Dear T: I Need To Tell You Something.... Part XXIII

It was to skies. But it seems now the posts I was responding to are gone.

T,
I'm starting to engage in really risky behaviors... I'm having fun but I know I'm making bad decisions and I wonder if maybe I am bipolar after all? I know you used to think I was but changed your mind...

Ah, ok. I am aware that skies, echos, LT, myself, and others that do between session contacts have at various times wished for something beyond what we got. So wondered if that was a general question.

T,

Whenever I see new pictures of you on your husbands facebook ( i know ) usually with your kids, it makes me not want to see you.

Like, it makes me feel this "i want to make YOU feel pain" cause somehow I think me not showing up will cause that.. I know, it makes me laugh too when I think about it.

Oh T, that was a weird - but mostly helpful - session last week.

I'm glad I tried that containment exercise even though I felt very silly. So far it has worked well! I did feel though as if you were getting impatient with me, because after a while you were like: Well, you won't know if it works until you try! - and of course you are right. Perhaps I needed that push?

When it was time to make the appointments for the next two weeks I was a bit disappointed. It's spring break here and I'm off work, but you said you'd be working and taking a week off in May. So I thought I'd get my regular spot, but you offered me a different time on a different day. I felt unimportant.

Oh, and then the weirdest thing happened: I was your last appointment of the day and you left the building soon after. I was still sitting in my car across the street, texting my friend when you suddently appeared. I'm not sure if you saw me? Anyway, you were smoking a cigarette. I don't know why this surprised me so much!! I never ever ever thought you'd be a smoker! I guess that says a lot about me and about how I..... idolise you.

T, I'm not sure if I want to talk to you about any of this...

Skies, I am so sorry about your situation- I am very sensitive to scheduling and I had one therapist actually admit to me that he had messed with my time slot because he was angry with me. It totally messed with my head. My current therapist really gets it now and is a very kind person and I can trust him to try to be careful around the scheduling. It's really important to me.

I am sorry that he did that to you. I really don't believe him when he says you were the first person to get upset about such a thing. That just sounds like a really weirdly defensive thing to proclaim.

I hope for good things for you and a good resolution for all this.

T,

I suppose you'll fire me after my confession on Wednesday. I don't know why I still printed out my super long letter to you written starting from our last session one month ago when I don't even know if I still have a T.

I see you this upcoming Tuesday. I guess I'll learn if I still have a T.

I noted you posted two photos on your now private personal instagram though of course I can't see what they are. Probably Christan stuff about Good Friday, Easter, outings with your friends and family.

Lucky you.

11 more days, so nearly halfway.

I called 911 last night for the first time because my panic woke me up from a dead sleep and I was home alone and I wasted my morning in the ER. Guess it's time to go back on the meds. I warned you I was getting warning signs that my anxiety was heading to being this bad again. I warned you. I'm so tired of fighting my own brain.

((((Pennster)))) thank you so much for sharing this I'm really glad he admitted he did it on purpose. I understand feeling messed with your head, it's horrible. I am really glad you have a great T now, I forgot how much I like your T as you don't post that much.

I am pretty certain he did this on purpose too, i am really really sad to say this is true. And I am certain he knew the way he did this would harm me but did it anyway. There are a number of ways he could have handled the situation, as we communicate every week. just a simple hey-someone else wants your time-I know you still planned to miss the next 2 sessions to do your other treatment, but if you can't come back tomorrow or pay for the slot for those 2 sessions, i'm going to offer it to another client. I could have done something, had a choice.

He chose to handle it in a way that would harm me and it was cruel because he threw it in my face in one of my most vulnerable moments. That is the issue, that was the harm-the worst part of it. Then raised his voice at me and was short and showed no empathy when I expressed hurt over the situation and was talking about trauma stuff. The whole session was like that. Similar to the time we had 1 mixed up session time in 4 years and he was angry and blamed me but denied it, although that didn't really harm me, just upset me.

As far as my reaction, it did trigger a lot of trauma stuff that would be good to work though. Especially doing something that effectively used my vulnerabilities to harm me-that triggered so much stuff. However, my reaction is not the same as not clearly seeing the situation that caused the reaction. I can separate the 2 when needed and would have never gotten this far in life if i didn't have that capacity.

Good people can do bad things. This is something that occurs throughout life, and it can get really triggering to not be believed. My therapist even told me he is capable of a violent act, he said everyone is.

Sorry if deletions irritated anyone. My therapist reads posts here. We don't talk about posts but i still go from ambivalent to panic about leaving stuff up. also had a hard time last night with some of the replies. Not looking for replies to my post or discussions about leaving my therapist. Just needed to get this out and be heard. Couldn't sleep all night and all stuffy from crying. Panic and flashbacks gone, but still feeling really hurt and betrayed and unsettled and hoping to get some relief by getting this out.

your T reads your posts?! Did he tell you that? That seems like a bit of an overkill, unless he is using this group as a support...but if he was, he shouldn't have ever told you.

I 100% agree that good people can do bad things. My T has said that even murderers still have good in them. (maybe minus psychopaths)

I think people responded bc of your pain, and wanted to help. I know that is why I did, but if it is too hard for you, I will stop.

Dear Dr. S, poke, touch I like that. We'll talk about it on Monday, I hope. Can you show me you still have it without me asking for it, please. I want to know it is safe with you, you didn't just throw it away (feels like it would mean you threw me away, so I can't ask you). Love you, me

I can't shake off the sadness.

