Weekends

Weekends are the worst. I'm always alone... no friends, no T, thinking about T 24/7... knowing she fills her weekends with family and friends, so much love... and I'm here. Just me. She feels light years away and while I love her I hate her for having a fulfilling life outside of the office... She's so good to me, but I hate when she's happy (it sounds horrible but I know it's based on neediness)... Her happiness extends beyond office hours and mine doesn't, and I'm mad at her for that... how dare she switch gears and forget about me during the weekend? I'm horrible. Without even knowing them, I hate her family and friends for having access to her 24/7, and being in her warm comfort all the time... laughing, making memories. I think and overthink... and fantasize about the fun she has with those she is intimate with. Which doesn't include me. God I'm a mess.

You don't sound like you're being a mess, those sound like perfectly natural feelings when you spend such emotionally charged time with someone and you feel like they have a more fulfilling life outside of session.
The truth is that T's life probably isn't as perfect as you imagine it, and also that she wouldn't be able to be emotionally present for you in session If she didn't put time aside for self care.
But your feelings are totally valid, and a lot of clients feel that way. It would be a really good idea to talk to T about these feelings and perhaps explore how weekends could be more fulfilling for you.

I hear ya. I hate weekends too, and my T knows it. I also was just thinking recently how I always wish the best for people, but since my T hurt me, it hurts that she has such an active personal life, while I'm left here to suffer, thinking about how much she hurt me months and months ago. I know, I know, my own fault for staying, but I don't think this would just "go away" by quitting.

Just wanted you to know you aren't alone in any of these feelings.

Envy is a very powerful and normal feeling. You should talk to your therapist about it.
Personally while I don't hate weekends I tend to feel lonely on weekends so of course my mind turns to my T.
I completely understand how you can both love and hate your therapist for all the time she spends with her family and friends.

As others have said, these are really normal feelings a lot of us have about our therapists. Whenever I had a pang of jealousy like this about my x therapist, I'd remind myself that she no doubt woke up with bad breath and stumbled out of bed to step in cat hairball gak, that she grumbled about the kids not doing their chores and she ended up having to take the garbage out to the curb by herself, that on Sunday afternoon, her husband was planted on the couch watching endless football and NOT helping her rake the two feet deep freakin' fall leaves on the front lawn, and then, when she called her best friend to gripe about her husband's selfish behavior, her best friend blew her off to talk about her own problems and then cancelled their lunch date for the following week for the third week in a row. Then of course, she had a total meltdown at dinner time when she spent all afternoon cooking a healthy family dinner and no one wanted anything because they'd gorged themselves on chips, dip and popcorn all afternoon watching the games. Truth is, their lives are just as mundane and fraught with boring life problems as the rest of us.

For me weekends are not a lot worse than the other days. But I can relate to thinking about T and what she could be doing. My T seems happy. She has a boyfriend, a babygirl, family, friends, a good job, she's beautiful, funny, smart. But I don't feel hate for her having a good life. I do feel a lot of jealousy and it even hurts a bit when I think about how T is and what she has. She deserves too have good things, she's a good person and I wouldn't want her to feel bad. But she's so totally different than me. I can't imagine how it would feel to feel good, to have a boyfriend and people who love you and to actually like being alive.

I am sort of the opposite. I can't imagine not being able to escape the woman after a little less than an hour. The idea of having to deal with her in real life is nothing I would want to do. And I don't imagine her real life is better than mine - different perhaps - but not one I would want. I pretty much like my life.

I do think that it is not uncommon to hear of clients who miss the therapist or think the therapist is having a content happy real life. I doubt it is true for any of them, but from what I have read both clients and therapists think it is usual for clients to think so.

Jaybird - exactly! Not to mention, she had to clean the toilet!

Maybe this is a sign that you need to develop relationships and hobbies that take place on the weekend. Clubs, classes, meetups, or even just going for a walk and saying hello to the people who pass by.

This feeling should motivate you to seek out the things you're envious of - not get caught up in the envy itself and worry about that. That's a little like being on fire and being more concerned with describing the burning sensation than actually putting the fire out.

