LCM showing up randomly at work

No, we wouldn't. I DO have a real and healthy mother/daughter relationship and if Mom showed up at my "home" (it's not your home) or at my concert or whatever and I didn't expect her, I'd just be happy to see her, say hi, and get back to work because that was my job. It wouldn't be upsetting. I'd welcome her and tell her I hope she enjoys the concert. Good relationships don't get bent out of shape over unexpected meetings. More likely, we're just happy to run into each other and move on.

That's not necessarily true and your relationship with her does not mirror a healthy mother/daughter relationship. Growli, I get what you're saying, but its not just your "home" - if I read your post correctly her daughter was in the concert. In that case it is also her (and many other people's) "home" too. You can't really claim ownership like that. I understand the feeling but you have to let yourself get past the emotions and face reality. It's the only real option you have that will be helpful to you.

It seems like the issue is more that she went to where you work (not your home) WITH her daughter to see her daughter's recital. And with her boyfriend, which would probably be loaded for you even if there wasn't the whole pdoc connection.

If she had gone to see a concert alone or with a friend, I wonder if you would be having this reaction. If not, I think that that is the crux of the issue-that when you get reminded of reality (that she has a daughter who is not you, and that she has a boyfriend and yes, a sex life) you can't handle it. So instead of staying in this super painful space and spinning around (because this issue will continue to exist regardless of whether specific things like this occur) why not DO something to bring about change in your life??

This whole situation truly sounds excruciating and I genuinely empathize-but why stay in it? That's what I don't understand.

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Yes. I do, however, live directly across the street from my work and spend a LOT of time there even when not working so it does feel like home.

If she went with her friend to see a baroque concert or anything else, I would have shocked to see her, but excited. If she went to a concert with her boyfriend and he wasn't the same pdoc I commented on, it would have been similar only slightly more uncomfortable became I definitely would have checked him out a little because I do that to most guys and also out of curiosity. If she went with him and he was that pdoc, I would have just been pissed. But once you add her daughter into the equation, I'm crushed.

My mother in law shows up randomly a fair bit. We have a good relationship and I'm glad to see her unless I need to shower.

Growli I'm not going to get on your case about this but I will say I think this is a mistake and realistically your life coach will make these mistakes as she's not a therapist. I think this served as further reminder she is not your mom and this hurt will keep hurting until it's dealt with properly.

Hope you can find peace.

So why stay in this situation, knowing that something is always going to come along to crush you in it?

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I saw my T's daughter a couple weeks ago. It was unsettling...I understand that part. She was in the waiting room during my session, which I was NOT happy about at ALL.

I love her and it's worth the pain

I feel like an *** for flipping out on her. She told me "I have not taught you to act this way and I don't deserve it". I suck.

Does she feel the same? My big fear is that one day she won't handle it anymore (because flimsy boundaries usually result in people panicking and putting up huge walls) and you will destruct if she leaves. I urge you to add a t to the mix and try and protect even a little.

Sorry again if this is blunt but you are obsessed. It seems to be the one thing that you feel will release you from the pain you are in. You never discuss anything else as a potential way forward, it always harks back to LC and your desire to be her child. When you have moments that mimic parental intimacy - like her saving you on the railway tracks - that's when you seem most positive and happy. It's like you are always searching out those moments, and anything that acts to remind you that the maternal bond is not really there forces you back into a reality that makes you want to leave work and find oblivion in a bottle.

Is there anyone else at all you love apart from LC? I think you really, really need to start nurturing your other relationships. You need to realise she is not the be all and end all.

More facts:
1. You are NOT her daughter; she is NOT your mom
2. The concert hall is NOT your home. It's a public place and anyone is allowed to be there.
3. She does NOT have to tell you anything about herself, her life, or her activities.
4. Maybe she didn't want to tell you because if you weren't working, you would ask to work that night just to see her.
5. How do you know what a healthy mother/daughter relationship look like?
6. How is it that your post started out saying one thing and as time goes on you "remeber" specifics that support you being the "victim" when supposedly you're drunk?

Do you not worry that your behavior is pushing you LC away? Your actions show how unhealthy your relationship is with your LC and sooner or later (if she really cares about you), she is going to start distancing herself from you. Or like I posted in another one of your threads: your parents are paying for LC... If they see that you're not getting better, but in fact are getting worse, they're going to stop paying.

