Screwed things up with T because my needs are too big

I've talked to her about all of this. We're working on it. But right now it's not there. So maybe it'll be there a month or a year from now, but that doesn't solve the problem in the moment. I know the goal of therapy is long term rather than short term, but that doesn't eliminate the mini-crises I experience (although I haven't experienced one like this in about six months, so yay for me) and need support for.

It's just a really nasty cycle. I can't be around other people when I'm like this because I do stupid things that hurt my relationships with them. I can't be alone when I'm like this because the anxiety spiral just gets worse when I'm isolated. I can't try to distract myself when I'm like this because I can't focus on anything when the anxiety and loneliness are so overwhelming; even schoolwork is a huge struggle. And no, my solution is notgoing to be to take some pills and go on soma holiday. That will solve nothing. The problems will still be there; only the symptoms get masked by medication that I can't even get a prescription for anyway. What I really just need is someone to sit with me and listen to me and hug me and tell me they're here and aren't going anywhere, and actually stay here and not go anywhere. Is that really so much to ask?

Your post earlier suggested that DBT group wouldn't be a possibility for you because of money, right? Have you looked into DBT skills on your own? Picked up some books? Have you discussed with your therapist whether she would be willing or able to talk about DBT skills with you?

(I am glad to hear that it's been a while since you went through your last mini-crisis. This, too, shall pass. )

Yes - I've been there in that place too. Years ago in therapy with an ex-T....he wanted to talk about my past and I was in crisis in my present relationship. He didn't seem to want to talk about my present relationship and I was so confused by that and adamant that it wasn't my past but it WAS my current relationship!! Well......he ended it badly and unethically (this is NOT to say your T will ever do that) but despite what he did wrong by terminating me in the way he did which is inexcusable, I do see things differently now. He was right in some ways. It was not just about my current relationship. It was an issue with me that I just could not see for the life of me.

I wanted my T to see just how wrong my H was and how hurt I was and whatnot. I was right. That mattered and I needed to know what the heck to DO in my present. But it was more complicated than that - it was more than just do A to get to point B. It's complex. I don't see that focusing on the T relationship is a waste of $$$ or that time....I see it as part of healing my attachment issues. If your T is a T that subscribes to attachment theory, she might think the same way.

I don't see anything that you have written about this therapist as evidence of working from an attachment framework. Nothing. Nada.Zilch.

She is pissing me off right now. I can hear so much the pain you're feeling and the isolation you're feeling. Your problem isn't your needs, or your desires for authentic connection and reliable support. Your problem is that you're surrounded my douchebags.

You are asking very appropriately for what you need and that's about as healthy as a person can get. You do need a support system. This therapist isn't it. She consistently lets you down, and refuses to meet your needs; which is understandable in that she doesn't have time but her delivery of that message isn't acceptable. And if you need more then she needs to refer you.

Or even better, refer yourself to someone who can spend a lot more time with you, who takes time to really get to know you and who wants to meet your needs as best as possible. It is out there.

Also meds aren't the answer, there's nothing wrong with you yearning. You are hurt and you are responding in a very normal way to that hurt. I'm not sure what this preoccupation with numbing everything down is. People are afraid to feel these days. It isn't pleasant, feelings are overwhelming and excruciating, i know this more than anyone but it is normal considering your upbringing.

Sending you lots of hugs x

We do discuss DBT skills and I have some books and they're helpful, but not in moments like this. In moments like this I'm just too out of control to figure it out myself.

We have 50 minutes a week. We can't discuss the therapeutic relationship, my issues with my mother, do trauma work, do breathing exercises, and do DBT skills all at the same time. It just doesn't work that way.

We talk about the T relationship a lot. Just not when I'm not in a place to hear it, like now, when the immediate problems are so large and overwhelming that that's as far as my mind can go. It's like if you're walking to the store to get some medicine because your wife has a headache, but on your way, you see someone lying in the street bleeding because they've gotten hit by a car. Your wife's headache can wait; first you need to help the person lying in the street because this problem is more immediate and time sensitive. You can go back to your wife twenty or thirty minutes from now; the person lying in the street and bleeding out doesn't have twenty or thirty minutes to wait.

My crisis with my mother = the person lying in the street bleeding out. The wife's headache = my relationship with T.

Okay, long-term solution = go find a new T (even T suggested today that maybe I need a second T or a skills group or something because she can't give enough support) and build some more friendships and all that jazz...but short term solution. For this moment, right now. I don't have anyone. The people I thought I did have (my mother, my mentor, T) are not available or never were available. So what do I do? I can't deal with this alone. If I could, believe me, I would.

Hmmm....I see what you're saying. Why do you think your T wants to talk about the email thing/your T relationship over your crisis with your mom? What is her reasoning? I'm wondering if this T is not going to be able to give you what you want at this time....like maybe you would prefer a T who is more pure CBT/DBT?

