miss my t

i miss my t. it is strange because when i see him i feel really very ambivalent. i'm really happy to see him. but i'm really frightened of seeing him too. i worry that i'm transparent and that sometimes he catches glimpses of what is inside me. and that he will feel disgusted / repulsed. but then he will mask that 'cause he is such a nice guy. but that he will struggle with those feelings anyway. i find it really hard to connect. in general, i guess. but in therapy everything is all amped up in terms of intensity. so the fears that i have more generally irl are concentrated in therapy. i think i push people away. so they don't have to deal with the feelings of disgust. i miss him though. even though i can't remember what he looks like or even the sound of his voice. i feel sad.

(((((((((((((( alexandra k )))))))))))))

Try not to be so hard on yourself. In my experience T's don't feel disgust about their clients. They do the job because they truly care about people.

I know what it is like to be missing T, I've been in therapy a very long time and I still freak out everytime he goes away.

Take care.

thanks. i don't think he finds his other clients disgusting. i don't know that he finds me disgusting... yet. rationally... i know i'm not disgusting. but still... i fear him seeing me that way. i fear that that is an inevitable response to me. rationally i know better but...

i feel so afraid.

i've been having dreams and stuff again. i get this dream. i'm naked and i'm bound to a chair. people walking past... some of them stop and stare and point at me and their is disgust on their faces. some of them laugh and some of them shout out insults and stuff because they feel really very offended at me. and some people see me but continue on indifferent. and others are gagging and stuff.

i've had this dream ever since i can remember. crops up sometimes.

i feel sick when i wake up.

I think it would be a good idea to share this with your T. You could write it down or print off this post for him.

In the mean time use your best coping strats till you see him.

Take care.

when kt talks protectors come out and push the person away so they don't hurt her. 'cause some responses are inevitable... i don't know how to stop that happening... so it isn't safe :-(

grump grump grump. don't mind me, i'm in a funny (strange) mood today. thanks for the responses pegasus (((((pegasus))))) i really appreciate them, thanks so much. maybe it is about trust taking time. i do take little risks and they seem to be paying off, so i guess that at some point... i will get to this. i've already told him more about some of the hard stuff than i've ever told anyone else. but i do think i need to be really careful and go really slow with some of it. with the vulnerable feelings in particular. because i think what happens... i've been thinking on it a lot... and i think what happens... is that when i disclose vulnerable feelings then i freak out and shove the person hard. i don't see it as happening like that. i see it as my disclosing vulnerable feelings and then them rejecting me or laughing at me or whatever... but i think what happens is that i'm feeling so scared and vulnerable that i imagine stuff... and then i shove hard. i mean really hard. irrevokably hard. that is a problem. so... gently does it.

i wish i wasn't such a %#@&#! up :-(

Gently does it.(((((((((((( alexandra k ))))))))))))))

Trust takes time.

You're not a %#@&#! up!

I can relate on a lot of this because I have that fear too, that my T will suddenly see enough where he can't stand to be in the room with me any more. And the strange part is there's nothing that I've done that is so terrible that it would make me push someone away, so I don't know why I fear that reaction in him.

But, when we've been hurt it's scary to be vulnerable.

I think you have it right. Take it slow. . .trust a little. . . . then trust just a little more. That's what I've done and I've made more progress in the past 4 months or so than years with other counselors. I'm not sure if it's just I'm ready, or he's just the right person to help me. Either way, it sounds like you're on the right track too.

I think missing him is an awesome sign, anyway. I told my counselor today I missed him when I didn't get to come, and it was really hard for me to admit that. I was afraid he would tell me that I was getting too attached and ask me to leave or something. . .isn't that odd? Like they've never heard someone say they missed them.

But it all worked out. Once I opened up I was very relieved. But I just have to be sure I don't go to fast. One week I was talking and things got reall weird and I felt like the room was floating up. It took me a few visits to dare to "go there" again but I'm getting there bit by bit.

Alexandra,

Your dream really seems to illustrate your feelings and fears, doesn't it? Even though you know that you are really hard on yourself, and you know that you are not really disgusting, part of you feels that way anyway.

When you say that you miss your T, and that you can't even remember details like what he looks like, I wonder if you might benefit from a transitional item. Something that you can take with you that will help you to feel connected to T. It could be a picture of him or any small item that has meaning for you and some connection to your T. Would you be able to talk to him about that?

Rap

I can really relate to your dream. I have a strange tendency to got to work nude in my dreams. My T said that it has to do with feeling vulnerable. I looked at her like "no dah like. What you don't think I can interpret my own dreams." I remember once I was working nude except for a dark blue smock and a customer said that I was a bad employee. Then, a co-worker defended me. The dream stuck in my mind because I had never dreamed of a co-worker defending me and usually I am so busy trying to conceal my nudity and noone never even seems to notice it. So, the dream is familiar to me.
I suspect that you feel vulnerable with T and fear his rejection. I hope you will gradually work towards sharing more and more. But it can be hard though.
As for missing T, I just left a voice mail for mine saying that I miss her.

