The drama that is psychotherapy

What about "hugs" and "thanks for this!" clicks?

Elaine and Mr. Lippman - Exclamation points



"You put an exclamation point after sweatshirt?"

This is also hilarious:

“HEY STEVE!” someone recently emailed me. Both my name and “Hey” were in caps, and all five sentences in the message ended with exclamation points. At first glance I assumed the message was a loved one writing from a plane that was going down. It turned out to be someone I barely knew, discussing minor logistics and thanking me for something that had taken no effort on my part.

I’m not the first to point out that we’re in a punctuation arms race in emails and texts. “Thank you!!” people reply, like you just sent them a kidney instead of an invoice.

“See you at 1:00 for the meeting,” I type, and then hesitate: If I don’t add an exclamation point it sounds like I plan to kill the person when I get there. And yet when someone emails me about a meeting with an exclamation point, I think, “Listen, it’s a meeting. The best it could go is that there are bagels. If you are really that excited about it, you’re a psycho.”

Too many exclamation points!!! - Salon.com

Peaches, if there's one thing I'd like to share with you that I had to learn the hard way, it's that stating your needs upfront and giving other people the choice whether to fill them or not will always feel better than "manipulating" (that's a word I hate and don't usually use, but I can't think of a better word right now) people into meeting your needs. Then you will know that they're doing what they want because they want to instead of worrying about whether you "made" them do it. And then you can use that honesty to build healthy relationships based on reality instead of based on your fantasy of having needs met in a certain way. (I had to learn this the hard way too!) It takes a lot of courage to make yourself vulnerable by being honest, but other people will respect you so much for it.

She's not actually a professor; she's a writing instructor, but we happen to have some very similar interests that most people don't share, ex. queer theory, which she knows way more than me about, which I used to find intimidating but now I just sit enraptured as she tells me that Judith Butler's "Imitation and Gender Insubordination" stemmed from her work with AIDS activism (I did not know this!!!).

And she does think I'm special, which is actually the part that makes me think this might be unhealthy. T doesn't think I'm special (actually, she probably does, but it's not something I think about a lot or put any time or energy into) and I don't particularly care. I feel like it should be that way with everyone, but T says it's normal to want to feel special, and if this instructor thinks I'm special, then good for me and good for her, and it's probably old teacher issues getting in the way.

For example, when I saw her last week, she told me that she goes home and tells her partner about me and her partner says she has a "type" of student she always likes (the kind that always challenges her) and I fit her type. Also, she says I'm really interesting to talk to and have really good ideas. So, I like that. And she told me the other day that if I get married, I would need to find someone who will accept me fully but challenge me gently, which is SO true.

All of this feels to me like the exact same relationship I had with my former teacher who abandoned me...but I am also respecting her boundaries, and I don't expect her to be here forever, so progress?

I told my T it seems like my mom is manipulative. He corrected me and said, "you feel manipulated." So I said, "yes - I feel manipulated." I took that to mean its important not to ascribe motivations to people and instead, state how their actions affect you. It's been helpful to me.

About stating needs up front - that's all fine, well and healthy. Unfortunately, I literally struggle to verbalize my needs. I don't know wtf they are half the time! I get into the therapy room and a lot of the time my mind goes blank. I have all these feelings and thoughts swirling around and I try to speak but it comes out all muddled up. I'm confused. It's actually quite terrifying to me. My T might think I'm doing this on purpose, I dunno. But I know for myself with 100% certainty that it's something that happens TO me. But I keep going to T every.single.week, like clockwork because I am bound and determined to overcome whatever the hell is going on with me.

If we all were at a place to have healthy, clear and interpersonally proficient interactions, we wouldn't need therapy lol

Thanks, Yearning. This is good advice! Thanks for sharing!

I cannot thank you enough for posting this. It describes the place I am in & why I have so much difficulty on PC.