Right this moment? Talk here, draw it out, go out a walk, distract if you can. I realise this is crappy advice when you're feeling that way and likely won't help very much that's why you need to plan ahead for getting a better support network. So in future when you feel like this you do have a support network.

CBT doesn't work for me; I've done it before and it just doesn't. I need more of a humanistic approach. DBT, I'm okay with learning some of the skills, and my T incorporates some DBT into our sessions, but I don't want a straight up DBT T either. Her reasoning for needing to talk about the email is that she wouldn't be fulfilling her ethical obligation as a T if she didn't remind me of boundaries and clarify things and also that the crisis with my mom isn't going to be solved overnight. Totally true, by the way. But she could have helped me come up with a plan to make me a little less anxious in the short term, ex. call your mom, say this to her, then go to person x who will support you (imaginary person x, but still), then do some journaling, then go home and rest for awhile, and if your mother does x, then you can do y.

Or at least helping me sort out my feelings/needs in this situation would have been helpful. Long term, maybe not, but you can't solve long-term problems when you're in crisis. That would be like telling someone who's in the ER because they're feeling suicidal that they should examine their relationship with their parents who have been dead twenty years to see if there are patterns here. Sure, that's a super helpful thing for that person to do...but not when he's in the ER. First order of business is to stabilize him; the trauma work can come later.

You do sound as though you could use a different T who could offer more support. My T does not hug me, but she does all the rest: sit with me, listen to me, and tell me that she's here and isn't going anywhere, and she does actually stay here and not go anywhere.

I don't know about short-term solutions; I often go to Dr. Google for this sort of thing-- whether or not you have any self-harm issues, "things to do instead of [self-harming]" will turn up lots of ideas and lists that may be useful to you. They've helped me in tough moments.

For me, I'd get to work as immediately as possible on finding another T or skills group, etc. Taking action tends to make me feel better, and the sooner you get to work on a long-term plan, the sooner it comes to fruition.

I've been trying to build a better support network. I thought I had one. Two really good friends, my mom, my T, my mentor figure (not for emergencies like this, obviously, but to help me be a little bit more stable in general). T = not happening, probably never was. My mom these days causes more problems than she solves, although she has been a good support to me in the past. Mentor figure I screwed things up with and she's not someone whose shoulder I can cry on anyway. One friend I lost a couple weeks ago and the other I'm burdening with way too much of my crap when he's going through his own stuff too.

What else can I do to build a better support network? I've been trying my very best. I thought I had it down. But obviously I don't. And I've spent the past week distracting myself, levelling the anxiety...but to what end? It needs to be resolved sometime. I can't live like this, spending my weeks working so hard to keep control, waiting for the moment when I'll finally be able to deal with stuff. I lived like that for a really long time. I was perpetually anxious, depressed, and suicidal. Mini-crises need to be handled sooner rather than later so they don't become mega-crises or worse, sustained crises that are soon no longer just crises, but your life.

My anxiety quick fixes usually involve stupid impulsive things that engage other people. For example, my first instinct is to go see mentor figure tomorrow and resolve my issues with her. I could probably do that, and it would probably feel really good to me and just sitting and talking with her about normal, happy things would be so lovely and make me feel so much better. And she might be fine with it. But she also might not be. And it's not a risk I can take when I'm feeling off kilter like this. I wish I just had someone I could call who would just be with me.

Why can't I have that, though? Most people do. Most people have someone they can call to just talk who will make them feel better. Why is wanting or even needing that so wrong?

Yeah - I feel your frustration and pain But my T is humanistic and while he probably would be more open to being relational (I barely ever reach out to him but I've started to kind of here and there and he's acted very happy about it...) he would never say do x and then do y and whatnot. He will not tell me what to do. With the exception of one time when I think countertransference popped out during a session (he apologized later), he has never given me direction in the way I want him to. I crave direction about wtf I'm supposed to be doing in the session but he has stood firm in not directing me.

Are there Ts out there who tell clients what to do like that? What do you want your T to tell you to do? Like if you could have an imaginary session with her right now and she answered the way you ideally would like her to, what would she say?

Remember you felt your t was supportive on Monday when you did the phone check in, and that was after you emailed her. So she can't be that angry. I don't think you've totally lost her, it's just that she can't be there as much time as you feel you need her to be there. Have you told her that you think there's a financial obstacle to the alternatives she suggested, so that she could try to help you figure out other alternatives?

Edit to add: I had in mind alternatives in addition to her. If you want to find another t to replace her, I think that's understandable too, but I don't necessarily think if you have to totally jump ship with her.

