i wuv my therapist again...

yup... i'm fairly sure.
:-)

i got a phonecall from an unknown number on my cell on tuesday, but i didn't have any credit on my phone so i couldn't check my message.

when i was waiting at the bus stop this morning (to go to therapy) i finally put some credit on my phone and checked my message. he had left a reeeeeeeeally looooooooong message on tuesday responding to a couple emails i sent him after our last (nasty) session.

:-)

we had a pretty good session today. figured out that we weren't really disagreeing... talked a bit about what it would mean for him to meet them... sounds like neither of us are very sure... said i found that stuff on the EP and ANP and were they the people who he said were the 'holland research group' and he was like 'yeah'. talked to him about the pain. kind of episodes i have. episodes where the pain is real bad and i can't go to work / function. i felt it a little. he talked about trying to reorient myself by refocusing my attention on the present moment and how things are externally okay in the present moment. really hard to hold both it in my mind that the pain is understandable and okay AND that it is a response to the past and not the present moment both at the same time. talked a bit about how we have to go slow 'cause i need to function well. problems with the trade-off of getting better as fast as possible and being able to function to do my work.

we meet every friday and every second tuesday. he said that he thinks he can offer me an extra tuesday session, though. so that will give us a nice run of three weeks with twice weekly sessions :-)

i wuv my t again

:-)

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i wuv my t again

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So happy for you.

Excellent work ..... both you and your T... a fine alliance I do believe.

Sounds good ...

thanks guys

aww ak, your love for your t shines through in your post and you sound very happy, peaceful, content, safe.

What a great place to be!

I'm so glad for you!

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alexandra_k said:
i wuv my t again

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Ahhhh.... I'm so happy for you. Sounds like a really good session without some of the pressure of before. ECHOES and SG are right--your alliance is a fine one and that shines through in your post.

thanks guys.

i think...

i think he is trying to make up for letting me down before. i don't think he realised how attached i was and stuff... and how busy he would be and stuff... but it was retraumatising to me. i guess he knows that. i told him productivity went out the window and that kt spent a lot of time in her room and that we felt really distressed and stuff. we didn't dwell on it (i didn't want to make him feel bad). but i think he knows.

so...

all the sessions since the break...

the connection was somewhat broken. he was trying to emotionally connect with me. with his eye contact and his leaning forward and his listening intently. and i was kind of gouging holes in my hands with my nails by making fists and leaning back into my chair and kind of dodging around topics. i could see i was doing it but i just couldn't seem to be able to stop. felt so very anxious. was trying to work (trying to emotionally connect a bit with what i was saying) but it was hard to do that and when i managed to do it i just couldn't seem to let him emotionally hold me. just kind of struggled along half caught in that state for the rest of the session. he offered another room that i could go into afterwards to give me time to collect myself but i just dissociated from the feeling and was like 'nah, i'm fine thanks'. was trying to work but i just couldn't seem to do it...

so i think he is trying to reestablish a connection. with the phonecall. with seeing that he needs to get w. onside (he needs to take rational me seriously).

reading some stuff again... they were saying that the most important thing with respect to trauma processing was basically having a secure attachment to the therapist. i understand why. in one of the sessions i was able to feel some of the shame that my mother was so good at getting me into. i could feel the shame and i could feel him emotionally holding the shame at the same time. he was there with me. he was there. he could feel it too and he was there with me and he wasn't afraid of it. he wasn't shying away from it or anything. and that made it more manageable. it hurt a lot that the shame was there. but it felt so wonderful that i felt so connected to him. now (sometimes) when i feel the shame in the course of my ruminations i feel him connected to me at the same time and it makes feeling it okay.

thats how the healing is supposed to work, i think.

but it means that we can't do that work if i can't feel emotionally connected to him.

so i think he is trying to repair the emotional connection.

its working. but... i guess the feelings of abandonment that were ignored while he had his time off... were really very retraumatising.

he said we needed to take it slow. i guess we have a lot of building the relationship stuff to be doing first. need to get me feeling safe and secure and being productive BEFORE getting into the traumatic feelings. instead of me working to feel the traumas... i think i need to work on feeling connected to him. i think that is why he offered me the other session. more sessions... faster establishment of connection...

i think.

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alexandra_k said:
in one of the sessions i was able to feel some of the shame that my mother was so good at getting me into. i could feel the shame and i could feel him emotionally holding the shame at the same time. he was there with me. he was there. he could feel it too and he was there with me and he wasn't afraid of it. he wasn't shying away from it or anything. and that made it more manageable. it hurt a lot that the shame was there. but it felt so wonderful that i felt so connected to him. now (sometimes) when i feel the shame in the course of my ruminations i feel him connected to me at the same time and it makes feeling it okay.

