It wasn't special...I'm a fool..I don't think I can do this

Once the revelation came that it wasn't special, I almost completely checked out. I think I made some kind of snarky comment to get hold of my emotions. She said I was lashing out at her. She said I'd made a mistake and that we'd talked about me needing to work on being vulnerable and accepting my mistakes. I pretty much tried to shut or avoid any door she opened. Less eye contact than usual cuz I didn't want her to see my eyes water. Left a minute early cuz we'd started talking about football and I couldn't take the fakeness anymore.

You guys are being so great to me. I really needed to talk this out. I want to reply to everyone, and I will. I am currently trying to draft a letter to my T.

I don't get it having to be about blaming someone for making a mistake. I mean.. what *mistake* did you make? Believing she cared? All I can tell you is that my first therapist was cold like that. It felt like he would ease me right up to the trough to drink, and then would pull the plug and drain the water out - and then mock me with "silly you! you thought I *really* cared??" It was so terribly toxic for me - but I stayed in it for a long time. Finally, when I became convinced that I was in danger of him telling me to not come back, I found a therapist I decided to use as a backup - some place to fall if I got kicked out. By a quirk, I felt pressed into seeing her at least once. So I did. She didn't know I had another therapist. So she kept encouraging me to come back. I did, because I felt guilty and didn't want to tell her the truth. Eventually, I started realizing how different she was, compared to my toxic therapist. After nearly a year of this, I made the switch. But anyway, my first therapist would do things like that. He'd blame me for any fractures in the therapeutic relationship.. anything that happened was my fault. I'd done something that caused it, or I'd somehow made a mistake in understanding him.

The therapist I ended up with, though, held herself entirely responsible for the therapeutic relationship. I had felt so much shame with my other therapist, but never felt any with her. If anything went wrong, or if the relationship went off the tracks, she always held herself responsible for getting it back on track. And it's not that I never said dumb things or reacted in dumb ways. I sure did. But she never blamed me. Never ever. She always looked to understand what took place that led to it. And if there were times that my perception of what had happened were inaccurate - she never used that to make me feel like it was my fault for feeling hurt. She considered my perception equally valid - and focused on correcting my erroneous beliefs that influenced my perception. And always with tender compassion and understanding. Never with haughty judgment. grrrrr. Your therapist is really bugging me.

Crescent moon, I don't know/think she was talking about blame. I don't think she wanted to blame me. In fact, she was probably trying to normalize it or something. My mistake was thinking that her email offer was special to me.

I wish I had your therapist. So much of what you wrote about your first T sounds like mine. But I keep thinking that these are my issues surfacing or something. That my issues cause me to get upset with her or not feel cared about, and that I'm the one that needs to change. My T has reinforced (or maybe started) this belief. She actually has never truly apologized for anything. Not even getting my copay wrong. I was the one who ended up apologizing for that. But she says she's not going to accept the blame I put on her anymore because it's not helping.

Fixated,
I'm so sorry this happened to you. You were vulnerable and she turned clinical on you. This sounded like it was some kind of enactment from your past and she ****ed it up by being less than empathic. I wish you the best and hope you are able to become unfixated, I hold no hope for myself in that are.

i'm with crescent moon. I had enough of "eating it". I ate it all my life with my mom. i'm done eating it. what does it prove? that nobody will ever have any consideration for your feelings? yeah, I effin know that. there is no mistake about that. I am not paying to have the effin rug pulled out from under me yet again. you wanna think about your lunch, you can do it after I effin leave - while i'm in here, it's your effin job to effin think about me. that's what we should have said, IMHO. I had enuf tough love to last me all my life. I need to know what nice love is like - and if your T doesn't know, then find one who does. you ARE special. we all deserve better. your T is a b-word! I had one (or two or a few) like that.

I feel like my T would just say I was looking back to find something to be angry about if I made a big deal about the lunch comment. Although I did feel worthless when she said it, but I didn't verbalize that.