I think when she tells you her boundaries you're probably hearing it in a different way than she means it. I remember in another thread you said you're okay with her boundaries but you need her to be more considerate about the way she states them, or something like that. I think it might help you if you could find a way to really discuss that with her calmly. Here's some of what you wrote in a previous OP:

"I know this is my stuff; I know you’re not trying to chastise me for having needs and that’s just how I’m interpreting you. I’m working on that, and for now, I just have a need for you to be mindful of it. Because today I felt like we had a really good session and I felt really validated and supported and even cared about (if that’s okay for me to feel) and then at the end I felt like I ruined it by asking you for some more time, even though I was okay with you saying no. So then I went home feeling really guilty because it felt like you were displeased with me and like I’d done something to upset you. I don’t think that was how the situation was at all in reality, but that’s how I’m interpreting it."

I emphasized the part where you said you know what she's thinking because that's what I think it would have been good to ask her about, so that she could reassure you, and then you could have tried to come to a mutually agreeable solution about how she could have stated her boundaries to you without upsetting you. That is IF you really are okay with her boundaries . I know it's scary to ask a question like whether she means to chastise you. You and I are guessing she does not mean to, but I think if you give her the space to actually say so herself, things could go better.

I know you're upset about a lot of things now, so it's hard to focus on this with her, but if you have to work out your relationship with her before you can work with her on things about your mother, then maybe this is a way to help work out your relationship with your t. If it's more important to find additional, affordable sources of support than the amount of support your t could provide, maybe working on that before working on the relationship with your t would be good. Then hopefully it would be easier to accept her boundaries. I'm afraid I don't know what is going on with your mother closely enough to understand exactly why you feel it is as urgent as you feel it is. I'm sorry you don't have the support you want about that right now.

I'm sorry if this is worded too strongly, but I'm afraid that if/when you insist that your t word things carefully and be mindful of how you might be interpreting her, then that's when things might go haywire. If you can manage to talk about it and ask her to do it, I think you could get more of what you want.

I didn't want her to tell me what to do, but help me figure out what I want to do to solve this. But I guess what really would have been so helpful today would have been just empathy. Like if she'd said, "I can see you're in a really bad place right now and worrying that you've ruined everything with everyone but you haven't. I'm here, and I will continue to be here, and I will see you through this, and you can work this out, and I will help you. It might feel like everything is ending, but it isn't, and you haven't done anything wrong with your mother or mentor figure; you're doing your best and I see it. And with the email thing, I'm not mad at you; I see that it was because your needs were so overwhelming [which doesn't make it okay] that you felt you had to do that. So let's discuss some strategies that you can use when your needs feel overwhelming like that."

Really just the empathy...and her not being mad at me. Possibly also telling me I don't need to feel guilty. But it's just a fantasy.

Yearning, I know you said CBT doesn't work for you, but the things I put in bold are all things that CBT emphasizes and works on. That is exactly what CBT actually IS, in my experience. Practical, if X then Y solutions. Perhaps you just had the wrong DBT therapist.

Can you print that out and give it to her next time? I think it's really important for her to hear it in that way...

That's part of what I need, but it isn't all of what I need. My T does CBT for some clients, and occasionally brings in parts of it with me, but she mostly works from an attachment framework. CBT to me is more results oriented than process/feelings/needs oriented. I need both. Today, I needed a results oriented approach. Usually that's not actually what I need; usually I just need space to have feelings rather than figuring out what to do about those feelings. The CBT work I did before was mostly trauma work, but I just didn't like the style of exclusively focussing on thoughts/behaviors.

I will. I should have just said that to her today - the issue is just that when I'm feeling so overwhelmed and out of control I'm not good at expressing myself articulately like that; I'm just good at yelling/crying and that makes the other person angry/defensive/annoyed, when what I really need is comfort and reassurance, but they can't see that. This is why discussing our relationship would have accomplished nothing today; I would have just been speaking really angrily to her and saying stupid stuff in a stupid way that would have been counterproductive and gotten my needs ignored rather than met. T uses the attachment term for this - miscuing. I do it all the damn time.

Yeah, NO, she doesn't. That may be what she SAYS she is doing, but it isn't. My T is doing a combination of CBT and attachment stuff and from what I understand, the idea is that they encourage attachment and give you a corrective emotional experience, and then teach you the skills to do it yourself. That is not what your T is doing.

Interesting. I thought her concept of "working from an attachment framework" = bringing in attachment theory, talking about my attachments with my parents, teaching me about my needs as a kid and how they manifest these days, etc. Is that not it?

If your T is an attachment therapist, she is the worst one I have ever heard of.

Well, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but not a huge one.

She was supportive on Monday. And she usually is. Which is why I have hesitations about jumping ship rather than sticking around to try to work this stuff out. I will discuss all of this with her when I see her next, but really, I can't discuss it with her until I'm calm enough to really be honest with her and hear what she's saying, and today I just wasn't in that place. I hope next week I will be.

The situation with my mother = me bringing up past stuff we never talk about and her getting angry in response and crying/guilt-tripping/threatening, as per usual. The longer I let her sit in her anger without reaching out to her, the harder it will be to repair our relationship.