You say the relationship is worth the pain. I don't think you realize it, but you're causing yourself the pain. It is so sad reading how you self-destruct. This isn't going to last forever. And you're getting worse faster. You think it's painful now, I sincerely fear the day this world you have created comes crashing down. And it will...it's already started.

It's not that your an ***, or a bad person for flipping out on her. It's that you are caught up in an unhealthy dynamic that is neither serving you, nor helping you to reach your goals. Your LC isn't helping you work towards your goals, and she isn't helping you work through your maternal transference. As the professional, a lot of this is on her. However (and I hear you when you say that you love her and its worth the pain) this is on you too. This is YOUR life. And as others have said, when your LC can't handle it anymore and pulls away, it's going to be a very bad situation unless you put a support system into place now.

Yes, this. Why can't you take some small steps to get any real help?

Why, why, why??????

Thanks for this. I cant believe the way everybody is jumping on growli. Just about anybody here on pc has had the experience of running into their t in public and being taken aback. Then, their being with other people? Yeah, freakout time. This is how transference works. I see no psychological understanding here. No understanding of how it feels. Instructions on how to avoid a situation are NOT what therapy is about!

Honestly, if anybody else were getting lambasted like this, one after another taking their turn, showing off how they know what the so-called right thing to do is - well, show me where that has happened last. How is saying, "i told you so" being supportive? How about - that must have been quite a shock. Why didnt she tell you she was going to be there? Im sorry you got so upset. What can you do tonight to recover? How can we help?

I refuse to coddle someone who does the same thing over and over again. That's what her LC is doing!

The problem is that OP isn't in therapy, doesn't want therapy, doesn't want to see LC for who she really is, and doesn't want to get better.

I feel so frustrated.

Do I understand how it would feel to run into your T out in public? Hell, yeah. I panic seeing my T in the hallway of her building. But it's the delusion that the OP is holding onto that makes this situation difficult.

People are where they are and are not going to change or be different because someone else is frustrated. Why keep coming back to something that one finds so frustrating because the other person won't do it your way? Who are we to judge whether someone else wants to get better or not? And so what if someone does not want to be different the way others want them to be? It is their life to have.
I think that if someone wants to write on this board about their struggles and upsets it is better than going out and doing any number of other things. It is no one else's situation to fix.

I am happy I don't think I would recognize the therapist out of context. I would not like running into her out in the world, even without the other parts that OP has going on. Adding on the other parts would make it feel quite bad I imagine.

There is no objective reason for you to be heartbroken.

The concert hall is a public venue and as such, doesn’t belong to anyone. Her daughter happened to perform there, so of course her mom would attend. Does she need any other ‘motive’? It really doesn’t matter who she brings with her. That’s her personal life. You are assuming who the guy was, taking it as some sort of personal(?) attack on you by invading your ‘home’ when it was all circumstantial.

You keep holding on to this relationship not because it is helping you concretely with your issues (whatever your issues are) but because of an emotional connection with her - and one which you’ve built up in your head to disproportionate levels. You know this already and if i recall she stated this explicitly herself but: she doesn’t have a personal relationship with you - she is not your mother, nor your friend and doesn’t owe you any explanation on how she spends her free time.

I probably should know better than to write this but it just had to be said.

Are feelings supposed to be rational or objective? If so, the one I see is lying to me even more than I had first suspected.

Abusing alcohol, holding onto a delusion that you know is an illusion, and not wanting to get better... I think my feeling frustrated is rational. I reply to OP because I actually can relate. I care.

LC coddles the OP. The person the OP loves the most and it doesn't help.

I will never encourage bad behavior, but I'm happy to offer healthy alternatives. Which, imo, is finding a T, building up her support system, making steps to be healthy. I don't see how that can offend anyone. Expecting a miraculous change is illogical. Suggesting baby steps and offering possible scenarios, to me, is constructive.

Yet for the people who don't like my type of support and find it acceptable to criticize it, I don't see you offering the OP any other support except saying the type I'm giving is wrong.

So, as one did, I address this to the OP:

If you actually want help and/or support, please tell us how. How can we actually help you to get to a better place? A healthier place?

All these people who have responded can relate on some level. All care on some level because they're reacting. We are listening. We are trying to help.

Support comes in different forms. Criticism and advice are not the only forms of support. OP sounds like it is hard for her, I offer acknowledgment and recognition that running into the lcm like she did would be a difficult thing.

