Virtually begged T not to abandon me...now feel disgusted at myself

I know I don't post often in this forum, nor contribute much support to others often enough and so probably don't deserve much support, but I really could do with some, please. (sorry its long, you don't have to read, I also just need this out!)

I have had some really difficult situations this last 2 weeks, that have brought huge emotions and stressors and many many old memories have been surfacing and I have trouble managing all of this....while studying and being a mum.

Yesterday I told my T about the horrible way that my ex husband has been treating my son, that I found out for sure this week as I witnessed it. It was how he used to treat me. Sent me in to quite a spin. My T mentioned towards the very end of our session that maybe I needed to see someone else for some EMDR(even though he could do this with me) while we carry on with therapy, explaining that it may have a quicker result for me towards managing the symptoms. Now, the way he explained it, at that very moment he said it....all I could hear was that he wanted rid of me. I told him that and began to get very upset. I told him it was too much with how vulnerable I was feeling. He tried to reassure me.

In tears I told him "please, please don't be like them all, please don't give up on me. They all did when the going got tough. Please don't be like that"

I am mortified, and feel quite disgusting!!!!!!! Because I made myself so vulnerable, I virtually begged him to help, I acted like such a child, I probably looked soo stupid, I just couldn't hear what he was saying. THEN......... last night I couldn't get out of my head that he was trying to get rid of me so I sent him an email!!!!!! I told him I didn't understand and it was probably a little....ugh emotional....and asked him to explain.

What should I do now? I feel like sending another email now asking him to ignore the previous and that I am fine now and pretend like everything is fine and that I am not really upset and just be very......closed I guess. I don't like that I have reverted to this sort of behaviour. Will he be mad with me? Oh dear.....

I have 2 sides of me working here. The logical knowing side that can see that based on my experience over the last 13 months with this T that he has never given me a reason to believe that he will get rid of me. But right now the emotional side of me, based on all of my history can on BELIEVE 100% that he will also not be there for me. It is like a battle!

Just....does anyone have any words of encouragement or feedback or had similar experiences? Please?

Well I know whenever I send an email, I always want to take it back because it is letting him see something that he didn't before. It's safer to hide. However, it is probably useful for working together for you to communicate together, whatever form that takes. With email, it is more difficult because there is no sounding board and I find myself saying things I'd never say to this person in person. In addition there is no tone of voice, and all the non-verbal communcation that we gather in person is missing, so it is a form of communication that can be easily misinterpreted. As you say, you felt fine a short while later and wanted to send an additional email to let your T know this. I find that to be the most challenging aspect of email. It's not a conversation. Did you think you felt better in part because you sent the email and let your T know your feelings?

If so, despite your feelings of shame, it is worth it to have shared your feelings of fear of rejection and abandonment.

Also, I will tell you that I've expereinced the feeling of this myself. When I was in treatment, I got transferred to another unit, and my T was not going to be my T on the other unit. I felt devastated and so horribly rejected/abandoned. I wanted him to stay my T. I believe he was experiencing feelings of doubt for his ability to help me, or not knowing how to best to work with me (he was a fairly new T), so he wanted to pass me on to someone more experienced for my benefit and best interest. Eventually he decided to stay with me, and despite any techniques or abilities or whatnot, the relationship itself was the thing that helped me the most.

The funny thing about logic is that it is not very convincing to our emotions when we feel so fearful of losing someone or something. Hope your T will respond with compassion and understanding. <3

Hang in there hear JaneC. I hear your heartache, and feel for you. For the first year of therapy I whined like a five year old about my therapist leaving me, kicking me out, etc. I have the taped sessions to remind me. The logical side that tells you, "He hasn't left me yet," is new for you, and has not fully replaced the feeling of "everybody leaves me. You are not at the place of trusting your logical side 100%, at this moment. It takes time. Keep practicing and you'll get there. And besides, there is nothing like someone messing with our kids that will send us off kilter, rightfully so. We go straight to the limbic part of our brain that is similarly used in the fight or flight response.

Oh, no angelicgoldfish, I don't actually feel fine.........I just feel like I ought to pretend to be so that I can not feel the other emotions. I know this is not healthy. Ugh

GTGT you are right, the messing with my boy who is 7, just tipped me over the edge. His father treated me the same way and witnessing it sent me straight to a trauma response, and also made many thoughts and feelings come up of my own horrid childhood.

And yes I probably reverted into a whiny child, I have never done that before with my T. I may have felt it somewhat, but I have never ever verbalised my need .......this in itself feels very bad. I feel like I will somehow be punished for even having a need. He will leave or send me away because I am too needy. I try to keep my needs hidden, actually I couldn't even figure out what they were before.

