[IndestructibleGirl]

Feeling really frustrated and starting to get afraid my therapist managed to do some irreparable damage.

I never want to subject myself to her again but at the same time the moments of closeness were absolutely happy. Even if they were synthetic, manufactured, not real - my stupid dumbf#ck brain absorbed them as real and is chronically restless, it wants moments like that again.

I am functional, and have zest for life and things I want to do, and I enjoy life - but I am scared the restlessness won't ever go away. I'm scared I've been damaged, by some horrendous rancid soup of reparenting mixed with erotic transference and countertransference. It feels like the reparenting bit cranked open the barriers and then she did massively stupid and unsafe things with my brain or nervous system - gave me all the pain of a romantic partnership that breaks down, but gave it all to the most un-armed part of me.

I used to know a guy, who had been on hard drugs. He was clean and off heroin for 15 years when I was having conversations with him. He never wanted to go back to drugs, but - at the same time, he said nothing ever came close in real sober life to the absolute high of heroin. They were the happiest moments of his life. As a result, he was a total drifter, didn't really see the point in anything. He could never hit a higher note because nothing matched up to the brief intense moments of euphoria of heroin.

I am so afraid that's what's going to happen in a similar way with the addiction to the intimacy with ex therapist. I can't detox from her properly, she won't f#ck off out my head.

I don't have time to mess around. I don't have years to spend resolving this mess. I lost my twenties to dementia and bereavement and illness and depression and I CANNOT lose another decade. I don't have time.

[missbella]

My therapists trained me so well to think of myself as a victim who was damaged by everyone else that it compounded the harm when they did the damage. I don't like therapy framing like broken and irrefutably harmed because that yet again is a hook how much I allegedly need their services. I disagree with the metaphor: we're talking about ever-fluid emotions, not a pottery piece or a wooden chair.

I've come around to tucking the experience away with other hard knocks, unfairness and disappointments. I don't forget the experiences but they can be replaced and certainly recede.

I think the best revenge is living life, pursuing goals, achieving them. It's more long-term and less dramatic than what happens in therapy.
I probably mentioned TELL TELL: Therapy Exploitation Link Line
I found their readings and talking to others who'd been through it very helpful.