Pain should be motivation. I see a lot of people on this board who seem to think that pain has some merit in and of itself, like if they're enduring something ******, they're somehow doing well. They're not. They're wasting their time and they're getting burned in the process. If they keep getting burned, one day that scar tissue will be permanent. But if people want to keep choosing pain, there's nothing anyone can do to stop them.

Anyway, there's nothing wrong with envy, unless you choose to wallow in it rather than use it as what it is - a sign of what you want, and the urgency to actually seek it out.

People progress at their own speed and rarely does "shoulding" someone, in my experience, change that speed. It is often easy to see what someone else might do differently from the outside but it is never so easy from the inside. I think people who post here are very often doing the best they can at the moment. I wouldn't choose to do almost any of the stuff others choose to do around therapists, but I don't think it would benefit me to judge or condemn them for their different choices. I don't think I have to like everyone who posts here or agree with their choices, (and I don't like some posters just as some posters don't like me or understand my choices), but their way, even if it appears a rocky path to me, is theirs.

Have you ever considered that not quitting, and instead continuing to see this woman twice a week for months on end, could actually be searing pathways of pain into your brain? Something that could easily be gotten over if you made healthier choices for yourself is becoming something irreparable and hideously toxic, because you've grabbed a hot coal and you've also convinced yourself that you have to hold onto it, because letting it go would somehow be weakness. It's burned through the outer layers of your skin, through the lower epidermal layer, and now its taking your flesh, but you're just SO convinced that if you hold on long enough everything will be okay.

It won't. You're going to end up with a bloody big hole in your metaphorical hand.

I mean, come on. It was hugs. I totally get that it sucked to lose them. Her response sucked too. But this hanging on for months and months and months, rehashing, reliving, re-experiencing the pain over and over again?

At this point, it's like the pain and the toxicity of the relationship is familiar to you. Your posts state that you don't even believe that it could be better if you stopped anymore. You're almost brainwashed into thinking that you NEED her.

The longer this goes on, the more frankly disturbing it becomes. Because where she once was the abuser, now your brain is telling you that you MUST keep seeing her. That there's merit and some kind of bravery and some kind of positivity. There's not. You're just getting hurt.

Your posts are tragic to me at this point. It's like watching someone beat themselves bloody because they've been told it's good for them. There must surely be some part of you with the self-esteem to know that this is messed up and not okay, surely?

Thank you!!! I am going to try my very best to hold onto what you've given me. I need to stop fantasizing about her life outside of the therapy room and thinking that her life is perfect. It's really, really hard to imagine her as a normal person though and I hate that!!! I am going to play out this scenario in my head the next time my thoughts get the best of me... which will probably be in 5 minutes

Wow, this really struck a cord with me- It's such a powerful comparison. Thank you for opening my eyes... I think this in itself is going to motivate me to be more proactive in making my life better. Thank you.

My therapist told me she was a slob (tho she hardly looks slobby), so I don't imagine her doing a lot of housecleaning on the weekend. I imagine her being very disorganized and wondering where the time went. Somewhere in there, she thinks about her clients and wishes them well. She never said that last part, but I once told her I imagine she does that and she nodded enthusiastically. I think that's better than if I'd asked her, because what was she going to say? No?

Thanks for this! Funny you mention this. Just last session I was telling my T about how my house is in shambles (and it literally is, I live alone and I can't remember the last time someone has walked through the door), and she kept asking me what that meant. I didn't want to tell her examples because I felt too embarrassed. She made a comment about how she would never think I lived like that... I told her I hide it really, really, really well (because I do!). I guess the lesson here is that no one's life is as perfect as you might think it is. Hard to realize, but I guess it's a work in progress!

What's the point of posting at all if you don't want feedback as to how to make your situation better? You can reject the feedback if you think it's not useful, because you're a competent adult capable of making those decisions.

