[precious things]

(This is long and rambling, I'm sorry, just not in a good place at all)

I have been so stirred up both internally by trauma work in therapy and externally by out of control life circumstances. My eating disorder is putting my tired, worn out little body through hell and my head wakes up in a constant state of (insert fear, anxiety, depression). I feel so split and dissociated most of the time and other times, feel as though I am fighting a groundswell of emotions. I have no real life support- in fact, I have the opposite. My T is the only person I have opened up about my trauma history with and we have been together for 6 months. And here I still am so entrenched in my disorder and caught somewhere between emotional hell with thoughts of ending it all and emotional numbness. I feel like I am losing my grip on myself and life. T and I have had a mini- break but still had phone contact. Today we had an in-person session and I was trembling with sadness and anxiety. My heart breaking that the walls were up, that I couldn't get out all the feelings and instead, the hopeless and jaded woman who hates herself and the world sat there and wasted an hour with " nothing we say can possibly change my life so it really doesn't matter..."

And I left knowing that I don't trust myself or T or therapy to make it okay. Nothing he can say can make the other 23 hours of the day more bearable. How can I do the trauma work when he can't help me manage these feelings, this utter hopelessness and despair? How can I recover when no one in the world cares for me except for me?

When I got home, I sent T a brief email quitting therapy saying I couldn't continue and how appreciative I was of his willingness to work with me.

He wrote back saying he understood I was in a bad place today, offered a free closure session and didnt like me ending therapy this way, still believed I could recover but respected my wishes. Thought it was better to end face to face.

No warmth or conviction of emotion and this closure session sounds like something designed to leave a T feeling better- how the **** can someone in my current state benefit from a closure session? I'm in hell and don't even understand why I quit, even more baffled by this response- shouldn't he be telling me I'm crazy to quit with all this trauma work looming? Someone help.

[mixedup_emotions]

I'm sorry you're in such a bad place and are struggling so much. It seems as though you were hoping that T would give you reasons to not quit therapy instead of honoring your decision. I know that my T would honor that decision as well, regardless of whether or not he believes it's in my best interest.

I'd imagine it would be worthwhile to reach out to your T with what you wrote here, so he is aware of what you're going through and what you need. It seems that you don't truly want to quit therapy. You want relief and you want to hang on to some sense of hope that things will get better.

I read a book about trauma work called Healing Tasks, and one of the important early steps is developing a support network in real life in order to be able to cope with the feelings that trauma work and therapy elicit. Also, to have outlets for the pent up negative energy - exercise, screaming at the top of our lungs, smacking a tree with a stick, etc. It may be worthwhile to talk to T about working on getting some of these steps in place before jumping back in to the deep work.

(( HUGS ))

[Raging Quiet]

I'm guessing your T was trying to get you to come in face to face to talk you out of your decision and he's offered it free to tempt you. He doesn't sound warm on his email back to you, but emails are not good and conveying emotions or thoughts well.

Sorry if I've got that wrong xxx

[Leah123]

Oh my goodness, it sounds like we're in exactly the same place. I am SO sorry you are suffering like this. It's brave and hopeful of you to share it here, to try and reach out when you're feeling hopeless.

I hope like Rect0pathic said, and believe, that your therapist is trying to give you an opportunity to continue, actually, but at the same time, they feel obligated to treat you as an adult- to act based on what you say, not what you're feeling underneath it, and to extend as much help as they can to you without trying to second-guess you or disrespect your words.

I wish you healing and hope. I'm sorry you're struggling. I'm right in the middle of this too, and it's hard to know what to do sometimes.

[ultramar]

Do you think it would help to slow down on the discussion of trauma? It seems to be overwhelming you -or contributing to overwhelm- and the idea is to keep it within a window of tolerability, so that this doesn't happen. You also haven't been seeing him for very long, so I wonder if you could establish a more solid relationship and work on regulating emotion some more before continuing, or at least continuing at this pace? Maybe you can concentrate on here and now issues for a while?

[CantExplain]

Originally Posted by precious things

When I got home, I sent T a brief email quitting therapy saying I couldn't continue and how appreciative I was of his willingness to work with me.

He wrote back saying he understood I was in a bad place today, offered a free closure session and didnt like me ending therapy this way, still believed I could recover but respected my wishes. Thought it was better to end face to face.

No warmth or conviction of emotion and this closure session sounds like something designed to leave a T feeling better.

I beg to differ.

When I did this to Madame T, she insisted on four closure sessions, fully paid for, and used one of them to lecture me on how disrespectful it is to terminate by email.

So I think your T is being quite civilised.

[feralkittymom]

He wrote back saying he understood I was in a bad place today, offered a free closure session and didnt like me ending therapy this way, still believed I could recover but respected my wishes. Thought it was better to end face to face.

No warmth or conviction of emotion and this closure session sounds like something designed to leave a T feeling better- how the **** can someone in my current state benefit from a closure session? I'm in hell and don't even understand why I quit, even more baffled by this response- shouldn't he be telling me I'm crazy to quit with all this trauma work looming? Someone help.

I suspect, too, that he will share how continuing may benefit you during the session. But it is his role to respect your decision as you articulate it, even if he disagrees with it. For those of us who may never have been listened to in our FOO, whose opinions/decisions were demeaned or ignored or punished, we often learned to interpret defiance as affection and caring. Ts won't engage in that positioning, and that can feel cold or disinterested to us. But it really isn't.

Go and talk. Maybe arrange for some coping measures before trauma work. Maybe agree to a break. But talk--at the very least, you need to understand for yourself why you feel an urge to quit.