....i think the following is a "rant"...

...maybe not...

i've been having a time today and tonight with my feelings about my therapist. i was driving and this song by Michael Bublé comes on, called Home. Why do I always allow myself to be triggered by songs?

Some the lines go:
Let me go home
I’m just too far from where you are
I wanna come home

And then later:
Let me go home
I’ve had my run
Baby, I’m done
I gotta go home
Let me go home
It will all be alright
I’ll be home tonight
I’m coming back home

It just hit me like a fist and I really got to missing my therapist...and I justed want to call her up and leave a message simply saying: "I miss you."

But I don't let myself, because I'm afraid and anxious and nervous. Me and my T are still "on break" and just now starting to discuss my return...via some formal questions I gave her. I don't want to call with some "sappy" words like "I miss you" that may sway how she responds to my formal questions. (Some of them have to do with how she really feels about working with me.) If I call with the words "I miss you", no matter how true, they could compromise things and make her feel some "sentimental obligation" to answer the questions how I want to hear them, as opposed to what is real.

There is not much about myself that I like, much less love, except that part which is represented by my "inner child" or what I call "5 year old" . This 5 year old is innocent, curious and loving as far as I can tell. This is the "me" that I can willingly do things for. The rest of me, well, I am not very generous with meeting the needs of the rest of me. So I wonder, is this "need" to call my T and tell her "I miss you" coming from a 5 year old's need or from the other parts of me? Either way, it seems I cannot call, less I risk messing up the clarity of my therapist's reponses to my formal questions. And even if the 5 year old is the facet of me that is really missing her now...sometimes 5 year olds don't know what is best for them...so I have to sit this boy down and say "sorry, we can't tell her this yet."

from a 5 year old's perspective, however, it just doesn't make sense and that it is silly to deny my missing her. all the "impatient" 5 year old sees is that he misses her and wants to relieve that pain and discomfort.

when I first discussed this break from therapy with my therapist, I said all parts of me were in agreement on needing this break. but when i had my last session and then went home, my 5 year old sort of "woke up" and I realized I did NOT "ask" all parts of me. I had forgotten the 5 year old and he had a "panic attack" of sorts and immediately wanted to know when I would go back to therapy. I told that part of me I didn't know and truthfully didn't know if I ever would. But I tried to assure the 5 year old he wasn't at fault for this break. But I don't think the 5 year old believed me then, or believes me now.

In addition to the fear of messing up the clarity of my therapist's answers (so that I'm not sullying it with the "sappy sentimentality" of missing her)...I fear: what if I tell her "I miss her" and she doesn't care anymore? I don't want open myself to that pain, to make myself vulnerable to that rejection.

i think part of me knows I shouldn't rely on others for my own worth...but it is said "no man is an island" and even if I shouldn't rely on others for my worth, I will still not do very well without someone to love me or care for me or something of that like. i'm surely not thriving in this life now being alone.

as far as I can tell that 5 year old in me just wants to see his "mommy" (my therapist) and give her a hug and have her put bandages on all his scrapes and bruises, read him a book, and tuck him in for nap. he has no agenda, no ill-will, and no malice - he just wants to be close to someone, to the therapist. but it is so hard to know what percentage of me is that 5 year old's need or the need of the rest of me (the rest of me that I'm not as generous with).

some part of me says that this disctinction shouldn't matter because, even if the older parts of me have needs, they are still needs of the same body/person...or...said another way: all roads go through 5 year old. if say, the 16 year old in me has a need for love, it just a carry over from the 5 year old.

trouble is...i have trouble feeling the 5 year old is still alive. I feel he may be just an apparition or a "ghost" from the past haunting me.

so i'll likely just go on "missing my therapist" without telling her, at least for a couple weeks, and then I will reassess.... and just try to assure that 5 year old part of me that there is a reason for it.

[Soidhonia]

(((DIXIT)))
Journaling may help some to allow you to express your feelings until you get to see your therapist again. Take care (((DIXIT))). soidhonia

i think my post just proves how screwed up my mind is...and how it seems i always set myself up to hurt.

my pain is pretty much all my fault.

It feels like i'm trying to find a "loop-hole" to allow me to call my therapist and tell her I miss her.

Like I think to myself, I can just call and tell her something like:

"It feels very risky to call you. I'm emotionally confused right now about how you personally and professionally feel about me returning to therapy with you, but I wanted to call you and tell you: I miss you

But I don't know. I'll probably do nothing.