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Always hang onto that moment, Alex. I remember the 1st time (not too long ago) that I recognized that my T was there with me. I'm sure he was there with me before, but I guess I wasn't there... so it wasn't a connection. But when it first hit me as a connection, as him being there... wow. And no matter how bad things have gotten since then... moments when I am pissed at him (or days), during the week when I feel disconnected, unable to internalize... I always remember the moments when he was right there with me. And I know I can go back to that. I hope you can too.

yeah. i do try and hang onto that feeling of connection. there are other moments too. even his efforts over the last few weeks have been helpful. even though i can't feel his emotionally holding me (or holding the emotions that plague me) i can see that he is trying to do that. i'm darting around not letting him. but he is trying. and i keep on darting. and he keeps on trying. that means a great deal to me too.

and there are moments of connection at other times too. i'm not emotionally experiencing anything... we are just talking on a more rational level. but his interest in what i'm saying means a great deal too.

but that emotional connection. sensing that he is holding the emotion that plagues me. thats how it feels. that... is what is most healing for these traumatic experiences, i think. i think my greatest traumas are experiences of very intense and very negative dysregulating emotion. the things that happened to me (the external stimuli) really aren't anywhere near as important as the feeling of intense negative dysregulated emotion. and him being there and holding it... showing me that it is manageable for him... makes it feel manageable to me.

we talked a bit last time (as i said already) about how when i'm having these flashbacks (whether they be mental pictures or memories of events or body / feeling memories or emotion / feeling memories)... the crucial thing is to feel it (rather than dissociating from it) while at the same time holding it present in my mind that they belong to the past and that the present is different (its okay) right now in this moment.

of course knowing it rationally and actually being able to do it are two different things...

now i'm thinking... that precisely what enables you (or will enable me) to do this... is feeling like he is there with me in the present. because the boundary dissolves. it feels like the past IS the present. but that means i can utilise that dissolving boundary... so that the present (him being there facing the feeling too and being connected with me) IS the past. so... they blend together and its ok.

i hope.

i so want to get better.

please god.

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alexandra_k said:

now i'm thinking... that precisely what enables you (or will enable me) to do this... is feeling like he is there with me in the present. because the boundary dissolves. it feels like the past IS the present. but that means i can utilise that dissolving boundary... so that the present (him being there facing the feeling too and being connected with me) IS the past. so... they blend together and its ok.


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That is the connection that I yearn for... but at the present time it just hurts too %#@&#! much when he's not here (obviously, as I just got finished crying so hard I was practically %#@&#! vomiting). seems like the deeper we become connected in session, the more it hurts outside. it seems like you are on a path in which you are taking, at least, little pieces, and applying them on the outside. you are on your way. you will get better.

i can't believe it. he is helping me so much. with the emotions, sure. but with the understanding too. all i wanted... all i wanted... for a great number of years... was for someone to WORK WITH ME. and nobody would. or if they did they felt like they had to change my feeling change my feeling all the time. cognitively restructure it or whatever. nobody would hold the emotion. nobody would let me experience it and just kind of move on in and hold it and show me it was ok. i thought that nobody could do this because my emotions were too powerful. they literally couldn't do it. like they are eating me up and killing me they would eat up and kill anybody who allowed themself to feel them. i kind of rationally knew that this wasn't right... but over and over and over my experiences in therapy were like this (people trying to cognitively resturcture my thinking and stuff) so i guess i really had a hard time not believing that.

and now i've found him. ((((my t)))). and he isn't afraid to be there with me and he isn't afraid to hold it. in fact i think he feels a little pissed when the sessions don't go that way. it seems to be something that he is continually working towards in our sessions. having me feel something and being there to hold it with me. and i've just seen properly now... that he isn't holding ME. he is holding the emotion i'm experiencing. there is a distinction. i know rationally i'm not my emotion but it surely feels like it consumes me at times.

i don't know that i do have DID... been thinking about that a lot for a great number of years now. read a great deal about it. but just recently (over the last year) i've found this whole other literature i never found before. Schore and people like that. Opened up a whole other way of viewing things. Well, it opened up another dimension to my way of viewing things. I think he is starting to see that maybe i'm not... it is hard to say... you know, i found this thing last night about the continuum... amazing... its something i'd kinda come to before but never really properly thought about it. here it is:

> Laub and Auerhahn (1993) organized the different forms of knowing along a continuum according to the distance from the traumatic experience, each form also progressively represents a consciously deeper and more integrated 'level of knowing.' The different forms of remembering trauma range from 1)not knowing; 2) fugue states (in which events are relived in an altered state of consciousness); 3) retention of the experience as compartmentalized, undigested fragments of perceptions that break into consciousness (with no conscious meaning or relation to oneself); 4) transference phenomena (wherein the traumatic legacy is lived out as one's inevitable fate); 5) its partial, hesitant expression as an overpowering narrative; 6) the experience of compelling, identity-defining and pervasive life themes (both conscious and unconscious); 7) its organization as a witnessed narrative. These various forms of knowing are not mutually exclusive.

> The critical issue is to introduce the capacity to flexibly remember the trauma. In order for this to occur, some new information that is incompatible to the traumatic memory must be introduced (Foa et al., 1989). The most important new information is probably the fact that the patient is able to confront the traumatic memory by a trusted therapist in a safe environment (van der Hart & Spiegel,1993). In order to help the patient regulate emotional arousal, secure attachment may be even more important than evoking the traumatic memories. Therefore, it is important for the patient to establish and maintain an emotional connection with the therapist.

http://www.trauma-pages.com/a/vanderk.php

i guess mostly i'm at that third stage. i think... its probably not useful for me to worry about what is to come... maybe just... keep ticking along...

i guess i do trust him.