The Lesson

Madame T said that every crisis brings a lesson, even if you have to wait for it.

I think the lesson of our final crisis is that I can forgive someone, even if they
1. are totally unrepentant
2. still insist that they were right
3. would do so again.

This, I guess, is the ultimate and most difficult of forgivings.

But there's another lesson too: just because I forgive you doesn't mean I'm coming back so you can hurt me again.

You don't, in my opinion, have to work so hard to forgive the therapist this soon.

Yeah I am still ticked/depressed from my 2010 T.
Just forgive her before the 3 year mark.

Thanks!

It's no so much that I'm making an effort to forgive her, it's more that I am forgiving her (whether I want to or not) and I'm trying to understand how that can be.

Did you see that I had a happy dream of being back in session with her?

She's given me a great deal of practice in forgiving her and I am getting good at it.

I'm puzzled as to what transgression you are forgiving her for. She did not give you what you wanted? She did not say the words you wanted to hear? She was not the person you wanted her to be?

If she is totally unrepentant, then she thinks she is right. You disagree. This sounds like a r/s issue to me, rather than some absolute issue where she is completely in the wrong and you are totally in the right. Is this not something that needs to be worked out, rather than an absolute? I seem to remember than you said that you "won" by exercising your power. If this is true, then she lost, so why do you need to forgive her?

She let me down very badly in the biggest crisis of 2012. I say she didn't support me, she says she did. It all went downhill from there.

We tried to work it out but I couldn't get past the fact that she had hurt me and wouldn't recant. And that, really, is why I quit.

Well that didn't last very long. I'm back to hating her again.

Forgiving isn't a magic wand...you forgive a little, seethe a bit, then forgive a bit more. It takes a long time, as long as it took for the hate to build up.

You're doing well CE, you're moving forward, a lot of folks can't do that. Well done.

Thanks. I guess that's true. I've know old griefs to come back for one last bite years later. But each bite is smaller than the one before.

I think you might have mixed feelings, and what you might be hating is separateness.

I have reached a very important stage in the grief process: the realisation that I am overreacting.

Yes, Madame T let me down very badly but it was only one session. In spite of her lack of support, I did survive the crisis and my relationship with my daughter is back on track and perhaps even stronger.

These things are so complex. You might continue to have more realizations.