Dear Client

Ah yes, a Monty Python sketch for every occasion

Annie,
Thank you for being honest today. I know that you know you are your own biggest road block, and you acknowledged that today. I hope we can work together on this. You are one funny lady, but so much of your humor comes from you avoiding your feelings or deflecting tough questions. I know you can be funny without doing those things. It's why I like you so much.
Be well,
T

Dear ATAT,

I'll ask again, because I'm still puzzled: I don't understand why we can't have a relationship where you look forward to coming here.

CW

(After the colon is an actual quote. I desperately wanted to say, "because you're a therapist.")

I enjoyed my hour off where your session usually is!

Dear LT,
Agh, so many e-mails lately! When T comes back from vacation, I'm going to tell her she can never retire, because then you'll never leave me alone!

This doesn't mean I don't care, of course. I do. Very much. It's just an awful lot of reading material, and I'm not entirely sure how to respond to some of it. You're worrying me a little, but I don't know how worried I should be. And if you were in a really bad place, you'd text or call, right? So I'll just stay with slightly concerned and try to make my response to you a more positive one. Hopefully something good enough to hold you till T is back in town Monday...

Take care,
MC

Dear c_r,

you are right, your little outburst yesterday at the end of the session was huge. In fact, it made me smile on the inside. You know that all your feelings are allowed. That I welcome them, after all they've been buried and suppressed far too long.

Don't worry about me, I can handle that. I can hold your feelings for now. And together we'll get there somehow that one day you'll be able to hold them on your own.

Try not to feel guilty, I know this is hard, especially with those 'loaded' easter days coming up...

I'm looking forward to seeing you again after the break. You will come, right?!

Love, art T.

Dear Satsuma,
I do care about you, and I'm not angry. I hope you have a good time, and I'll be thinking of you, and really wishing for you to have a nice time and succeed.
I also appreciate that you are not having a meltdown, even though I wasn't able to speak to you for long. And I think it shows how much progress you have made.
Love from T.

Annie,
I feel like there's so much that you're not telling me. How do I break down your walls? Why won't you be upfront and honest with me?
T

D.,

Just shut up. I hate how ambivalent and indecisive you are. Stop being so self destructive (yeah, what you're doing IS self destructive) and just stop it. Can't be that hard, eh? I'm tired of having to worry about you.

It can't be that hard to talk about feelings either. I've been asking you for 1.5 years about how you feel before, during, after hurting yourself. Start realising that "(not) wanting to hurt yourself" isn't a damn feeling. It isn't.

And stop defending your parents, really. If they were as great as you always tell me, you wouldn't have been hurting yourself for more than half your life.

Get your s... together and stop wasting my time.

T

Dear Waterbear,

I am so sorry that these black holes keep coming up and landing on you. I agree that it seems like it is one step forward and several back, but you do always come back from them, as I have said before, stronger and bolder. You can do it, even though you don't think you can. I believe in you, I really do. I do think that you are amazing. I think that you are kind and thoughtful, funny and intelligent, strong and brave. I think that you are a truly wonderful person who really doesn't deserve all of this. You didn't deserve it all back then and you don't deserve these struggles now.

I so dearly wish that you had had the help that you needed back then. I wish that you hadn't fallen through the net. I wish that someone had been able to access you. It wasn't your fault. It was them that were not able, not you. I also wish you the very best in your efforts to build your relationships now. I have so much hope for you, but it keeps getting dashed, doesn't it. Please keep going, Waterbear. I want you to find what you are looking for, I really do. I want you to be happy.

I am so sorry that I cannot be who you want me to be. I have told you that, and I mean it. I just hope that you can find it somewhere, for you.

I cannot tell what the future holds for us. I just don't know, right now. All we can do is to keep things as they are, to keep going on our journey together and see where the road takes us. In time, as we go, we will constantly reassess and take stock of what is best, for you. I don't know what that will be. I don't even know what I think about it all, to be honest, and I am not sure that I ought to give it any thought, because if I do I may see what I want, and if I see what I want then I might not be able to see clearly what you think is best for you. Not what you want, but what is best for you, in the long run. It is confusing, isn't it.

