Problem with therapy itself.

My last therapy has finally ended. Failed dreams, failed hopes, lots of money into therapists' pockets. Trusting somebody who ultimately realized and admitted that she had "insufficient" emotional resources, because of some personal and other business stresses, to continue with my case, after 6 years. She is, ultimately in my case, unable to accept and deal with my negativity and negative transference.

Wow. For this I have been in therapy for 50 years, on and off? So that I could experience all my hurt and rage and have the therapist say "OK, that's yours, I can't tolerate you any more."

HA! Sure would have been nice if somebody had clued me in on the front end!!

Going back to the idea of therapy as a relationship, she justified what has happened by saying that although it's usually applied to dating relationships, the notion of "timing is everything" can apply to the therapy relationship as well.

This wasn't me interpreting therapy as a "friendship". I thought it was a business relationship. When you go to any other business for a service and they understand it's important to follow through with what they start -- even though you may not have a contract, if they can't follow through, then they have failed it seems to me. They may certainly not have intended to fail, but still they failed. Not just "timing is everything". A better saying might be, "It's not personal, it's just business." Yeah. So how is that supposed to help us in our real personal relationships, if we want to try to have them?

Either way, when your service provider won't/can't do the the work, then they can't. Personal relationships as a business? I really do think, after all this time, that the model has failed this customer. It's a scam and a cult and needs to be exposed.

It was this last therapists' idea, not mine. Once again I went to her for help with problems which she diagnosed as DDNOS and PDNOS. The idea of "therapy as a (practice) relationship" was her idea, not mine.

I certainly don't it see as being like a real reciprocal friendship. More of a heavily skewed, heavily imbalanced version of the real thing. Seems that many clients wind up wanting their therapist to be their friend, or romantic partner, or parent… because it approximates those relationships, through a strange role playing that takes on a life of its own after months or years.

Failed me also. Did your therapist accept any responsibility for the failure or just throw out meaningless concepts like "negative transference"? it is a very bizarre model, this intimacy in a professional setting that is kinda real but not really.

Wow, nice one. Bill3-level advice.

I do not consider T my friend nor has she ever called me on. There was one time I saw her outside of session and she asked me to do something. I declined and emailed her later. It was something very innocent I just didn't know how to handle it. She apologized and said I was right that she had treated me as a friend and if we had met under different circumstances we would be friends.

There have been a couple of times I have seen her and her boyfriend in public. We spoke for a few moments and she introduced me to her boyfriend as her friend for privacy reasons. Or when I realized a person I know lives across the street from her home office. She wondered how I felt if they saw me going into her home. I told her I was okay with it. To which she said, they don't need to know why you are here I have many friends over so they can just think that.

No, the "negative transference" is my idea for my part, at least, in the "failure" of the relationship. And no, she seems to have known that she failed and tried to justify it as I said, trying to prop up and maintain her own sense of self, I guess.

Years ago after a therapy would fail I would go back through things trying to find why it was my fault, never taking into account the context of the relationship. Looking back now, finding reasons why it was (all) my fault calmed me down so I didn't feel the uncertainty and rage at how the therapist had let me down (and probably transference of repressed feelings for about my parents -- really, that stuff does have some meaning sometimes, I think.) But it's taken forever for me to (maybe) get to the bottom of it, and in the meantime therapy definitely messed me up worse some times. And even if I have "gotten to the bottom of it" I'm 69 years old!!! Yes, it was a path I chose, starting when I was an adolescent and was told that any problem you were willing to face you could overcome. And when you go for "help" to our society's professional helpers because you feel you can't handle things well -- maybe I've won the battle and lost the war -- but the professional helpers certainly weren't concerned about that!!!

You had a comment about the gap between psychological theory and clinical practice on another thread and I thought a reply might fit this thread better since the topic is more general.

Like I said in that other thread, I think Kohut was onto something. I've even tried to use some of his ideas to try to build a sense of self, myself -- thought about changing therapists several years ago but I was still working on "the relationship" with a therapist who seems to have worked according to the model you described above.

It probably sounds like I'm just venting and because I'm so mad it probably affects people like they just want to stay away from me. If I could redirect this energy into something positive that could help poor results like mine from happening again I certainly would.

Oh sorry, didnt know the "neg transference" was your idea, though it's a therapy idea generally. My last one also tried to prop up her sense of self. I think the failure crushed her, but rather than be forthright about it, she tried blaming me and pretending that things weren't so bad.