It's something I've been learning through therapy, to identify that I'm needing when I'm feeling an emotion. One thing that I've learned that's surprised me is that usually when I'm feeling angry, I'm not really feeling angry; there's usually something underneath that anger like sadness or hurt or disappointment or frustration, and underneath that maybe there are feelings of incompetence or neediness or inadequacy, and figuring out how to peel back those layers and get to the root of my actions has been my task in therapy.

T is also teaching me to frame things like this: when x happens, I feel y, because I need z; would you be willing to do abc to help me feel better about this? This sort of framing works because there's no blame; it's not, "You make me mad because you're selfish/manipulative/mean!" It's, "When you say that to me, I feel sad, because I have a need to be respected in this relationship, and calling me that name makes me feel less than."

Working on it...

Yep, that confirms it. I'm still in love with you, Stopdog.

I imagine the interrobang is also not acceptable, right?

[Sorry to hijack. I just feel like I need to affirm my undying love of Stopdog every few months, and this was the perfect moment. Now carry on, friends...]

Asiablue,

Thanks for explaining where you're coming from. It helps me understand where your strong feelings originate. This thread triggers my own "parent issues," but in a different way. I certainly can understand how it evoked some powerful emotions for both of us.

I agree with you that sometimes a person with a desire to be loved or special to their t could be capable of trying to manipulate their t in some way to attain that feeling of specialness.

The thing that I objected to the most was how you seemed to be categorizing all people with a desire/need to feel special into that selfish, manipulative category. Not all of us act manipulatively. Not all of us feel entitled. Many of us feel undeserving of care and hate to even ask for help. And if we do ask, and find out what we want is "too much," we back off in shame.

Our crime isn't that we purposely maneuver situations and people into meeting our needs because we are selfish, manipulative people. Our crime (if it can be called such) is that we were never taught how to ask for, or receive help, in a balanced way. Either we kept our mouth shut and tried to forge through all our problems alone, or else we ended up cracking open and spilling our needs onto others in a way that was "too much" for them to handle. Once we realize our needs have worn somebody else down, we feel shame and go back to trying to be an island again, coping with our pain alone.

Often, our parents were not there for us when we desperately needed them, so we could not depend on them for support. So now, we don't know what IS or IS NOT acceptable when it comes to depending on others. We don't know what's normal, what's balanced.

People who don't struggle with these issues expect us to have these relational skills and are quick to label us as manipulative when, in actuality, we're just trying to figure out how relationships work. We don't know how to depend on others in a balanced way until we learn it, usually through painful trial and error.

I do not categorize everyone with those needs all in the same boat. My view is that everyone on this planet manipulates their environment to get their needs met. Manipulation for me isn't all good or all bad. THere's degrees of it. Everyone does it, even "healthy" people.

I feel like you've chose to certain things i said out of context and somehow see it as a personal attack. I have no need to attack or judge anyone. And if you read what i did say, i said that the extreme few who are on a constant drama rollercoaster and who put others thru it with them need help to and that i feel sorry for people who try to get their needs met that way because they often end up alienating people who get compassion-fatigue and just can't do it anymore and distance themselves and the cycle of abandonment continues for that individual. I expressed some sympathy for it but i was also expressing the feelings it brings out in me because of my stuff. And like i said before, i'm allowed to feel like i don't want dragged into that just as that person with those difficulties deserve empathy and help... i'm just not the one to give it because it triggers me greatly. No one is wrong in this scenario.

I thought I had decided to keep my next appointment, but apparently am still waffling, because I immediately thought "if I tell t I want to cancel and then say thanks for everything see ya never" I will be accused of creating drama. And maybe that's what I would be trying to do, who knows. this whole thing is so darn complicated sometimes and it does not need to be. I don't like drama either - I don't want people looking at me, etc. would rather fade into the woodwork - so me doing this drama-y thing is out of character. I better just keep the appointment eh?

I think I have quite good predisposition to be a drama queen but I just do not allow myself... E.g. sometimes I want to scream or cry but I don't do that as it would be just "stupid", I want to write a dramatic e-mail to my T but I don't do that as I want to be "normal", I think about the consequences, if I really need it etc. I want to walk in the session, sit on the floor, hide my head but instead I see calmly in one position etc... And I hate being in the center, when people are looking at me - I'm fine with it when I give a talk at the conference or something similar but even imaging that someone could accuse me of creating drama is terrible... So I think that I have good predispositions to be a drama queen but I won't act like that as it would be too embarrassing...