I was really thrown off guard, panicked and reacted very poorly to the situation. I drank a lot and the original feeling got very warped and confused. Was I overdramatic? Yes, I was. Was I an *** to LCM? Yes, I absolutely was. And I feel so guilty I can't sleep.

However, I do think she was wrong to not warn me that I could have seen her. Regardless of if it is a public hall which she does have every right to go to, it's a public hall that I happen to work in and practice in and hang out in and rehearse in. She is well aware of that and even knew that running into me was a possibility. I told her last session that I don't want to ever want to see a picture of her daughter. She knows I get upset when she talks about her. There was a very real possibility that I could have run into them and saw them together and she knew that would absolutely crush me.

I also don't think she should have tried to refer me to her boyfriend without telling me that. I'm glad I didn't see him in practice because if I did and found out later, I would have felt used by her to help start up his business or to help them pay her rent. Yes, maybe he wasn't her boyfriend, but I highly highly doubt that given the context clues from when she's talked about this pdoc before and when I saw him at her office. I just feel like at a minimum, she should have told me that her opinion of this doctor was extremely biased.

I was upset because I felt like that whole thing was very insensitive to me. Yes, it was her daughter's concert and she absolutely has a right to go, but she should have warned me and talked to me about it beforehand. My school T's have all gone to concerts that I was either playing in or working and they told me ahead of time just so that I wouldn't be totally blindsided. I feel like there is absolutely no way she could have forgotten that there was a chance I could be there. I've taken her around the school before. She should have handled this differently.

Maybe she didn't tell me because she didn't want me to come see her if I wasn't working. But she knows me well enough to know that I wouldn't have.

And yeah people like to jump down my throat but they all would have had a similar reaction if this happened to them.

You panic when you see your T in the hallway? Then it is also your own delusion that makes that situation difficult. It's not fair to pretend like it's anything different.

I just like to pretend she's my mother. I know she isn't, but what if I actually didn't know that? What if I had a break from reality and had legitimate delusions or hallucinations as plenty of people seem to like to paint this as. Would you really respond to my delusions by yelling at me over the Internet, telling me that I am deliberately trying to not get better and that I'm being "coddled" by people who are just affectionate to me? I highly doubt you would. This is a mental health site. You have no idea who I am or how lucid I am.

Now yes, I do know that she is genuinely not my mother. I know I'm just pretending to make myself feel better. But you don't know LCM at all so I don't know how you can go about saying I need to see her for who she is. You don't even know who she is.

Being patient and compassionate to someone who was abused and is working through stuff and maybe isn't doing the best job and falls down the same hole 50x isn't coddling.

I wasn't yelling. I'm not angry. Frustrated, but not angry. As I wrote my posts, it was in a "voice" of calm yet assertive, and soft and caring.

You're right. I don't know you nor your LC. All I have to go off of is your posts. I go by what you write whether you're sober or not.

When I say delusional, I am referring to your view of someone who is not your mother as a mother. There are a lot of people here who suffer from transference. What you describe goes well beyond that.

As for me being delusional, that doesn't even make sense. Maybe irrational. I have agoraphobia. I also have suffered abandonment, abuse, and many other things. But that's not delusional no matter how you try to twist it.

I do have to say I'm proud of you. Really. I'm proud of you speaking up for yourself against me. I feel sad that it seems like nothing I wrote came across as caring. That being said, I still stand by what I wrote. But I'm happy for your reply. It shows me a different side of you...a very promising positive side.

But please, please tell us what will help you. Would describing some of my experiences help? So that you maybe can understand why I wrote some of the things that I write? Do you want me to ignore your actions, but validate your feelings? How can I (we) help?

I also am really uncomfortable with the tone of the posts being made to Growlithing. I totally agree with you Growlithing that it would have been preferable if she had warned you she was going, and that she should not have suggested that Pdoc to you cos of her association with him. I think that many of us here fall somewhere along a continuum of obsession with the person we talk to, which ranges from thinking of them pretty much constantly to them being a re-assuring presence that we would not wish to be without. To be on the wrong end of the continuum is a really painful place to be and a really hard place to get out of, if there was an easy solution to escaping this, Growlithing would have found it. I think Growlithing needs support not condemnation. She is not the only one facing this issue on this board. I am sending you hugs Growlithing.