I'm trying to figure out what would have been the *right* thing for her to do.

I could see how your therapist might be feeling "damned if you do, damned if you don't!" right about now.

The thought process before you set off on your trip that I imagine her having:

"I really want to keep my relationship fresh with Fixated while she is away. This may be a good opportunity to reach out to her from outside the sterile office walls. Maybe she will open up more and we can really be able to get to work on stuff when she comes back. And if she's anything like my other patients, she will be hurt if I don't make this gesture of caring. I don't want to hurt her by allowing her to think that I don't care, since we have come so far."

I don't know exactly what she said to you. Maybe her feelings were expressed in a tactless way, I don't know. But I could see how your response could perhaps take someone by surprise. When people are jolted, they tend not to phrase things in the best way.

Your therapist cares for you, Fixated. You aren't a fool and she isn't a liar. It's not about anyone being right or wrong. It's about what's true.

So your mind-reading skills are very sharp?? Kidding of course, but seriously, I think it's perfectly valid to feel hurt by the lunch comment. But I wonder if taken in context it's a little different? I bolded the parts of your post below that make me think she might possibly have been mirroring your withdrawal and checking out. Along the lines of "Well, if you're not going to engage with me, then I'll think about something else." You said you asked her what she was thinking about. Was there a long silence and that's why you asked her that?

Actually I think your T DOES care about you, and you're just having a rupture. Painful as it is .... I think it's very important to bring up how the comment made you feel, because it's perfectly valid and normal. And then you can discuss it and get her side of the story.

hi hun sorry this hapen. i sorta know the feeling. my psych in beginning asked to email her and used to say oh "ill email u to ask about if u did that thing" so i got used to it and now she couldnt care less. ive shown im upset but she not even brings it up in appoints. anyway.. i think if my psych said oh im thinking abut lunch i would tell her to **** off right away. u need someone caring and believe some psychs are.

About the lunch comment.

I understand why it was hurtful. It would hurt me too.

But out of curiosity, I'm wondering how you would have felt if she had given you the *perfect* answer? If she had said something like, "I'm thinking about how hurt you are right now, because I care for you and don't like to see you in pain."

Fixated, if she had said this, would you have believed her?

I'm wondering if she felt like maybe whatever she said, you would have been angry so she didn't have anything to lose by being honest. Maybe she thought you would laugh and it would break the tension. She may have been genuinely confused about how to make you feel better. As someone who is frequently in this position, I can see myself saying the same thing (even though I also understand how it can come across as insensitive).

Good posting Autotellica

Fixated, you posted a while back that you have a habit of blaming other people. I am the same way. There are times when NOTHING the other person could do would be right. Once I'm hurt I will reject EVERYTHING. I have to be really careful to make sure that this isn't the case. Not everyone has to do this. Some people (especially on this board) tend to blame themselves. Others need to REALLY stop and rationally look at what happened and see if we are stuck in "misinterpret" mode. It's really hard to admit to doing this, I know.

((((Fixated)))) I know during your trip you were really holding on to T and her care at times, and that being able to email her was like a lifeline in a way when you were out in different places on your own ... finding that the experience for you was different to her experience ... well, it has to sting, which it is I do think she cares although some of her comments backfired (maybe for reasons like autotelica suggested) ... I hope the two of you can work through this. She may never be able to give the level of care you want though and yet still care at the same time; so sometimes it's having to choose if that will be enough or not ... which can hurt in deciding.

Yes. I do have a thing about blaming others and not being able to admit I'm wrong, but how does it apply in this case? I don't think I'm blaming her for the email thing...the impression I got. It was made pretty clear that I misinterpreted what she had said/the meaning behind it.

I guess I am maybe blaming her for that fact that I don't feel cared about?This email thing really was the catalyst for my push to believe she cared, so I just feel so incredibly lost right now. Combined with school, job, and seeing my gram in the ICU, I don't know what's up or down right now.

Maybe I am misinterpreting the lunch comment, but it hurt. I am just angry. I don't know if I am angry at anyone in particular. I am just angry that I feel this way.

