My curiosity and urges are making me waste my time

There are some great posts on this subject in this thread. Thank you all for sharing.

I too have obsessive tendencies. I can spend way too much time 'ruminating' on therapy and my therapist. Some of this is productive in that I'm processing my own stuff but some of it feels like escapism and that's a pattern for me too. I ruminate about my therapist and I ruminate about my Ex.

I have mentioned this before but I'll bring it up again here. The connection I've made for myself and my own childhood is that my Family DIDN'T communicate about anything too emotional, hard, or personal and no they didn't ask me or help me with anything I was going through. I never had those mom/daughter chats about anything personal. My mother was depressed and anxious, my father was not there, and my Grandmother was over-protective and critical.

There was a lot of unspoken shame - that no one in that family really deserved, let alone me. I heard/read something somewhere that when a child is not given an explanation for trauma in the family, they fill in the gaps with their mind and will place themselves at the center of it as a way of feeling some form of control. I have come to learn how I internalized all of that as a kid and the silence - that lack of explanation or communication about any of it led me to fill in the holes with my own feeling of culpability.

I also kept to myself, tried to avoid doing anything 'wrong' or upsetting, avoided having my own emotions about things and let my own daydreams make up the void. I still do to this day. Basically, I was filling a hole in my life with my own thoughts and I think that's an instinct that carries on today in my obsessive rumination about any close relationship.

The long and short of it is this: I'm still filling in those childhood holes. Information feels like protection. Information feels like control. Occasionally it even feels like love.

So we developed a style where I emailed as much as I wanted and about whatever, but he would not engage and reinforce it.

Question - when you said he would not engage and reinforce it. Did he just not reply to them or was his replies minimalistic acknowledgements of receiving the email?

I have worked on obsessional tendencies extensively with my last T and this was also the area where I felt the therapy had been the most effective. There was one method especially that worked out great, something that was not meant to be a method in the beginning on his end but it evolved into it and we co-created it. I had a long-standing habit of obsessive online interactions with people one-on-one that I used as a distraction and escape from dealing with other things - much like an addiction. Same for information hunting and spending an insane amount of time on the internet looking up whatever, including people. I think I might have made a career as a detective with these inspirations and abilities, but unfortunately that's not what I do for living, and the obsessions affected pretty much every area of my life. One of the ways it manifested was excessive emails with select people, typically one at a time. Of course it also became part of my therapy experiences and I actually wanted it to be part and did not suppress it because I wanted to resolve the problem and have my Ts help me. My first T turned out totally incompetent with this and got entangled in many ways, also misinterpreted it grossly, not like I expected a T and much like other people earlier in my life.

Had much better luck with the second T and one key element to the success was that he engaged only sparingly and in a minimalistic, very professional way in the email interactions (while actually encouraging that I emailed). He refrained from getting affected and pulled into it, he did not gratify my wishes. Of course it was frustrating to me initially and for a good while - until I recognized a potential in it. So we developed a style where I emailed as much as I wanted and about whatever, but he would not engage and reinforce it. Gradually, over time, my desire to do all this lessened and eventually got pretty much lost because there was no one feeding it. It was such a great relief for me and liberated a lot of time and energy since I no longer have the desire to do it with others either - after so many years with the habit and pulling many people into it, causing a lot of turbulence in their lives as well as I really had little inhibition. Of course, as I said, often it was very uncomfortable that he would not provide what I wanted... but he provided just what I needed!

When I read these threads from you, rainbow, they often remind me of the above part of my own story. I think that your T is doing the best service to you with not revealing the bf's identity and encouraging you to drop it. Maybe try to play an imaginary tape forward and imagine what could be if she told you. Surely you would feel a moment of gratification, but more than likely, it would bring further curiosities, perhaps frustrations, jealousy, whatnot. And then you might want to know something else about her and do another cycle of the same thing.

Some thoughts I had on the background to all this that you shared in these threads, that you have these curiosities and urges because historically people did not give you information that you desired. But maybe think about what you desire? The example of wanting to know who T's bf is may be a good example. It is without doubt her private life and personal info and while it is indeed good therapeutic material, the fact is that you are pushing her to talk about something that in inappropriate in the context of therapy. Other people might feel similarly (intruded upon) when pushed for private information like that... even friends and family members, and probably rightly so. I mean, love life of adults is indeed private matter. Maybe some people in your history were overly and excessively secretive but I personally would have hard time imagining how this could be compensated for in the present with getting this information from your T? Perhaps learning to be satisfied in a relationship with reasonable boundaries that are appropriate to the actual relationship is a more constructive process? It's been for me at least but I did not know it until I was at a point when I accepted it and felt the liberation from dropping the desire.

I hope you don't take this post as criticism, I mostly just wanted to share my experience and thoughts, may or may not be relevant.

I told her, that child part, that she can't be part of T's life, that T doesn't want her to be. She cried when she heard that. I told her that she can be part of MY life, and she has to accept that T loves her, but she can only be in her life during the session. After that, she has me. Then I hugged her, or tried to visualize my hugging her. She just held onto me and cried.

So, it comes down to attachment again. Maybe that incubator. Not getting what I needed from my Mom. Idk.

In the end it doesn't matter where it comes from. Knowing if it was this or that or neither doesn't make a scrap of difference to 'what is'. And there isn't really any way of knowing anyway.
But the bolded part is where all the healing is. That is where you will create change. You can be for that inner child more far than T or anyone else in the world could ever be.
You and her together, looking out for and after one another, will give you an inner peace and sense of love that is 100% secure, dependable and there.

Have you ever considered the fact
that YOU shut out the child sense of you, too?

Maybe it doesn't matter, but I'd like to know where it came from. I'm not sure if I can help my child parts. I don't know what you mean about shutting out the child sense of me. I often feel like a child.