I literally don't think I can take it

((((((((((nightsky))))))))))

I've been away from the computer and just read your thread now. I'm so sorry you're having problems in therapy again. I don't understand how your T could believe someone else's lies about you. I'm not quite sure I understand what Anne was saying about alters, but does it mean that a part of you, an alter, did or said something that YOU are not aware of, so what T heard isn't a lie? Please forgive me if I'm totally off base with what I'm asking. I know YOU wouldn't lie, and I can't see your T, as I've come to "know" him these years I've known you through this forum, not believing you either. It doesn't make sense. I'm glad you're working it out, and I hope you find some peace soon. You so much deserve it!!!

This definitely isn't it, because if this were true, there would be actual evidence that we could look at (due to what the specific lie is). And there is no evidence because it didn't happen

If this other person is saying to your T you have told her something about something your T has done or said to you. That would be very difficult. This is the problem when T's see clients who know other clients. If it is something you have supposed to have said about your T & you it could leave your T in dangerous waters. Perhaps it would be best to find a T and star afresh. Sounds like a kind of sibling rivalry between you & this other client. Your therapist needs to be the adult here and either put it to sleep or tell you be cannot fully trust what the truth is. Im sorry this has happened.

The lies aren't about me and T. I'm sorry I'm reaching out and can't be more specific. I just don't feel safe sharing the details...not because of PC or the regular people here, just because it's the internet and I know anyone can read it.

hm. first of all, i can't believe he's breeching confidentiality, and telling you what another client is saying. someone else i know sees the same therapist as me, and my therapist is very careful about keeping things separate. even when i KNOW what she's been told something, she doesn't let on - not even a little bit.

second, and i know you probably can't say specifically, but why is this thing (this lie!) "still in the way?" that seems kind of ridiculous to me. does your therapist mean that he's resolved (not sure the word to use) except for this issue? like we're-all-good-but-there's-just-this-one-last-thing? sounds like it, but i'm not sure. thankfully, it's not adding up for him (like it doesn't make sense, given what he knows of you), so it sounds like he's not accepting it very well. yes, on some level he "believes" the other client in that he wants to check this out with you, but it seems like deep down he knows it's really not.. unless you're getting a totally different message. but i don't think questioning = believing. plus he's just saying "this is what i heard."

well, crap. not sure what to say about that. my suggestion would be to pick apart the lies as best you can, as a way to "prove" they're not true (if that's even possible). but i get that you just want to go to therapy and not have to defend yourself. my only other idea is to confront this other client.

i'm not sure if this makes sense, but maybe you should keep not trusting him - until this thing is 100% resolved. i think if you stay in sort of a neutral/guarded space, it might be easier to work through some of this stuff without feeling like you're leaving yourself vulnerable (even if it's just a "teeny bit").

if he says he now knows the truth, then i think from here you might want to spend some time going over and over and over what exactly that is/means. not until you believe him, should you move on to something else.

one last thing thought: he's not your past. he's not someone from your childhood that told lies and hurt you. he's someone new, someone you know now that is trying to help you. try not to bring the past into it, because the present is very different. this feels the same, but it's different - and capable of a much different outcome.

i hope my comments don't come across as harsh. i'm a thousand percent on your side, but i just wanted to present a few thoughts and ideas. for the record, i don't think you've done ANYTHING wrong and you don't deserve any of what is happening. i hope you're feeling okay today.. 's

(((Nightsky))) I am so sorry. This is really a conflict of interest on the part of T. And it stinks. And it is causing you pain. Sometimes in smaller towns, this thing happens. Goes off into the "he said" "she said" world. And that really can damage people and their relationships with others. I really wish this would never have happened to you.

Sending you very big hugs.

i still don't understand why on earth your T would believe something about you that SOMEONE ELSE said. I know you can't go into specifics, but this completely boggles my mind.

I am SO angry for you.....SOOO angry.

Nightsky

This sounds SOOOOO incredibly hard. And PAINFUL.

I'm glad you are reaching out here on PC.

Working through issues, both in T and RL, can be challenging. Although it's easier for those of us on the outside looking in, sometimes, when we are in the muck of it, it's hard to know when enough, really, is ENOUGH.

