that i shouldn't be feeling so bad because i have no reason to. i said i would rather forego any positive feelings if i didn't have to feel the negative so bad. i told her that i do not understand how ANYONE is happy as an adult. there are so many horrible things that happen to people-no one escapes unscathed. my uncle died a few years ago, and he and my aunt were married for 30 something years. love of her life. how she manages to find happiness now escapes my imagination.

to me any potential grief, sadness outweighs any positive feelings. also everyone is stressed, working too much, then go home and attend to their children who are full of energy and life and need constant attention, only to go to sleep and do it all over again. day after day. I L-O-V-E kids, i work with them every day! Yet i can NOT imagine actually raising one, or in a relationship at all.

ANYWAY (sorry, tangent) my T was saying that the way I view the future for what i was taught, rather it was explicitly or implictly. i was taught that negative feelings were not to be expressed, or i should just "get over it", so at some point i turned off my feelings. i turned off any want of expectation for a future, because all i saw was stress and difficulties. She is sloowwllyyy getting me to accept all this stuff.

There is a point to all of this You seem similar in some ways. Do you feel that your childhood has effected your thought processes today? About how you see the world? What you expect from others? (Or not) NO ONE likes to be controlled or manipulated, but i would think that most people wouldn't think of all T's as "wily," or "manipulative." Do you think that you think these things BECAUSE of how you were treated?

do you believe that it is absolutely human nature to have the need to connect with others, be attached, feel supported? we are social beings-that is how we survived, evolutionary and as babies. There have been studies showing that babies in orphanages die not because they were malnourished or not properly dressed--it was literally because they were never held by the nurses. They died because there was no attachment to another human being.

Oh no, quite the opposite, Stopdog you are very unique - just not abnormal.

It was just silly and stupid and pointless to tell the therapist. Or perhaps weak is a better word.
If no one likes it, why is is so prevalent with so many people letting it happen?
With friends, I just have to be able to withstand and sidestep their unsettling attempts (well meaning but very aggravating to me) to provide comfort. I have to be in a place of self control to tolerate and deflect their concern which, while well meaning, is very annoying to me. Because they are friends, one must tolerate a certain amount of it from them. I have attachments that are controlled and useful. I just don't understand what one is supposed to do with connection or attachment to the therapist.

I see. I am not so worried about being abnormal. My mother found me completely weird and usually wrong, the rest of the family thinks I am odd, my friends consider me somewhat unusual, and the therapist has called me challenging and eccentric, and even here I seem in the minority in my approach and what I want- so I am sort of used to it. But I do not think I am unique or special - that is what I was getting at. I realize everyone else feels or thinks or does etc most of the same things I do, feel etc. The only thing I have been abnormal about (and this may just be abnormal for me) is I chose that therapist to tell rather than just waiting until I was more under control about my father in order to tell real people in my life. And I should have exercised more self discipline.

Have you considered that those therapists who are smug and condescending are the ones that write books?

I now only read books by researchers. I try to avoid books by practitioners because of my very strong adverse reaction to them.

Have you ever heard the phrase "I may not be much, but I'm all I think about." That is how deep depression feels to me. It's a dark pit of self-absorption--a very small emotional world where only my feelings matter to me--even if I see my depression injuring someone I love, I only really care because my guilt about it makes me feel worse. Their pain is an inconvenience to me. I can watch this happen, but I seem powerless to move beyond the self-centeredness that has engulfed me and become my obsession. "I am worthless. I don't deserve to live. I'm a fraud. I am weak. I should be punished." I have such a laser focus on myself that other people's needs and feelings seem like interruptions that I resent. While meaningful nurturing connection may be exactly what I need to pull me out of myself, it is precisely what I resist and certainly not something I think I'm worthy of. This is just my experience.

Given that you don't believe you are unique, your mother finding you weird and usually wrong seems to provide the explanation of why you feel a continuing sense of wrongness. As a human, like it or not, the feedback your mother gave you about your basic nature shaped your self-perception. This is basic attachment theory. Your self-perception has already been deformed by a warped attachment relationship with your mom. How could it not make sense to you that the amelioration of your self-perception then would also lie in attachment? So you can have the corrective experience which you've no doubt read about? And since experience did the bulk of the damage, experience is necessary for the bulk of repair. Mere information is insufficient.

I don't think it is just me who is not unique. I really don't think anybody else is either.

Now I have this bit from Monty Python stuck in my head:
Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves! You're all individuals!
Crowd: [in unison] Yes! We're all individuals!
Brian: You're all different!
Crowd: [in unison] Yes, we are all different!
Man in crowd: I'm not...
Crowd: Shhh!

If I am supposed to be having corrective experiences with a therapist, I don't think it is working. I am not certain I even know how to do it.

I think it is working. It is subtle. Much more subtle than you'd expect. You contacted your T about your parent.

How can it be corrective or even supportive if you won't tell her about things that bug you?

I do tell the therapist about the things that bug me. According to her, that is all I do.

Can it be corrective without being supportive. Supportive sounds bad.

I know it was wrong to do so. Next time I will not. I just needed to wait a bit longer. Plus she wrote back with something entirely stupid. If I had wanted stupidity I could have told my friends.

Corrective is supportive, actually, if it's the thing that you want/need most and you receive it.

And yeah, the paradox of human existence is that on a basic level we are the same, but yet we really are different. You are not me and I am not you. I may relate to some of your struggle, but I see very clearly that we come from different places and the struggle has a different context for us, because the experience without/within (nature vs nurture) is unique to each of us. And I sense that where you may feel you are not the same as others, or have that sense of wrongness, is that you do not want the same resolution as you feel others seem to want or think is normal. I think you need to do some reframing perhaps ..... accept that you are unique, your experiences, your needs, your desires are yours, and your resolution/solution for your struggle does not have to be the same as it is for another. It only needs to be what is right and normal for you, tailored to you as an individual.
We are individuals who need autonomy and a clear sense of identity, as well as individuals who need connection and inter-relatedness. But we need to have a good relationship with ourselves and a solid sense of ourselves and an authentic acceptance of ourselves in order to be more comfortable in relationships with others - that is NOT worded in the way I see it in my mind, but that's the best I can do with it right now. Being ourselves with ourselves and being comfortable with ourselves helps us feel comfortable with ourselves when we are with others ..... a sense of security that comes from within sustains us both in relationship with ourselves AND with others ..... You need a good connection/attachment with yourself and more acceptance (self-compassion?) for yourself as you are, stopdog ...... if that's even sort of clear.

Nice post, spirit! I agree

This is my new motto. Well, not NEW, exactly, just official now. This works for me - reading books didn't "do it", but I did need to read books to find out that this is what happens in therapy, this was what HAD happened wrong that T was trying to fix, and how he was trying to fix it.

I don't understand the post Spirit. I am great with just me. I enjoy me. Adding others into the mix is where the problems begin. If corrective is supportive, then it sounds horrible.

Oh, you will find it intensely uncomfortable. No doubt about that. It will make you want to crawl out of your skin as every dysfunctional but familiar instinct you have is trodden upon. This is how I experienced it. However, if I took it a little bit at a time and TRUSTED that I needed to surrender to the support and vulnerability in order to heal, I found that it worked. I cannot stress enough how uncomfortable this was for me. I had to sacrifice my autonomy and trust someone else's direction because it had become apparent to me that doing what I thought was best led to misery and laying in bed for days imagining how I could brutalize myself--clearly not the result I wanted.

It was not wrong to do so. It made you uncomfortable, but that happens with change.

ok, if you are great with you, whats the point in therapy? you don't really care about connections with other people which is fine if that is how you feel, but that pretty much is the point of therapy.