(Asking for support here was soooooo hard to do, it makes me feel incredibly vulnerable and worried and anxious too, like it is wrong to do)

Sweetie, the fact that you are here, and you are hurting, qualifies you for support. You don't need to do anything here to deserve support. That is what we are all here for.

Being vulnerable and begging for help is not childish; even adults need to ask for help, and it's OK. Ts are trained to deal with emotional needs. You are more than OK, and have nothing to be ashamed of. I am sure your T will be compassionate.

Sending you lots of hugs, and positive thoughts.

tametc, thank you. That made me cry, I am not used to kindness when I am having overwhelming emotions.

It's ok I have abandonment issues as well. Along with abandonment insecurities are my tendencies to self destruct relationships and burn relational bridges before other people have an opportunity to leave me. I act in a manner that allows me to keep my sense of self to intact but every so often someone slips by and makes it all worse.

That kind of sounds like what I do too.

I do that too. Sorry you are going through a hard time.

How committed are you to this t? Maybe you are picking up on something from him here. Like is he really the best person to help you through this period of your life? It sounded to me like he did not want to address the issue about your ex's behavior at all. If your ex is being abusive, why should your son be subjected to that? They should get therapy, not you. I would think your t would help you get a court order for that, not srnd you to emdr. Maybe he is more on the dads side. These are broad strokes, but do you get my meaning?

I am sorry jane for the way you are feeling, and its ok, if you dont respond to peoples posts, regardless we are here as supporters . Dont pretend everything is ok, I have heard good things about emdr, I know about all those abandonment fears you are going through, I dont know if you have kept up with my posts, and rough journey, but this is my third t right now, know her for only 7 sessions, t1 i worked with for 1 year and couple of months , and she suddenly left for another job, after building a relationship with her, I was crushed, t2 left for another job, after building a deep relationship after working with her for 1 year and 3 months , I had such negative thoughts brought back abandonment issues, tears and sadness, wanted to quit, My friends here at pc, helped me through it, as I dont have much of a support network irl . I know all about how you are feeling.
Change is very very difficult, but I realize that sometimes therapists, dont do it to hurt you or to abandon you, they do in your best interest, even though it makes you hurt, You will get through this, and we are here to support you. Feel free to pm me if you want to.

Jane, I am sorry you are going through this. I feel with you, this must be very hard! And I second another posters statement - you need support, you need help and we want to offer that to you as much as we can. It's not about deserving it - it's about sharing and receiving.
If I could give you my two cents of advice - don't follow up with an insincere email that invalidates everything your wrote in the first one because you would be doing to yourself what others may have done to you - ignore your feelings, abuse you, hurt you and so on.
BECAUSE:
The first one was valid. It was what you were feeling, what you were experiencing in that moment. It was your most honest response to a situation that left you feeling vulnerable and alone and scared.

And that is ok! I understand very well about only "hearing" things that affect us the most. I almost got myself into a very dangerous situation once when I was a bit younger..
I lived with some friends, which I loved a lot - they were a little like a mother and father to me. I came home very sick from a vacation and when the friend picked me up at the airport he wanted to take me straight to the hospital. I refused, I was angry. I absolutely didn't want to go. We got home, he helped me upstairs into bed and went downstairs. A few minutes later I heard the doorbell. I thought he had called an ambulance but nobody came up. Then again a few minutes after that, someone else rang the doorbell and I got very confused.
Half an hour later the friend called me, helped me downstairs (I couldn't even walk on my own) and I saw to other friends of mine and apparently they had talked about what to do.
In his most strict voice this friend - supported by these two other friends - said:
"You have five minutes to pack your bags. Either to leave this house or for me to take you to the hospital! I won't have anybody die in my house if I can help it."
All I heard was: LEAVE THIS HOUSE.
I was horrified, felt abandoned, misunderstood, angry, sad and a truckload of these distorted emotions - when all he was really trying was to help me.
Of course then I chose the hospital, still angry about the ultimatum. When we arrived the doctor shouted at him for not bringing me in earlier. My kidneys had shut down and I was in absolute grave danger. His ultimatum saved my life.

But it took a while until I could understand that he did what he did and said what he said out of pure love, care and concern. I am incredibly grateful for that very tough love lesson today.

In your case it seems you T wants to help you and offer you more options that are in YOUR best interest. But it's hard for you of course because it brings up a truckload of feelings and emotions that are incredibly painful and difficult to look at in a rational way.