I don't think there is any right or wrong answer here.

I AM worried about you. Weren't your T and you meeting with another T? Perhaps, right now, it might be helpful?

Nightsky...I have been more of a lurker here on PC as of late and not responding to very many posts. Several people here have given you good advice and I am not going to parrot previous information. My heart hurts for you; that you are still dealing with this. I look at my T as someone who is on my side and if that was ever threatened, especially by another client, I'd be in shambles.

Know that you are in my thoughts and prayers. My prayer is that you will remain strong and that this can be worked out in a way that is best for you. Many hugs.

What you wrote really struck me:

"So my past is all jumbled up with now and I just don't know how to move forward. I mean how many YEARS will it take me to trust T again? And then what will happen? Ugh. Sad"

I'm going to suggest a different perspective that may have the potential to feel invalidating or otherwise not supportive, if you want to define supportive as never disagreeing with another person or failing to condemn a T for having done something wrong. If you are not wanting to hear something in this vein, stop reading now. For anyone who's not nightsky, I would appreciate you not sending me any nasty PM's.

I'm not trying to claim I know the truth or any specific truth or have any corner on the right way to handle this, or any other issue. This is just said in the spirit of this is how I think about things, and I thought it might help you.

I don't think it matters whether your T believes something that someone else said or not. You're not in therapy to have your T believe everything you say as opposed to conflicting information from someone else. If this were an issue about something traumatic that happened in the past that your T didn't believe, that would be another story. But, so what if your T *might* believe something someone else said that isn't true, especially if it isn't about the reason why you're in therapy? And I say might because it just seems to me that you don't really know what he believes, that you might be making assumptions about what he believes, and even if he does tell you directly what he believes, you may or may not actually believe what he says. You're not in therapy to get your T to believe you about this thing. Maybe you feel that it is a precursor to working on your stuff for him to believe every single thing that you want him to believe, if it has nothing to do with the reasons why you came to therapy or what you want to work on in the first place. You're not in therapy to trust your T. You may perceive a lack of trust as an obstacle that must be cleared before you can continue on with your therapy, but that is a belief that should be challenged. Perhaps the perceived lack of trust is an obstacle that can be gone around rather than removed, and it doesn't need to be something that prevents you from moving forward. You see it that way now, but that doesn't mean that is the way it is, or that's the way it has to be. Many of us construct obstacles to our own healing because we aren't yet ready to do the healing work at this particular moment in time. The beauty of creating obstacles is that we can always remove them when we are ready.

In this culture we live in, with the ability of technology to interconnect everyone with everyone and the realities of related social networks, people are going to lie about other people-- or unintentionally pass along lies. Sometimes we learn about these lies and sometimes we don't. But no one person can prevent other people from talking about her and no one can prevent the spread of gossip, rumors, innuendo that are the inevitable part of living in a social world. This is not so much of "it happens, get over it" statement as it is a point of view that we have to figure out how to deal with this when it happens, without letting it destroy you or your trust in people or certainly your relationship with your T. Whatever happened to bring this issue into therapy, I think that what needs to be worked on is the "jumbled up" part of it with your childhood. That it might be important to address how that terrible dynamic of what lies meant when you were a child still affects you know and how you might be constructing what is currently happening within that framework, rather than a more balanced and mindful perspective on the relative lack of threat that is inherent in lies in your social world now.

I know that for me, I look back at certain events/interactions in my life and I see that I brought my past to them and perceived threat that wasn't there. Now, I look at times or people when I feel threatened and ask myself whether I'm bringing something into this from my past or whether there is an actual threat now. As I have continued to heal, I see fewer things and people as threatening.

All I'm really trying to say is that it is worth considering whether the threat that you perceive is really, actually there in your T and/or this other person, or whether you are bringing your past and feeling threatened because of that. Of course it's not always an either-or, but for me what has tended to work is for me to focus on how my past is activating the threat, because that is something within my control. What other people do or what other people believe is not under my control.