[PetulantWolf]

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Ipse_Dixit said:

. If I call with the words "I miss you", no matter how true, they could compromise things and make her feel some "sentimental obligation" to answer the questions how I want to hear them, as opposed to what is real.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

Ummm..I havent read all of your posts and if Im off base just tell me. You seem like a really decent person to me. "sentimental obligation"....means she likes you...how is that different from what "is real"? People come with feelings...its being human...

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Ipse_Dixit said:
so i'll likely just go on "missing my therapist" without telling her, at least for a couple weeks, and then I will reassess.... and just try to assure that 5 year old part of me that there is a reason for it.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

My impression is youre throwing up all these road blocks becasue youre scared. Could you be creating these things to throw yourself off the track of getting close? Youre throwing yourself red herrings i think.. all this anxiety could be interpreted as a good sign..that youre bonding with your T...youre doing a lot of good work and I imagine youre exhausted...but keep in mind what you said yourself..."driving yourself..." I think all this resistance means youre on the right track and dont be afraid...I know its easier said then done..Hang in there Ipse Dixit.

You know how I feel about my T. I understand the scariness of it...when he said those things to me I was devastated....buthe explained himself and I grew from the whole thing. It sucks putting yourself out there, but unfortunately I think its the only way...You have to just put yourself out there.

I cant imagine why anyone would not like you. If they dont theyre just a jackasss anyway.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
justsignmeupalready said:

Ummm..I havent read all of your posts and if Im off base just tell me. You seem like a really decent person to me. "sentimental obligation"....means she likes you...how is that different from what "is real"? People come with feelings...its being human...

My impression is youre throwing up all these road blocks becasue youre scared. Could you be creating these things to throw yourself off the track of getting close? Youre throwing yourself red herrings i think.. all this anxiety could be interpreted as a good sign..that youre bonding with your T...youre doing a lot of good work and I imagine youre exhausted...but keep in mind what you said yourself..."driving yourself..." I think all this resistance means youre on the right track and dont be afraid...I know its easier said then done..Hang in there Ipse Dixit.

You know how I feel about my T. I understand the scariness of it...when he said those things to me I was devastated....buthe explained himself and I grew from the whole thing. It sucks putting yourself out there, but unfortunately I think its the only way...You have to just put yourself out there.

I cant imagine why anyone would not like you. If they dont theyre just a jackasss anyway.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

I wrote this in the "self-injury" forum about my T, thinking she may be reluctant to really want me to return from this break I've been on (about 3 months now):

".....i just think it is a possibility [that she may not want me to return] because i'm very difficult to work with. at least, it seems that way because my emotional defense system is so confusing and complicated (even to me) that we are having the hardest time breaking through to really fix what the heck is wrong with me, or at least see something inside that will show me it is okay to to stop me from loathing myself and start me loving myself. it is very frustrating and she may want to stop [dealing with me]. even though it was my decision to take a break, i'm not sure she is ready for me to return from break."

and you wrote your impression is i'm throwing up all these roadblock because i'm scared. truer words were probably never spoken. though i might upgrade the word scared to "terrified" or perhaps "petrified" because I'm petrified into inaction and just keeping my "neediness" inside.

if I need her, though, it feels like i'm weak and vulnerable ....and so often allowing myself to be vulnerable and open in the past has gotten me burned.

i sit here and think of how terrified i am of everything but at the same time needing "someone" to help me, needing others in general, and thinking of all of this....I start to cry for the innocent 5 year old that once existed before all the bull-plop that came along destroy the innocence I had. that poor little boy who seemed so beautiful and just wants love and just wants to explore with his curiosity....that boy is buried so deep in me and wrapped up and imprisoned by all of my fear....and i so desparately want to give that boy the life he deserved.

and i just cry...looking at how petrified/terrified i am right now...how i've been conditioned and brainwashed to not even know how to make it "safe" enough to let the true me out...for the most intense fear i will be hurt. somehow I have to find a way to make it safe for that "true" me to come out of the hole.

hey ipse, sounds like quite a confusion of feelings.

> I justed want to call her up and leave a message simply saying: "I miss you."

i think i understand this. sometimes i really want to reach out to my t so he can comfort me.

