[IndestructibleGirl]

This is making me kinda sad when I think about it, even though I'm not sad today at all.

I just can't hold on to the connection. It took months to build up to a very tenuous connection, and then boom just as I was starting to grow confident in it we had a rupture. Well, she said she wouldn't have said it was a rupture, but to me it definitely was. And then the weird job fiasco. And now I feel quite distant. We're mending things. I told her I wanted to stay close and that I was concerned in case a negative transference was on the horizon, and I can see how much she is trying to meet me where I am. I'm allowed to email again, she just wants me to check to see if I can reassure myself first. And she has put a new boundary of not replying after 6pm or on her days off, unless it's an emergency. This is totally fair, I get it. Everyone needs time away from talking shop.

She keeps stressing to me that she's protecting our session time now she's super busy - we never had a regular time before, I find it odd - and then hopefully we can fit some more sessions around that. Yesterday, I was having a miserable mother-aching sort of day, and texted her telling how panicky it makes me when my own mother doesn't want to spend time with me and that I feel so humiliated at being this unlovable, and she replied telling me she loves me and I'm very loveable.

So she's doing loads of good things.

Why, then, am I being such a high maintenance twit that I'm distancing myself away? Not willingly though. I asked for a phone check in before our next meeting to stop myself floating away, and I try to remember all the good things. But for some reason, I am uncomfortable. I feel she has put distance between us emotionally, or something. Maybe she has just tightened up the boundaries to a healthier place, and me being a bit warped and unboundaried, finds that uncomfortable, even though it's actually a good healthy thing? I feel cared about and loved, but something else seems to be gone. I don't know what it is - maybe intensity?

Why do I feel hurt, when she's doing nothing wrong? Why can't I keep a sense of perspective?

Hmmm. Can anyone relate?

[feralkittymom]

Girl, I think this is a transition that will pass. Her securing the frame (a better way of thinking about it maybe than enforcing the dreaded boundaries) is a good thing because that looseness initially felt good, but left you feeling out of control. Looseness of the frame can feel good to the adult part of us, but it can also be psychologically terrifying to the child part of us.

You're in a place now where the challenge seems to be to find a new pattern and sense of relating--and you haven't settled into it yet. So it's going to feel disjointed and unstable. But I don't think it is. I think she's moving in the right direction here. Give yourself a break.

[Leah123]

I can relate. I am sorry you're struggling. Try not to judge yourself so much as you are. You are attaching a lot of negative labels to wanting connection with her: it's not a negative. It's a feeling of neediness, hard to honor, but worth honoring.

Also, you have just had what I would classify as a major rupture, two really, between the email/progress change/changeback and the job offer/withdrawl. Goodness! Your current feelings of disconnection and topsy-turviness make perfect sense to me, both because of your larger issues and the current therapy issues.

Trust arrives on foot, but leaves on horseback. (I believe that was a great one I just recently read on PC actually.) Hard to build, easy to break. Yet, you sound like you know you and your therapist do have something worth building on, a foundation to keep improving and growing..... so, I think what you're longing for will come to you, in time. Until then, I hope you'll tell yourself you're wrong when you think you are pathetic or unlovable.

[CantExplain]

Most patients are high-maintenance at some point or other. Your T should cope.

[Crescent Moon]

Your therapeutic relationship has gone through quite a bit of sudden upheaval and I think it would be more shocking if you didn't feel this way! Keep talking to her about everything that's running through your mind. Reconnection will happen, but she's going to have to find where that tether got frayed and tighten it up. You telling her about all these feelings will help her find it.

I think your finding it difficult to hold onto the connection because she cannot hold onto the connection! It is the client who should push/pull not the T. But then you know my opinion on how incompetent I think she is. I think she is doing more harm than good.

[HazelGirl]

She has done a lot wrong, and it will take time to repair that trust.

[IndestructibleGirl]

Originally Posted by feralkittymom

Girl, I think this is a transition that will pass. Her securing the frame (a better way of thinking about it maybe than enforcing the dreaded boundaries) is a good thing because that looseness initially felt good, but left you feeling out of control. Looseness of the frame can feel good to the adult part of us, but it can also be psychologically terrifying to the child part of us.

You're in a place now where the challenge seems to be to find a new pattern and sense of relating--and you haven't settled into it yet. So it's going to feel disjointed and unstable. But I don't think it is. I think she's moving in the right direction here. Give yourself a break.

Thank you

Yes, re securing the frame. I actually don't mind thinking of it in terms of boundaries. I think there's a part of me that is frantically crying out for healthy boundaries. I want to see what they look like and how people operate within them. My boundaries growing up were...well, a lot were not set for me. I was treated like I was 25 from the age of about 5. I did a pretty good job of convincing everyone I was an adult then, but now I see that it wasn't my responsibility to make sure I was treated in an age-appropriate manner by my care takers.

Originally Posted by Leah123

I can relate. I am sorry you're struggling. Try not to judge yourself so much as you are. You are attaching a lot of negative labels to wanting connection with her: it's not a negative. It's a feeling of neediness, hard to honor, but worth honoring.

Also, you have just had what I would classify as a major rupture, two really, between the email/progress change/changeback and the job offer/withdrawl. Goodness! Your current feelings of disconnection and topsy-turviness make perfect sense to me, both because of your larger issues and the current therapy issues.

Trust arrives on foot, but leaves on horseback. (I believe that was a great one I just recently read on PC actually.) Hard to build, easy to break. Yet, you sound like you know you and your therapist do have something worth building on, a foundation to keep improving and growing..... so, I think what you're longing for will come to you, in time. Until then, I hope you'll tell yourself you're wrong when you think you are pathetic or unlovable.

I do. I tell myself it's just a feeling and it's simply not the case that it's true. I

know, I considered it a rupture as well - she didn't. I told her how I felt, and pointed out the things I considered to be unfair, and we went a way to resolving them. She said she had worded things poorly in a couple of the instances I cited, and explained she never meant to diminish my progress, but the tough session had been partly driven by fear, because I was having a lot of suicidal thoughts and she said for someone doing intensive therapy I shouldn't be feeling that bad.

Thanks! xx

[IndestructibleGirl]

Originally Posted by StarShank

I think your finding it difficult to hold onto the connection because she cannot hold onto the connection! It is the client who should push/pull not the T. But then you know my opinion on how incompetent I think she is. I think she is doing more harm than good.

Really - if you know I know your opinion on my therapist, what was the point of coming onto my thread to point out that you think she is incompetent?

I always welcome constructive criticism or observations or whatever, but to me this post of yours feels rather unpleasant. What was its purpose, other than to attempt to ridicule me for seeing this particular therapist?

Originally Posted by IndestructibleGirl

Really - if you know I know your opinion on my therapist, what was the point of coming onto my thread to point out that you think she is incompetent?

I always welcome constructive criticism or observations or whatever, but to me this post of yours feels rather unpleasant. What was its purpose, other than to attempt to ridicule me for seeing this particular therapist?

I was not trying to ridicule you. I have had a T like yours in the past and at the time I enjoyed the lack of boundaries, it was only afterwards that I realised how much damage she had done. I'll stop criticising your T, I'm just angry at her and really feel for you. I hope you can get out of this unscathed because you deserve better.