Hopeful, I think it's interesting that in your dreams nobody else seems to notice your nudity. Do you think that means that you feel vulnerable, but you conceal it well from others?

Rap

Alexandra,

I was told by a psychoanalyst acquaintance that we play all the parts in our dreams. So, you might look at your dream as showing that sometimes you like yourself and sometimes you don't; that like with all of us there are some things you like about yourself and some things you don't. And that you are uncomfortable being 'naked' psychologically/emotionally for others to see, even for yourself to see.

Just my thoughts. I hope you are feeling much better today.



ECHOES

thanks pegasus.

wow. i don't know how people find the courage to say anything to their t about it... for me... it isn't that i've done something... it is just that i am. hard to explain. i went through a period of being attracted to existential views... only trouble is that i thought they were unrealistically hopeful. existentialism minus the hope... you are left with a kind of nihilism... all this was when i was taking some time off uni with a major depressive episode, however. but i guess my fears were just more at the forefront during that time. normally i'm not so very aware of them... but it is fairly much about existence. that i exist. that is why birthdays are so hard.

hey. yeah, my dreams don't ever seem to be particularly deep. just an illustration of my feelings and fears. maybe more could be dug out of them... i don't know. i think of the interpretation of dreams as being a lot like the interpretation of tea leaves or horoscopes... they reveal feelings and fears, yeah. and we can come to learn to have symbols as we come to learn about symbols. maybe there are symbols that are universal... maybe... jung thought so... dunno... evolution, though, i'd need there to be an evolutionary explanation...

i'm not sure how i'd feel about a transitional object. probably feel stupid. my old t gave me this little wooden box with some objects in it. a bead. a shell. a crystal. stuff like that. for a mindfulness exercise. i guess i've used that a bit. when i'm feeling sad. it helped me once she left... i don't know that i'd have the courage to ask for anything. something to think about though. thanks.

hey. yeah, trust is hard. express vulnerability and people target you as something to exploit. that is my experience. hard for me to express vulnerability now. but not expressing it... leads to problems too (where t thinks i don't like them and / or they aren't helping etc). i'm a little better at expressing appreciation after having done dbt. i did express gratitude that he is willing to work with me. i've also said that i didn't want to go to this other city because i wanted to keep working with him... thats all though. tis hard for me :-(

thanks. fragile today. i've been feeling very fragile over these last couple weeks. we had a talk yesterday and i went to the pub for a quick pint after that... managed to leave the book i was reading on the floor in there. one of the guys was asking me how it was that doctors got involved with asylums and psychiatric disorders in the first place (before psychiatry was a speciality in medicine) and i was checking the book... then i put it on my bag and went out for a cigarette. when i went back i pulled my chair in quite close to the table and when i went to leave i squished the bag up onto my lap. the book must have fallen off the bag onto the floor. i'll have to go back today. wonder when they open? i hope i find it :-(

rationally... i know that it is acceptable to exist. i didn't choose to exist so i can't be blamed for it. i don't think anyone else has to do anything to earn their existence being acceptable. (thats why i'm opposed to the death penalty but at any rate) rationally...

but that doesn't seem to help with the feelings...

does not. maybe it helps some people... not me. i don't know why.

Hi Alexandra_k
thanks for posting all this. it got me thinking. i totally relate to missing your T. im even finding the week between sessions so long to wait and i think about her just about every day. i feel like such a disgusting freak for doing that though.
i also have the fear that one day she will see how disgusting i am and be done with me. i can see her having that feeling of skin crawling at the thought of having to spend yet another hour with me. except its not really totally about what ive done to be disgusting. its just who i am maybe. im not sure. its confusing.
and, more than a fear, i genuinely believe its a fact that some day she will get irritated and annoyed and frustrated and fed up with me and wont want to see me again. it makes it so hard to trust and also makes me a bit frantic to get as much work done as i can before she throws me out.
anyway. sorry. im babbling. just wanted you to know you re not alone and to thank you for getting me to think.
i hope you can work this stuff out with your T because you deserve to find healing.
take good care of you
biiv

Alexandra. I totally relate too all your fears and struggles. I am getting to the point, I think, where I hurt so much that its less painful to say stuff that I have found almost impossible to say. I just dont want to hurt no more, I just don't want to be this needy vunrable person anymore, I want to do what its going to take to move on, and I think for me that is going to be asking the most embrassing and neediest questions I can think off to T.

You know just today I asked T if she did laugh when I have left, because the tape in my head says she does. Right now I can hear her gentle voice sayingnn "no I don't laugh" I'm glad I asked that question now because the tape in my head has another option to play.

Instead of her laughing in my mind, its being rescued with her "real" response.