> But I don't let myself, because I'm afraid and anxious and nervous.

but sometimes i can't reach out 'cause i'm scared he won't want to comfort me. i'm scared that he will resent me or be averse to me for reaching out to him.

> If I call with the words "I miss you", no matter how true, they could compromise things and make her feel some "sentimental obligation" to answer the questions how I want to hear them, as opposed to what is real.

it could... though... therapy is meant to be about the therapist answering the questions in the way that is most likely to facilitate theraputic progress.

sounds to me like you are defending against expressing the vulnerable and needy feelings because they haven't been responded to very well in the past. it can be soul destroying when that happens. really very. i tend not to express those feelings either. it is hard.

sounds like you do have a good connection to your therapist, though. its just that is is scary huh.

not sure what to say except that i think i understand.

hang in there.

[Perna]

I think the five year old is part of you and has to be part of your whole equation or there's no way it can come out "right." If you think of a math equation, if you leave out a number, the other person you ask to "solve" the equation can't because they don't have all the information!

Why not write your T a "note" and tell her you're missing her, a "P.S. I miss you" sort of thing? There's nothing sappy about that and it might indeed make the "missing" difference in the reply your T gives you! If you want your "whole" T, you have to give her your whole truth. I made up a saying for myself I use on myself, "The truth is true, whether you like it or not." :-)

Being MPD - I have many inner children who are very attached to my therapist. I have one who always tells her that he misses her. She tells him she misses him too!

One way to do it is to right a letter to her, and write "miss ya!"... It doesn't come across as "serious" as saying "i miss you" and can tests the waters without making it seem like some deep rooted issue.

Just a thought - dont know if that helps.

this is still a struggle and i'm walking around feeling crazy....

.....but I realized everything I am feeling and every way I am feeling it right now is EXACTLY how I've been all my life (well at least after 5)......so I look at this and think I can walk up to my therapist and say "This is what I've had to live with for so long....this is why I hate myself....this is why I think everyone must hate me and want me gone....putting up with my insanity and my stupid ability to not get it."

I remember once (a month or so after I got out the psychiatric ward in the hospital for suicide when I was 17) my mother told me:
(1) "I make life miserable". (literally she said that. it came out badly and I try to defend her sometimes saying she really meant that "life feels miserable for me (me as in me "Ipse Dixit") because of my attitude and negativety but you don't have to allow it to be).

(2) she also said no one knows how to live around me because they feel like they have to "walk on eggshells" around me.

I didn't have much to respond to being told I make life miserable. I just remember walking away and going into my basement bedroom.

My emotions feel that everyone here must be just sick of hearing me. My logic says, I have no way of knowing how others feel. But as I've mentioned in other places....my emotions have more power over me and doesn't speak the logic language so cannot grasp things.

Right now I feel like everyone on this forum is probably sick of me complaining about my break from my therapist and will be glad when she and I finally set up a session so I will stop whining and go away.

I'm sick of living with myself....i always tell people that at least they don't have to live with me 24-7 like I do...i can't escape the loathsome, evil, dirty, vile sickly, stupid, putrid beast that i see in the mirror...........i just want to take a sledgehammer and bring it down on my skull!!!!!! God I hate myself!!!!!

wow. i could have posted that. with how i feel at times.

i'm glad you are here. i'm not sick of you.

maybe part of it is the terrible twos... but... thats my answer for everything this week.

EVERYTHING i say

(uncertainty can be scary at times)

part of me...
part of me...

can be a good way to express.

part of me needs you so much. just wants to seek and receive your comfort.
part of me feels so scared. don't need you.

i dunno...

confusion. confusion of feelings. its hard sometimes. things will get better for you, hang in there.

be kind to yourself. to the 5 year old, sure... can your 5 year old be nurturing? chatty? mischevious? if you soothe your 5 year old... could you allow your 5 year old to soothe / cheer you?

i read through the entire terrible twos thread and that feels very familar to me....my therapist always talks about the "push and pull" that a child does with the parent....and she has specifically said I do that with her all the time....(and, personally, I think I test her ALL the time.)