Wow that is an incredibly long stretch of therapy you've done. Seems you have a right to vent. Yes the messages are insistent about overcoming problems and needing a professional to facilitate or whatever.

I do recall some of Kohut's ideas in the psych books i've read but all i can recall is the self-object concept.

The self-object concept was a very tough one for me to understand, but what did help me a lot was his ideas about what he called the "self" being formed on the basis of 3 functions or something like that: grandiosity, idealization, and twinship. And if your parents couldn't provide those -- couldn't be "self-objects" to you maybe -- then your "self" (for myself I like to call it sense of self) can't/doesn't develop well.

That matches a lot with what I finally got diagnosed with. And in fact when I asked her in the beginning what she thought was "wrong" she didn't use the DSM terms, she said that I was "narcissistically wounded and fragmented". I do think she treated the fragmentation -- she was a specialist in dissociative disorders -- but not the "wounded narcissism". And rage would be definitely a part of that, seems to me.

So it all very much sucks. I'm very glad to have PC to vent on and to feel some commonality with other human beings, otherwise I'd probably still be entirely feeling like a worthless, hopeless piece of trash that even my therapist couldn't tolerate.

Lefty, parn me for saying so, but you need to get out more! theres some gold in these here hills!

OK, and then the problem for me was that I lacked the ability to "choose" a friend -- my unconscious "twinship" function with my last therapist and others of them -- went sour because they couldn't accept my cut-off, overcontrolled, rage when they failed me as "idealization" self-objects. (An attempt to use Kohut's language, maybe it's close enough to communicate somewhat.)

There's attachment, then idealization, then twinship -- all unconscious. I have used my understanding of Kohut's ideas to try to explain to my T how we were different in a way that, as I put it one day, "I don't want to be like you!" And when I thought about how that was, using Kohut's framework -- she had the twinship pole of her self established OK, but probably not the grandiose. And I had the grandiose established in my father (my mother had previously failed me as a self-object) but he failed me in twinship -- he liked me only to the extent that I strenghtend his own ego/self. I have a clear traumatic memory of the occasion when that happened.. So then I was "narcissistically injured" and had to defend against the rage of that with overcontrol in order to be socially accepted.

Right now I'm still (feeling) injured -- shamed, simmering rage, etc. -- so very few want to associate or "twin" with me. So then nobody picks up on anything I say as having any value (for them). They are "shielded" against me. Nothing personal. . .but that stuff just turns you offf. But there's Bud here and somebody else in another forum maybe -- these are maybe the beginnings, maybe, of my self's unconscious ability to select who I can be friends with and who I can't. That ability is something everybody needs in order to be a functional adult -- not too shy, not too grandiose. Somewhere in between.

OK, not joking but it might be useful to mention in this forum and context -- My grandiosity feels hurt by being passed over, ignored. "There's gold in my hills, too." Although my OCPD is not nearly so apparent these days. Or maybe all the covering has finally rubbed off and it's just too glittery? Hard, not life-producing like the dirt on the hills where plants and animals can grow. From the cold-blooded, reptilian part of the psyche but part of what's needed for people to work together in society. Not a lot of fun to be around, that's for sure!!

I'm working on developing an authentic "skin" or sense of self founded in this "self" which is now feeling accepted by these "others", since my therapist can't accept me. A covering that is pleasant enough for other people to be around. What's the point at my age? Just because it's there. Reptilian, survival functions still chugging along.

(((Here today))) thats a good point, about looking for twinship. You can tell when its just "supportive bs". You/i want it to be genuine, but you dont want to have to give up your authenticity to get it. You just want it to be recognized.

Otoh, if my so-called authenticity is really just my mothers unconsciously appropriated bullying, it needed giving up. Thats where my ts puppy dog eyes came in and finally caught my attention, that what i was doing wasnt nice. Not that anybody can just stop, but one can try.

Im not sure if thats where you were going. I was gonna say, i was lucky to find that supportive twinship here on pc. But its not for free. I think we work at it on both sides. Thats where pc can be like group therapy. You find a kindred soul here and there, on various forums. You get to know and appreciate them, even if your politics or religion or hobbies or marital status or challenges or whatever arent even close! Something about them is charming or homey to you. It ultimately helps you negotiate relationships IRL.

I'm really just beginning to have a feeling about this. I'm still very guarded IRL, somewhat all the more now that I have more access to chaotic feelings inside. So my posts here may be very chaotic as well and I'm used to having that kind of thing looked down on or ignored. So I gave myself permission to kind of act and check some of it out.

Thanks for replying! I really appreciate it! :-)