Anyways, I hear ya and your not alone, and I dont find you discusting or anything else, infact I like looking for your posts :-)

One thing that I realized yesterday is that any reaching out to another is an act of vulnerability and everyone has to do it so everyone is "equally" vulnerable. If you ask another person a question or tell them something about yourself, there's always the chance for a snub, hurt or disappointment but that the majority of the time, we aren't snubbed, hurt or disappointed and often when we are, it's our perception of a response, not the actual response we get that is the culpret. Too, since everyone has to be vulnerable, T's are doing it all the time and I don't know about you, but I was rather off-putting :-) When a T makes an overture and we retreat instead of taking them up on it. . . that's a bit disappointing to them I think? But, when one gets better at the communication thing, the interaction with others, one's perceptions change so one is not quite so snubbed, hurt or disappointed when one's vulnerability is rejected.

I think we're more vulnerable than we give ourselves credit for and everyone else is just as vulnerable and has the exact same problems we do with getting up one's nerve to share one's self (so we should remember when another person shares or reaches out, they're being vulnerable and we should take care in our response) but has had more practice is all, isn't "better" than we are or having fewer problems/necessarily less scared. Sometimes it helps me to see when other people "like me" are being brave, helps me be brave too.

hey biiv.

i'm glad you can relate because it helps me feel less alone, but i'm sorry you can relate because it isn't a nice place to be :-(

i get in these negative spirals sometimes... sometimes i can get in a really foul mood and be fairly relentless with myself (though nowhere near as much as i used to thank god). othertimes i can get into this thought that is unhelpful but i don't quite know what to do with it. like the stuff i posted here...

(i think the answer is distration. if i can distract myself then quite often these thoughts don't come back in quite the same way. but i'm not sure and it seems next to impossible to do that at the time).

different therapists have different frequencies of sessions (and sometimes different frequencies of sessions for different clients). once a week... is a lot for some therapists (who see people fortnightly or even monthly) but it isn't a lot for others (who see people 2 or 3 times weekly) or analysts who might see people 5 days a week. i think a week is a long time. a horribly long time. especially, yeah, when you are thinking about them every day. i have talked to a lot of people who find once per week to not be often enough so you are NOT a disgusting freak for finding once per week to be hard.

could you ask her about seeing her twice a week? or about supplimenting sessions with an email or a phone call or something like that? might be hard to find the courage... or maybe you could write to her once a week?

you aren't just babbling. i can relate. sorry if my posts got you down ruminating on this stuff... trust takes time... we will get there. take care of you too.

hey mouse. yeah, i have a fear of people laughing at me too. and i hate feeling vulnerable and dependent. i'm really afraid of someone knowing i feel vulnerable and dependent. takes a lot of trust to get that one out there.

i'm so glad that your therapist is really very receptive to this and she seems to be handling it really well indeed. you took a huge risk to share some of those feelings with her. i'm so glad it paid off for you :-)

gently does it.

hey perna, yeah i think that any reaching out to another is an act of vulnerability. but... that we are more vulnerable with some people than we are with others. there is a guy at work (for example) who is alright as far as he goes, and i take little risks with him, but i am always somewhat guarded because i know he looks out for himself as number one. i can say 'hey' and if he is finding the conversation around him boring he will talk to me enthusiastically. if he is finding the conversation around him stimulating, however, then he will simply ignore me. i take little risks with him (i keep saying 'hey') but i don't take emotional risks. if that makes any sense. i don't trust him to respond to me in a sympathetic or caring way. if he does he does, if he doesn't he doesn't i don't invest in the relationship at all.

with a friend who is closer, however... then we care about them in particular and if they reject us it means a whole heap more than if that stranger on the street fails to smile back or if colleague turns up his nose and turns the other way. sometimes the vulnerability isn't equal because one person cares more than the other. i care more about my t than he cares about me, for example. i bet i think about him a lot more than he thinks about me (not enough time to think about all his patients that much i bet)

but yeah, i think t's can be vulnerable too... but i'm not sure how vulnerable they are with us. not as vulnerable as us anyways. but vulnerable sure. sometimes i'm surprised... at how fragile human egos are in general. i always thought my flaws were obvious for all to see... but i'm realising how most peoples are obvious for all to see without too much reflection on it. i might be more extreme... but people are quite fragile in some respects yeah.

(Colleage things I don't like him. I like him okay and I try to be polite but what I find hard is that he is very emotionally immature which is understandable I guess because he is young. But he likes women to be pretty little airheads too so he feels quite threatened by someone who is willing to say 'bollocks'! So... He is alright... And he probably thinks I'm alright... But he is fairly wary of me... And I"m... Fairly wary of him... And thats okay. Can't click with everybody)

sorry Alexandra. i only got the chance to read this just now. thanks for replying to me.
i do try to do therapy work and write stuff at least once a week and i feel closer to her then which is good. plus it really gets things moving faster too. recently though she has been moving my days around a bit so i ll end up having seen her three times in a week and a half. yea! lol
your posts didnt get me down but it did get me thinking about stuff that i ended up talking to T about last time i saw her and im really glad i did. thats what im going to be writing about this week and while im really scared to focus on it im a bit excited too to be really looking at stuff thats important instead of floundering round talking about every day stuff.
anyway thanks. i hope you re taking care of yourself.
biiv