The one thing I find most frustrating about this board is that I feel it seriously encourages people to make heinous decisions, wallow in emotional states which are often destructive, and generally indulge in the worst kind of passive submission to impulses which their better judgement would tell them to move past - if therapy weren't geared toward convincing people that every infantile impulse is to be nurtured and explored for sometimes years at a time.

I have no doubt that people are doing the best that they can. Not many people do the worst that they can, but simply patting everyone on the back and saying 'there there' no matter what they're indulging seems to me to be almost hateful.

It's like encouraging self-destruction - and you get brownie points for it, because that's 'supportive'. If someone comes on this board and says they're not taking care of themselves properly and instead spend their weekends fantasizing about a therapist, then the only allowed response is 'oh yeah, that's understandable'.

For some bizzare reason, saying that they should do something with their lives instead of fixate, is just unthinkable. Saying that those sorts of thought patterns can be dismissed and not entertained or indulged, is apparently so far out of the realm that it's almost offensive.

This truly is one of the strangest places I've ever been on the internet, because so much of the support is really just crabs in a bucket mentality, where everyone agrees that life is super hard, and therapists are super interesting and don't we all just go gaga every time they go on holiday.

Is it really so bizarre to say hey, if you spend your weekends doing nothing and thinking about how cool your therapist's life is, then maybe you should, I don't know, get a life?

Apparently. Because on PC, the only acceptable thing to say is yes, spend your weekends going over the same old tired emotional ground you've been over a thousand times before, really grind those thoughts into your brain and do nothing to change anything, because that's what's cool here - passivity and helplessness in the face of one's own responsibility for existence. And then go and pay a hundred bucks to tell your therapist that you are envious of her life - a hundred bucks you could have used to actually do something interesting or nice for yourself.

Am I really the only one who feels this way? Honestly, I think about 90% of people on this board would be better off without therapy - it's taken a benign exploration of feelings and turned it into obsessive feeling watching to the point people are paralyzed from being able to do anything without reference to their therapist.

I feel like this board sets people up to fail over and over again, by lying to them and telling them every single feeling is okay, and no action is ever required, and if you just talk your feelings out long enough, you'll somehow be fixed. The real truth is, you'll be potentially tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket and years lost mooning over a therapist when you could have been actually living life.

/rant

Have you considered getting busy on the weekend so you don't think of t? My t always says too much idle time is not good. I agree from my own experience. It could be anything whatever suits your life style. Try it. Hobby, volunteer, work etc

When you are busy you won't think of her as much.

I personally don't think my t lives much differently than me. She has more free time than me as I currently work two jobs. But so do other people who have one job. Other than that our lives are not that different. Therapists are just people. Like the rest of us. There is nothing different or unique about their life style.



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I just gave my take on it. I disagree with you on your approach and tone even where at times I don't disagree with some of the underlying idea, but certainly your have the right to do it differently than the way I choose. One might wonder what is the point to coming onto a site and ranting about how much everyone on it is stupid and whiny and wrong in how they do their lives. I think sometimes some people just need some space to be and tell their situation at the time - I don't think that everyone is looking to be told in a bludgeony manner how wrong they are - I think some people have been told their entire lives how much they suck and perhaps just need to be able to be without being told it for a while. I think most people do realize that some expectations about therapy and therapists may be off the chart but they just want to express the feelings of sadness, or loss, or frustration or whatever about therapy without being criticized.

I post all the time and I NEVER want people to tell me what they think I should do. I don't care what they think I should do. I might want to hear how they have handled similar situations, but being told what to do or what is wrong with me by strangers on the internet is of absolutely no interest to me.

Okay. Thanks for the opening.

You have a remarkable knack for grabbing hold of the right stick at the wrong end and then bludgeoning everyone to death with it, including those who might agree with you. I'm sure you're good at whatever it is you do in life, but please...for the love of awful therapy, do not volunteer on a crisis line.

I'm a little confused as to why my post got derailed a bit in the direction it did... I don't think anyone told me I "should" do one thing or another?? Everyone has opinions, and we can all take it or leave it. Did I miss something?