Hold my hand, T?

Dear R,

Why must I be so dang practical, to the potential exclusion of my own needs? You offered touch, which I will probably find reassuring in that moment of releasing everything, and I declined...not because of need, but because of physical space!

It's hard to be me at the moment, because I have this fear that if I were to allow myself to cry, I would get stuck.

Permission to reconsider?

Lost

I hope your talk went well
I know how nervous that stuff makes you

Dear MC,
Why am I so worried about the handshake thing? I'd feel better if you'd respond sometime before Wed. to say you'd be open to trying the in-office (vs. hallway) opening handshake. Or something. I know it probably seems weird if I'm hung up on this...but I don't think it's just about the handshake. It's partly about the change in moving to the new office...but that timing also coincided with your wife's passing. So I think just as much of this is my fears about a change in you and how you are as a T. So anything that might be a sign of something different, my brain is jumping on.

And there's probably the fear, too, that, well, if you could stop doing the pre-session handshake (even if it's logistical), what if you find some reason to stop doing the post-session ones, too? And what else might you take away? E-mails, especially because I've sort of been overdoing it this past week, with T away and me being in a not-so-good place?

OK, there's something to talk with you about. Along with the seeming hard stop at 3 after our appointment, which doesn't seem to be another client (at least not an in-office one), even if you retrieve us pretty late, which also seems to have changed with the changing office. Especially since you've been more flexible with sessions ending when we haven't seen you on our usual day/time.

Yeah, there's clearly a lot that I'm worried about regarding you. Including my paranoia that your hard stop at 3 p.m. is actually because you have to go get radiation treatment or something. Or that weird reference you made recently to "a stop I had to make on the way to work" without saying what it was (because normally you'd say) is actually a treatment of some kind.

OK, maybe I don't feel quite as safe with you as I said in that e-mail...though if it was, say, a personal health thing, that wouldn't be about me...but still about abandonment fears.

Love,
LT

Dear T,
And I guess I need to talk to you about the retirement thing. Because I just have this feeling...especially because you're so unhappy in the new office. I'm a little mad at MC for that, but I know he had so much going on that he was just trying to make the decision that was right for him and the practice... But still, I'm worried you're on your way out the door. Any chance you'd give me more than 3 months notice? I know I'm not as attached to you as to MC, and the relationship is a bit more complicated, but I'm still pretty attached...

I'm tempted to just start looking for a new T now, so I wouldn't have to deal with both your leaving and finding a new one at the same time...I guess I could ask if there's anyone (besides MC of course!) that you think might be a good fit for me in the practice...but then I know you said at least one or two of them don't allow outside contact...and the one T sees someone I know...and I don't know if seeing an older male T is a good or terrible idea after my attachment to MC...

Ugh, I dunno...

Love,
LT

I just want you to help get me back to where I was before we started, then I can leave. I can't leave damaged. It feels traumatic to leave in this state. I want to die

If i ask you to help encourage me to help me be stronger, you'll say no. That's manipulation. I dont understand why you wont help me except to say what you want on your terms. What's wrong with me knowing how you can help me? I dont understand. I want to die

It's traumatizing to stay but ttraumatizing to leave. I finally had all the ambivalence worked out from that break-then you gave my session away and it's worse than ever

i wonder if one of the reasons you are mean to me because you don't feel good about your job with me. That's one reason why you replaced me. I 'm just meant to be used for something and ojbectified then thrown away. kicked and left in a ditch

i need to be gone forever

Hang in there, Skies.

Dear T,

Let's do something else. Anything else. Like, literally anything. Let's talk about beavers, or you can show me how to fill out a w-2 again. We could watch youtube videos of octopodes, or look at pictures of cats in sinks. I could teach you how to use an apostrophe. You kind of suck at that.

Remember that sign in the waiting room? The one about how to spot stroke's? And you told me that defacing clinic property - even for grammatical purposes - wasn't really appropriate behavior?

We could go find the people responsible for that and I could teach them how to use an apostrophe, too.

Point is, we have options. Right now, I think the only thing worse than seeing you and doing that would be...I don't know. Getting a root canal? Without anesthetic? By a fifteen year-old dentist who can't stop telling me about this really brilliant guy nobody knows about called Nietzsche?

Dear T, why did you let me down today when I really needed you. I'm really hurt. I don't know how I'll get over this. I'm tired of people sucking.

I'm trying, i'm trying...

Hi T. I know that when I see you on Monday and I inevitably tell you about my week, that secretly (if not openly) you will be happy that I had so much socialization. Except, I am not happy about it.

Going for a walk today with T was fine. She sent me a hysterical youtube video, that for some reason (WHY CAN'T I LEARN?!) I decided to send to S. Anyway, she responded after a few hours saying she was meeting a few people out, and did I want to come out?

Really, I should have declined. Because THE ONLY REASON she asked me was bc I had initiated contact. Like always. But, like the fool I am, I went. It was mostly okay. I did get 2 free drinks out of the deal, but walking downtown on a weekend night felt strange.

I haven't been out on a weekend night in so long, that I felt like a weird, alien creature.

Then when talks got around to relationships and how people met their current significant others, I was like "righttttt...this is why i don't go out," bc I feel so effed up.

UGH. I am sure this is great therapy material, but it would be so much easier to come in Monday and say "Eh. My week was the same," while I curled up on the couch and talked about nothing, like the past few months.