when I "look at" my 5 year old, I see boy who is soft (as in gentle), and he loves to play, dance and sing, and draw and read stories and sit on our "therapeutic beach" or walk on that "beach" barefoot with his "mom" (i.e. whoever is the caregiver/guardian of the moment - such as my therapist or "the rest of me"). He LOVES to hug (though I've denied him of that love, pretty much <u>entirely</u> over the past several months, to which he "says" to me, in a playful tone, "That's silly.") And I have seen him get sad, not "depressed" but sad and I've seen him lonely and I want to scoop him up and take him somewhere safe (take him to the therapist or trundle him off to our "therapeutic beach") He can be "chatty", but that isn't his norm. And he does occasionally have a "rascal" or "mischievous" side to him, but never with malicous intent. And he has colossal curiosity (a constant need to inspect, take apart, turn over and ask the who, what, when how, where and especially "why" questions). in his gentleness and softness he also loves to care and nurture others. he could be soothing to me and cheer me (probably just by writing about "him" he has done some of that).

but part of me won't let him be "real" or just thinks the "5 year old" is a dead part of me, a ghost or apparition, or just a memory and not something tangible anymore. this could be because part of me wants to protect that 5 year old at all costs....to keep those qualities I wrote about above intact.

plus, part of me feels, I don't want the 5 year old to be taking care of me. because it feels like it should be the other way around....someone should be taking care of that 5 year old. it is "the child shouldn't care for the parent" mentality and probably some "upset in me" that this "5 year old" didn't get the care he should have gotten growing up and part of me feels that 5 year old deserves to be the one who gets taken care of.

One of the very eariest sessions I had with my therapist was one with me "imaging" scenes from my life. And in that image, I emerged from my basement bedroom into the backyard of my childhood home. I saw myself as 16 and there was also a "supportive" voice in the image too...a blend of my therapist and another individual who I knew at 16. And I emerged into that backyard, I saw the 5 year old me sitting alone on the cement, perfectly content and drawing circles around himself with chalk, in the warm sunshine. And he was very gentle. While the 5 year old didn't know "me", he wasn't afraid. He just was content to be sitting there alone and drawing circles in chalk. Eventually we began to wander the yard and ventured toward the front and toward the curb. And it turned out that the entire universe was void of people or animals, except this 5 year old, the 16 year old and the "supportive voice". That is how it all organically emerged in my therapy work early on. And before "me and my therapist" went into that vision, it seemed that the 16 year old and the "supportive" voice didn't exist in the universe either.......so that 5 year old was completely alone in that big universe.

That all came out somewhere in just one of our early therapy sessions (maybe the 3rd or 4th or 5th). I "met" the 5 year old and realized he had been alone all this time. I was 30 when I started therapy with current therapist and so that meant for 25 years this 5 year old has been sitting alone, drawing circles in the cement with chalk...content and not entirely aware he was alone, but still aware enough to feel something missing -- like he was waiting for someone to come, expecting someone to come and "sure" someone would come, yet kind of somber and maybe "numbed" for being so long without anyone. There is more to that first "therapeutic vision" of the 5 year old, but then again there has been a lot that the 5 year old has shown me in the past 3 years of therapy.

I think perhaps part of my terror does truly come from wanting to keep that 5 year old safe. in some ways, all through my life, I have buried this part of me so deep that i myself haven't known of his existence...because if I'm not even aware of "where he is" or that "he exists at all", then no one does and he cannot be hurt. hidden from the world and even from myself. perhaps thinking that he is 'just a memory" or a "ghost" now and not really "me" anymore, is that...me trying to keep him safe by "not knowing he exists"

why is this so difficult for me? what is the piece I'm missing?

well........i did something potentially stupid.....at least it feels like I am now vulnerable and I have let my guard down too much.......

....i called and left a message on my therapist's office voicemail.

i bascially told her: I am very very emotionally confused right now and I feel like I'm making myself vulnerable by calling at all and this feels very risky......but I miss you.

and i told her there is no real need for her to call me back, I just wanted her to know...and said again how risky it feels to call her and tell her this.

am I an idiot or what? why do i make myself vulnerable like this?

[Perna]

Not an idiot! Vulnerable is a good thing, scary, but very very good. Kind of like Vegetables (which starts with the same letter and has the same number of letters and that can't be by accident can it?) Just remember, "stressed" is "desserts" spelled backwards and being vulnerable to vegetables is good for you!

I apologize....but I'm quite confused about your metaphors...especially why vegetables is like being vulnerable.

and i sincerely apologize. ..i'm not trying to sound mean. (i'm not sure if my above thoughts/words come across as angry/upset/mean) i'm not sure what vegetables has to do with vulnerablilty