Do you remember when I told you that these feelings are difficult, for the client, but that they are even more difficult when the other party wants it too? That was me giving in to my wants, somewhat. I am very fond of you, Heather, and I wouldn't be human if I didn't dream, if I didn't think about the what ifs and the what could bes, but that is not where we are right now.

Right now, I am here for you. When you need me I am here, as you need me to be, as best I can be, anyway. All I want is for you to be happy, and for you to be at peace, and I will work with you to achieve that for as long as you still want me to. I love you too, you know.

Hey Art,

I'm thinking about you as the weekend gets closer, and I want to offer encouragement so you can feel confident as you go do your 'thing' Saturday afternoon. My professional boundaries won't allow me to text you and say so. I guess you know that by now, huh.

Warmly,
T

Wait! Don't go! How will I ever get my certification?!

Dear Giucy,

I realize you trust me much more than I give you credit for. I thought you were defiant against my advice, when you actually want to make them work.

I thought you were angry against my incompetence, while you actually felt only utmost respect and trust towards me. What I perceived as anger and contempt was actually a matter of fact information without implied judgment against anyone. I had a lightbulb : you are not angry when I don't know, you are angry when authority refuse to acknowledge it and blame the issue on your being defective. It's very different from being angry at me because I don't know.
I thought that you felt how your GP was perfect and I was the bad guy, when you tried to explain to me that GP and I are talking from different perspectives, and her broader knowledge about ritalin than mine doesn't take away my experience and competence at psychiatry generally speaking. Of course, if she has been knowing you since childhood while I have been knowing you since adulthood, no wonder she could see stuff I can't : it is only basic common sense !!
I thought you wanted to win at all cost. You only want to get the facts straight before making a decision, whomever is actually right.
I realize now that I freaked out so much about my relationship with you, about your bad feelings about me. Actually, there was no basis to worry about your negative feelings about me, because you held no negative feelings against anyone in the first place.

I thought you were defying my competence as a doctor, when your actual reasoning was only related to your experience at dealing with rare issues. I thought you wanted more than a therapist-patient relationship, while you wanted me to understand about dealing with side effects in daily life. I now understand that probability and stats in only one element among others when you make a decision, while this criteria is #1 for me.

You reason differently than most of my patients, and you are hypersensitive. Therefore, I can understand that you have very negative feelings when you are actually giving a very matter of fact piece of information.
I might think you refuse my advice, when the opposite is actually true.
I am actually happy you now take your time to highlight when you agree with me before scanning my advice's obstacles. Actually, you raise the obstacles to make it work, not to defy my authority.
Frankly, I wouldn't had thought about taking a piece of paper for putting the bee out of the window. I thought you refused my request to put the bee out of my sight, while you were complying with my request in a much safer and ecological manner than I'd had usually done.
Actually, you focus on details to implement my advice. You rush for getting things done, while I focus more on intent.
I worried you defied advice and authority, you actually want to get things done safely and efficiently.
Why didn't I think about it earlier ?

Actually, you are much more sane than I expected. You made a lot of progress you don't realize.

This is awesome. I had forgotten what life without you in it was like. Don't come back.

Echos, for anything in the world, I cannot imagine your T saying this to you. Not even thinking. Could it be that you are in some sort of projection mode?! Hugs to you - this must be painful.

Thanks cr. I don't think he would actually say this. I guess this is the fantasy mean version of T in my head talking, rather than the real T. But I do feel like I've been an irritation to him with the emails. I think the thread of truth is in that. I think he's finding me difficult at the moment, even if this isn't exactly what he feels.

So my T would ask in a situation like this: What do you need from me right now to make you believe deep down that this isn't true, that I don't feel that you are difficult/annoying/a nuisance etc.?

And yes, I could come up with a few things that I'd need from her, if I can muster up the courage to talk about it. Most important to me at the moment is consistency and reliability. Therapy breaks are anything but consistent or reliable... (Or reliable in the fact that they suck big time...) If I find my T is somehow unreliable/inconsistent my 'inner critic' lashes out in numerous pre-emptive strikes, hypervigilance here we come! And for me those attacks of self-criticism so often mimik Ts voice and behaviour. More or less mental self-harming, really....