I really appreciate you trying to help me figure this out.

What would you have liked her to say instead of the lunch comment? What would you have liked her to do to show she cared? It sounds like you were rejecting all of her attempts to get close to you.

She has said something similar (that I go looking for things to be upset about when I leave) when I've brought up that I was hurt or upset by something she said.

Yes, there was a long silence. I said that 'I usually don't/can't think about anything when we have long silences. I zone out. What are you thinking about?'

Then she said the lunch thing and something about how this white string on the couch had been bothering her all session. Idk. I guess she could have been trying to make me laugh.

Idk if I would have believed her. I wish she would just say something like that to me one day so we could find out. T would say that I wouldn't believe her/would be offended (because I've asked her before in an instance why she challenged me instead of saying we could work on it together).

I guess I would have liked to know that she was thinking about me. I certainly didn't think that she'd be thinking about something completely unrelated to therapy. I just wish for once she would say she was sorry that I felt that way or sorry that we had a misunderstanding. She's never said something like that (at least that I can remember). I'm the only one who ever says sorry.

Gosh..this just has me crying again. It meant so much to me, and now it seems pathetic. I know a lot of this must be parental issues because I just wanted so much to be special to her. I can't believe that I let a huge motivating factor behind finishing my scrapbook be wanting to show it to her. I think the thought of showing it to her even impacted what I put in. It just hurts, and it all originated due to my misunderstanding.

I know people will say that the conclusions I came to and the emotions I went through when I thought the email thing was a gesture are still valid, but it just does not feel so right now. It feels like the last seven months have been lived on a lie.

There's nothing wrong with wanting people to care and to feel special to someone. Harder still if we haven't experienced it and really want it; or if we don't have that at the moment and long for it. You've invested a lot in the scrapbook ... and part of that was emotions attached with knowing you'd be sharing it with T as you did it. what you feel is ... what you feel; but maybe writing down what you know to be true could help?

rather than wait for us to point out what is valid still; can you do some of that yourself?

Honestly, I don't think I can right now. If I missed the mark on this one so badly, what else have I taken wrong? I don't feel like I can do anything at this moment.

Give it time. These big adjustments take a while.

If anyone is interested, this is the letter I sent to my T a few hours ago. The subject is 'for our Tuesday appointment', so I doubt I will hear anything this weekend. I already regret sending this. It is long.

I've had a very strong reaction to what went on today. I think it's exacerbated by lack of sleep, the week, and my grandmother being in the hospital. I don't think I shut down because of anger. Maybe embarrassment, but I don't think that's it either. I felt I needed to stop talking about it or I was going to start crying. As it is, I only made it 30 minutes into my drive home before my defense was thwarted. I haven't cried like this since last summer when my grandmother died.

I've obviously made a fool of myself. Made a ridiculously large and impactful error. If things like the email thing are something you do as a standard, how am I ever supposed to know you care? What does it even mean that you care? Without it, you seem cold, disingenuous, and manipulative. Without it, I can't tell whether I mean more than some random rock on the street. (exaggeration, but things like the lunch comment today make me feel like that). This isn't exclusive to you, I don't know how to tell if anyone cares.

Is sleeping with your phone nearby typical for clients across the board? It feels like the entire foundation of therapy has been shaken. Again, I also feel very disturbed by your lunch comment. How can that appear as anything other than ice cold? I know we’d been sitting in silence for a while, but it made me feel so worthless at a time I was already reeling.