I hope this will get better for you and the best way to work through this is to try to listen what your therapist tells you. Don't try to forcefully get rid of the emotions, be kind to yourself. You don't have to convince anyone that you're fine - especially not your therapist! You are not fine. And that is ok and knowing what you feel can help you redirect your thoughts and feelings into something more positive.
And of course we are here to offer support when you need it.

Be gentle with yourself..

Amelia

Your story is similar to mine. My first T,call him T1, suggested I do EMDR because his exposure therapy seemed to be to much for me and he was concerned. All I could hear in my mind was he is afraid of me, I am to difficult for him, he is trying to get rid of me. I begged him not to stop seeing me.....I was a wreck...triggered.....needed to cling to him more. I sent him emails to stroke his ego and give him examples of how he has helped me. He never scolded me for any of the emails and your T wont either. Anyway a couple of months later I decided to find an EMDR therapist, T2, and it was the best thing I ever did. He turned out to be the T that has stuck with me, tried different things to help me, always makes sure I am ok between session, goes above and beyond what is expected from a T. He cares about his work and is passionate.

Maybe you should try to find an EMDR T. You can still see your T you have now. You can see both.

I can relate. A lot of loss and abandonment has come up in the last 2 weeks for me too and I think I'm driving my t nuts by having her reassure me she won't disappear on a moment's notice. Despite her making no hint towards leaving soon, I don't believe her when she says she's here for now (I'm glad she is not making any promises she can't keep, but it's killing me that I hold my breath each session for her to tell me she is taking another job or transferring me out). The termination with her is imminent as I'll be moving across the country again by August. I really just want to hear from her that she won't ditch me before I move... but I think she knows better than to say that.

Maybe your t suggested emdr with someone else so you can focus on the other stuff that comes up? He may not have the time in his schedule to add in the extra sessions for emdr, and doesn't want to leave you "high and dry" on the support end of things... when I did emdr with my t, we did 3 sessions a week. One was a check in for daily support kind of stuff, one was the emdr itself, and one was processing the emdr session. While I know that's a lot of extra stuff, I need it at the time and my t had the availability. Maybe your t thinks just doing emdr would be a disservice at this time? It may be good to talk to him about why he suggested referring out for the emdr as we'll as your insecurities around abandonment.

(So sorry i can't remember your full screen name ___goldfish5...) I love this quote. Can I use it? "The funny thing about logic is that it is not very convincing to our emotions when we feel so fearful of losing someone or something."

Oh, thanks for the reply, but my T very clearly addressed what is happening with my son and what he would do himself if it continues and what I need to do. My T is a good T.........this is all about my lack of trust especially when I find myself in he middle of an intense fear response reaction. Also about my inability to believe he wont abandon me.

Thanks again for thinkung protectively about my son......... and don't worry, he comes first for me too. I will not let this go any further.

er job, after building a deep relationship after working with her for 1 year and 3 months , I had such negative thoughts brought back abandonment issues, tears and sadness, wanted to quit, My friends here at pc, helped me through it, as I dont have much of a support network irl . I know all about how you are feeling.
Change is very very difficult, but I realize that sometimes therapists, dont do it to hurt you or to abandon you, they do in your best interest, even though it makes you hurt, You will get through this, and we are here to support you. Feel free to pm me if you want to.[/QUOTE]

Thanks sweepy, I have been following your journey. I think you are doing incredibly well with this new T you have, you display such courage!
My 1st T told me I was ok after 16 weeks and exited me from the service. My nextbT I saw for 6 weeks and she told me that she suddenly had to leave as her son was very sick. I waited for 18 months to get this current T and it has taken me soo ling to trust him. I hope it will all work out, I just hate feeling this way........because it infiltrates into every part of my life.

Thanks for the support.......I find it hard to reach out to people, irl and in virtual life too. Lol

Amelia.... thankyou. What you said about my T providing me with options, it made me remember that he actually said that very thing to me when I was mid meltdown. Yes, we need to talk about it. Thanks for your kind words. I domlike reading your responses to peoples posts, I find them quite insightful.

Moxie....... I am glad you found a great T that has stuck by you. I hope that mine can too.

Mdgntrain....... I think you may be right about why he suggested whaitgntrain But he can do EMDR, so why not do both. I'll ask him, or hope he can explain. It's just that I see him hroughnthe local health service here and it is free, and I certainly could not afford to pay to see a private T. He knows this, but may have forgotten.......yes we need to talk. The whole thing is overwhelming really.

Thank you all for taking the time to reply, I really appreciate it it helps to lower some emotion and be able to thunk more clearly. Although after a night of endless dreams and waking my brain feels pretty fuzzy!