Sending you a long, warm hug. You are *not* alone in this.
c_r

i told you i didnt think it was a good idea

now stop texting me.

You've really captured how I feel here cr. I was awake half the night thinking how T could never care about me and that he's probably tired of me/repelled by me. You're right it was almost like it was in his voice.
He's very consistent in almost every respect but the one way he's never managed to achieve consistency is in his email responses. So my ambivalent attachment is playing games, placing me half way between loving him and hating him (to protect me from the feelings I fear he has for me). It's hard.
Sadly there is nothing he can do at the moment because he's away himself. I need to think about that question though for when he returns.
Thanks so much for understanding.

My T asks a similar question, I never know what to say. When I am in these states, I never know what T can say/do that will get me to believe again. I usually just need time for the "tantrum" to fade or that child part get so tired/exhausted that it goes to sleep. Well, that is how it feels for me or the best way I can describe it. It really feels like I am going through a tantrum... a 2 yr old, 5 yr old, or a teenager's tantrum. Or maybe it's a combination... the 2 yr old's fear, 5 yr old's hurt, with the teenager's lack of trust/belief and anger, and the adult's shame, embarrassment, logical rationalizations...

Luc,

Write your f'in essay.

Love, T xxx

(My T likely doesn't give a toss whether I write my essay or not but I feel like thinking that he wants me to do it will help me to do it...)

Dear LT,
Seriously, stop with the e-mails! T is back now, start bugging her instead! I won't actually tell you this, of course. I'll say all the e-mails are fine, meanwhile, I'm cringing when I see your name in my Inbox. Or your H's name--which actually dealt with your issue, too (though in very confusing language). I mean, I care and all, but just stop!!!
Love (yeah, there's love there, just like in your dream that I read about on here--while I'm at it, stop posting on PC so much! Wait, unless that means less e-mails for me...so, OK, keep posting away!).
MC

for me it's a combination: Either I don't really know what she could do/say in the moment (only later on, something sometimes come to mind...) or if I do know it's having to courage to ask her for it... It often sends me into panic mode. Recently, I've started to come back to those questions in the next session. Sometimes it's easier to ask for something later on, once the immediate situation with all those 'young' feelings is over...

For me, it's the mixture of things. In moments like that I tend to need a lot of reassurance. But: T just saying reassuring things once or twice doesn't really do much. It's her being consistently reassuring. Consistently listening. Consistently giving room to my thoughts and my feelings. Even to my stroppiness and my tantrums. Just her being there. Understanding, or at least trying to. Having a sympathetic attitude towards me, no matter what I might come up with. Holding those emotions that are too much for me at the moment. That I sometimes don't want to hold. Or cannot hold. And waiting for that moment when I'm ready to hold them for myself. Helping me to get to that point. Without rushing me. Just walking alongside me. Being there. That does shift something inside of me. Eventually. But it takes time. Lots of time. And me taking the plunge over and over again. Into the coldest water imaginable.

Lately, I've started to ask her for all sort of "weird" things: Her reading a story to me, from one of the many children's books that are in her office. I've started to ask her for a childrens book whenever there is a break coming up. I've asked whether I could borrow one of her little figures that I sometimes use to visualize the imaginative work that we do together and that I have grown particularly fond of. I've changed seats. I've asked her to sit next to me...

I keep wondering what all that is about. Part might be the child/children 'testing' her. Or maybe even testing out the boundaries. It seems to me that they must start to feel safe with her, to trust her, because they actively start to talk about their wishes and needs. And part is my adult side. Taking care of my needs, or the needs of the children. Because I've noticed that breaks are 'easier' when she gives me one of her books to borrow and I can look at it whenever I want....

I'm right there with you... asking for "weird" things. You should see the stack of books I have for today's session. I too don't know what it is all about, I am just trying to give space to what feels right and seeing what comes of it.