Yes, it's better to keep the appointment. It takes a lot more bravery, in my opinion, than canceling and running away.

The words, "thanks for everything, see ya never," are a stand in for all the things you don't want to say.

I was toying with the idea of texting my new t and telling her it's not working for me but that wouldn't be very professional or adult so I have decided now that I will go to next appt and just tell her.

Asiablue,

OK. So here's the misunderstanding.

You said in your last post,

". . if you read what i did say, i said that the extreme few who are on a constant drama rollercoaster and who put others thru it with them need help to and that i feel sorry for people who try to get their needs met that way because . . . "

But I looked back at your initial post. You didn't say "the extreme few," You referred to "people like that" and "people who wish this" (the desire to be special). That sounds to me like an overall negative classification of everybody with the wish to be special to their t.

Because your post sounded like a negataive categorization of all people who have this wish, I responded angrily and pointed out the wrongness of classifying everybody with that wish as being helpless, manipulative, or passive agressively get needs met.

I know you said you had sympathy for such ones. I didn't say that you weren't allowed to feel the way you did. I also didn't imply that you should be forced to deal with people like that.

My only point was that there shouldn't be an overall negative classification of people who struggle with this issue. That's it.

Had you used the words "the extreme few," or I knew that's what you meant, I would not have responded in the way I did. But all I had to go on were the words you used.

This isn't worth fighting about. You made your point, and I made mine. No blame either way. Just a miscommunication.

I was never fighting with you. You are right i didn't say specifically "the extreme few" but that was what i was meaning and was thinking when i typed what i did. But i can't expect everyone to know that of course. So yes, a miscommunication.

You're so right with every single word there. Oh my. Thank you.

the interrobang has long been my favorite non-punctuation mark.....

I never even heard of this mark!

Here it is:
Interrobang - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

‽
‽‽
‽‽‽
‽‽‽‽
‽‽‽‽‽
‽‽‽‽
‽‽‽
‽‽
‽

heehee I just do it like this you know?! lol
(sorry stopdog I had to do it.)

You mentioned letting go of the desire to be "special" to my T. Well, just recently, I accidentally crossed one of two of T's boundaries. On my own, I came to realize that she is a professional; I am a client. And the two shall never meet. She has lots of clients, and I am but one. But I disagree about the pain part. Realizing that there is an unmovable boundary between us has actually created more and greater pain.

I do think, at some deep level, we all have a desire to be "special"...there is nothing wrong with that and, hopefully, in our lives we are special to a few, just as some people are special to us.
The problem comes when you begin to believe that you are Unique in your pain (or, I suppose in your Rightness/Perfection) And, now that I recall, the phrase I used to use was "Terminal Uniqueness"...because, unless we realize that we all have things in common with others, we miss out on the great beauty and true pain that can result in growth...
You end up, in this crazy "unique me, nobody can understand me..." isolating yourself in a sad, small, painful world of unreality.

I think that depression can do that to people. It can isolate you in this small, sad, painful world of unreality.

And then, the depressed person starts to feel really alone, and sad, and despairing, and then when he pops out of that for a moment, he reflects on his prior feelings and feels like he is crazy. And the cycle repeats.

A depressive spiral is one of the most tormenting things I have ever experienced. I'm so thankful it did not end with my own life.

I hate to admit it, but believing that my therapist cared about me is the only thing that got me through those times. And it's not that it was a therapist, it's that SOMEONE cared. One human being gave a darn about me and my pathetic life.

And ... this makes me cry ... that therapist was one of the first people to act that way toward me in a very, very long time.

So I think it makes sense that someone would want to be special to someone who helped them so much. And it is painful that the relationship has to end.

Hopefully it doesn't end until you've diversified your support network to include people whom are not paid caregivers.