After having calmed down a bit, I can see why I thought the email thing was special to me. In the same appointment, you said you'd miss me and that I was important to you as a person. You also said to email as much as I wanted...that you wouldn't say that to most but would for me because my M.O. is distance. I think this last part is where the wires really got crossed. The problem comes in with how much what went on at our last session before break impacted me over the last six months. I want to say that you claiming I was important and saying you'd miss me only felt true and caring once they were paired with the action of offering email (which I thought was nontypical). This is why I'm almost certain I wouldn't have emailed had I known it was in the same context as a session. I don't necessarily feel the chit chat portion of our sessions shows any caring because isn't it just a means to an end of getting me to talk about "the work" as you call it? Part of the reason the email offer was such a big deal to me is that it seemed maybe you were interested in me as a person and not just a therapy case. Idk...it's a really weird line to draw, and I don't know if this distinction makes sense. This whole dynamic is incredibly confusing and frustrating. I don't want to be your friend. We would never be friends in real life...we'd never be acquaintances. But there are a lot of moments where I'm so incredibly insecure and needy that I do, on some level, desire to be special to you. Or get jealous of those that must be special to you. (etc. embarrassing things)

So yeah...I thought the email offer meant I was special to you. I thought you were doing something outside the norm, going out on a limb. This impacted so much of my trip (things I thought about) and the last seven months in general. I thought if you'd gone this extra mile to show you cared, then I needed to seriously consider and deal with how I felt about the relationship as it is a microcosm of everything else. My choosing to email was a really big decision to me. (based on what I thought at the time) It meant that I was acknowledging there had to be emotions and a relationship in therapy...something I'd fought strongly. That I cared about the therapy dynamic too. I wouldn't have bought that stupid gift and carried it around for weeks in my backpack trying not to break it until I could ship it out. I wouldn't have pushed myself to finish my scrapbook with the thought in the back of my head that I wanted to show it to you. I don't even know if I'd have come back to therapy if I hadn't thought there was this special meaning. I doubt I'd have had my revelation about needing to be wrong and admit I'm the problem. If there's another way to have the feeling of therapy/you as a secure base that would have fostered these same reactions, I'd love to find it and be able to believe it.

While I don't think this means there isn't a huge therapy dynamic aspect to this, I think my incredibly strong reaction to this news today is rooted in my childhood. It feels so much like when things changed with my dad or my brother. I adored my father for years. He taught me how to paint, took care of me at night while my mom was at school, made up bedtime stories. I'd sit on the sofa listening to him play the guitar, and he would play the same song over and over for me just because it was my favorite. These things made me feel loved and special. I was so secure in the relationship. But then these things stopped happening. He started drinking and fighting with my mom. He kept saying the words, but it didn't feel the same. Same with my brother. I followed him around like a lost puppy. Wanted to be just like him. We made home movies together. But then he started donig drugs, getting arrested, stealing my things, or cutting up all of my mom's clothing. Like the floor dropped out from under me.

This feels like that all over again.

I feel this overwhelming need to be special or someone's favorite because it doesn't feel like I ever have been. I think that's why I gravitate to things like Harry Potter or Chuck. They're stories about everyday people that found out they were special, and they got to do great things. Like maybe if I was better my parents would have loved me more or things wouldn't have been so big. If this has been there from my parents all along, I can't feel it very well. It doesn't feel real. Just like you don't. If I'm not special, why would anyone care about me?

I feel like we're at a really big crossroads in therapy. Like we need to find some way that I can feel/know you care. I feel I need to understand what you mean when you say you do. You say you care, but if the email thing is nothing new, then isn't it just you doing what you normally do? You'd probably say you care about all your clients, so it's nothing particular about me? I know you think (and I think) I need to open up more in therapy and be vulnerable, but that's going to be even harder after today. It just doesn't feel safe enough yet, and I don't think this is all totally a product of my issues. I know my patterns play a huge part (over the majority) in this reaction today or my not feeling like I can open up totally or cry, but I don't think it's true to put it all on me. I feel we need to find a solution or I don't know how to go forward. I don't think I can just keep putting it out there and putting it out there without feeling (or being able to recognize) that there's something there to catch me/help when I fall.

My t emails only with me. It does make me feel special. But she does. Other things too that are nurturing... Does your t do anything in sessiOn that makes you feel good? A shoulder squeeze. A pat on the hand? Does she say anything in particular? I'm sure she cares about you.