Oh Nightsky, I'm so sorry . I've been going through my own should-I-go-back-to-T drama (most recent development: for the first time since I have met him, I e-mailed him to tell him I did not feel safe, and he said he did not think he should be "involved in supporting" me, since every time we talk it goes sour... so I really feel you on the suicidal feelings). So I had been thinking about you.

If you don't mind, I'd like to NOT say one thing that I know happened, but simply say that one of this person's claims is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE. As in not in the realm of possibility, at all, not for Nightsky and not for anybody. There is absolutely no way it could possibly be true. If you'd like me to remove that, just let me know either by PM or on this thread. But I wanted to come to your defense a little and say that there is just NO WAY that it's true, and there's no explanation other than a total fabrication on the other person's part. At least this one thing.

Which makes her totally not credible. I CANNOT BELIEVE your T still believes her. I mean what the hell. It makes me really angry because it feels like he has gone through no effort at all to figure out if what she is presenting to him is even POSSIBLE, let alone true.

What frustrates me is something that multiple people have brought up. SeventyEight, for instance,

He should be able to hear something about you from someone else, and you should not have to bear the burden of it. I'm with everyone else whose mind is boggled that he would allow himself to believe -- really believe, inside -- something that someone else said about you. Frankly, he chose to be a therapist, which means he made the choice to be present with only the person across from him in the room, and working with in their subjective reality.

What Anne brings up makes me think of how it SHOULD be with your T. It shouldn't matter what he thinks about what you are saying, how believable it is. T's are trained to talk to people who believe that they are receiving messages from space ordering them to kill their parents -- not by saying, "No you're not," but by asking them about the messages, etc. I'm not saying it's the same thing AT ALL, I'm saying that even if you were saying something totally out there, it should not matter. What makes this truly a nightmare is that what you're telling him is actually the truth, both in your reality and in the reality perceived by others.

But he brings this other stuff into the room. You shouldn't have to know about any of this stuff, because whether he believes it or not (which I still can't get over, how dumb is he??), he should be there with you, and he should be there believing what is real TO YOU. He seriously screwed this up, and now that you know, it's nearly impossible to go back to that state of blind trust, because now not only do you know what's being said, but you know that he is allowing his belief of it to affect how he sees you. He is actually TELLING you that, which amazes me in its shamelessness. I would be so embarrassed for myself if I were a therapist and I had to admit to someone that I was having a hard time believing them because of something someone else said. Cringe!

This whole thing is just an awful mess. I'm so sorry. I'm not surprised you're suicidal. I wish I could say something that would help. Right now for me, I am trying to spend as much time with my H as possible, because I feel guilty thinking about suicide when I'm with him -- I can't do that to him. Hang in there

I want to reply to everyone but really can't right now. But each and every response means a lot to me. A LOT.

Anne - The place I am trying to get to is seeing how much of this is triggered from my past and how much is now. I know that if my past were different this wouldn't feel so big. But my past is what it is, and it DOES feel this big. I don't want it to. I can clearly see how the past is getting in the way - AND this sucks. I need to be able to trust my T to work with him - and to be able to feel really, really, really safe - and I'm struggling. A lot. I do hear what you're saying. And I even see how it applies. Im' just not there.

SallyBrown - thank you. I appreciate you backing me up on that. Because it IS impossible, and it's crazy making that T is stupid enough to believe it. I did tell him at one point that she had manipulated me a lot (she had) and that HE was being manipulated too. I think he heard me. I do kind of think he;s starting to get it. but omg.

I think that 78 said something about confidentially. T did say what he said in a very vague way - no names or specifics -that made it clear to me what was being said but by sort of skirting around it. Which wasn't ideal, and probably still violates something, but I'm glad he told me. What made me fall apart was finding out that while I was sitting there feeling safe, he was sitting there with this doubt in his mind. That, to me, is the worst part. I thought I was safe, but I wasn't. Trigger trigger trigger. I pretty much lost it - I mean REALLY lost it - and it was like something "snapped" for T and he saw the reality of the situation. Maybe. Maybe.

Things are crazy. They will get better. I'm just not sure how yet. I'm scared it will not involve T, though, and that breaks my heart. AGAIN.