Dear T: I need to tell you something....Part XXIV

This reality can't be real. It's so stupid. So...I don't have to be afraid. I don't have to care.

I'm so tired. I don't know why I am here.

You don't have to care too. I don't want to live in this reality. I can't. You can't change me.

I appreciate your support and love you anyway.

I am so confused by your question (and its constraints): "what would be helpful to you to move this therapy forward-outside of me changing?"

What is not moving forward? What has to move forward? What would moving forward look like? How can I change the therapy without you? If it's not working, why am i the only one to change the therapy? how come you aren't part of it not "moving forward"?

I don't ask you for anything anymore. Don't email or text you outside of sessions. Tell you about all my feelings every session. Make myself vulnerable all the time. What else can I do that doesn't involve you? I have no needs anymore; well I don't ask for anything anyway. I don't see how there could be any logical answer.

I think you are mischaracterizing me. I really think I'm just someone with depression. I keep questioning myself back and forth, but it always keeps coming back to that. I have no need for pain. I am not 'hurting myself'. I spent years trying to better myself and have overcome a lot of adversity. How am I not getting un-depressed on purpose? Even aside from my history, everything that happened before i came to you, most anyone would have depression. And that's what I hired you to help with.

I really could use your help to get my self-esteem back, that declined from the depression, that would help. But that would involve you 'doing' something that you are not doing. How could the whole outcome of therapy be only dependent on me and what i do? Why did you go to school all that time and have all that training if you don't do anything? How can you have all that expertise but not help or not use it in the therapy? But me, without all the expertise, is supposed to make it work by myself. i don't get it.

Was I doing therapy by myself all that time? Maybe that's why it's not "moving forward"-because I am trying to do it by myself. I feel I work very hard to make this work, too hard actually. How come you aren't part of the solution? This is crazy.

Hi T.

Tomorrow I will see you tomorrow.

T,

Is what I'm experiencing real or am I just making up these feelings to get attention? Is there anything I don't do "just for attention"?

My parents are great. Everyone in my closer environment was. Stop making me think that they might not have been perfect. They were, are and always have been.

Happy Mother's Day to you, t, I know you're not actually a mother but - because you've served as a "good enough mother" for me emotionally during my therapy and I appreciate your being willing to "go there". It can't be an easy thing to let yourself 'be'.

Hi T,
You'd be proud of me--I finally went to a yoga class today, and made it all the way through! Between that and the e-mail I sent you last week, you're really going to be wondering if my body has been taken over by someone else. But then, pretty sure if I show/tell you about the e-mail exchanges with MC, you'll realize that the old LT is still in there...then again, MC agreed that my sharing some of that with him was progress, even if I was talking about child-like feelings. So maybe I'm somehow making progress on multiple fronts?

And Happy Mother's Day!
Love,
LT

Hey T--hope your girls and H are treating you well today

Dear CW,

Don't know if you have kids, don't care, but I've hit the point on Mother's Day where I feel like it's just a way for society and the fecund to rub it in the faces of those who didn't luck out with the biological or genetic spin of the wheel. A reminder to us that we are abnormal and they are superior to us.

ATAT

Eta: not aimed at anyone here, I don't think it's something promoted by individuals but society. Just feeling a bit bitter.

It can be pretty insensitive especially because with technology and media now it's impossible to ignore

After writing this someone walking down my road yelled happy mother's day to my neighbor who is weed eating her yard. She didn't hear her

Life.... Lol

Weed eating her yard, made me chuckle as I envisaged an old lady out in her front lawn eating all her weeds!

T, I am going to make a fairy garden for the little one. I think you should make one too. I would like it, and sure your granddaughter would too.

Hi Dr. S, I want to email you a happy mother's day. I was good leading up to today and not going there. Since this morning I have gone there and I am struggling internally on which part of me I listen to.

I was once driving down a back road and saw a guy herding a few cows back through a fence. He waved at me like he knew me. I was several miles down the road before I realized that it was my GP. Totally didn't recognize him in farmer mode, even though I knew he had cows.

Dear CW,

So after yoga class this evening we all found an iris and a Happy Mother's Day wish/thank you for supporting the studio card in our cubbyholes. Inside the card was an inspirational saying: "If you woke up this morning, it's time to celebrate!" Odd it doesn't feel like that.

I am glad you no longer ask about thoughts of sui. I might keep things from you, but I'd rather not lie openly.

ATAT

We've talked about my mom. Married young. She never graduated high school.
Innocent, yet, she was smart. Mom passed the real estate boards. She was a department head at a major grocery chain. Mom was hard working- retiring three times.

My mother never sought nor caused drama, kept family business inside the family, loyal. Home immaculate. Likable. Neat. Delicate but was never afraid of tackling hard work. Loved dogs and horses.

Mom was a farm girl.
Versatile: not many people can say, "My mom could ride a cow." Mine could.

You would have liked my mom.

We have also talked about how she didn't protect me, really, from teachers, the neighborhood or my dad. Some of that was due to her "innocence." She didn't know how to do it any better. It wasn't because she was mean or did not care. She was a good person.

Her last few years were stressful. I wanted her to have whatever she wanted.
She didn't want a breathing tube. She didn't want a nursing home. She wanted me. I tried really hard. I really did.

Regardless of everything else- I tried, and failed somewhat, to protect my mother.....who didn't always protect me.

Love and miss you, Mom.

M,
help

Dear R,

Thanks for realising your error today. Glad I'll still see you on Thursday, even though we'll now meet in the morning. Not sure how I'll be, but I don't have to be any particular way, right? Also, not sure you meant to sign off with a kiss, but it made me smile.

Whatever happens, it will be OK, right?

Dear MC,
A bit nervous to see you today, with all the inner child e-mails. Not nervous you'll reject me, just...nervous. I'm guessing maybe we should talk about some of that stuff today, unless there's something that H has in mind that he hasn't mentioned (it's not like we've had any major conflicts over the past week). I'm just not 100% sure what exactly I want to talk about in that context. You mentioned the security thing, so there's that. There's the talking about my inner child's needs. And then just the fact that I miss you rather intensely between sessions. I hope your solution to that isn't to stop e-mailing or something like that--I think that's something I need to figure out on my own timing.

But maybe you'll have some ideas of how I can hold onto the secure feeling, to trust that you still exist, even when I don't have any proof of that? I don't even know--maybe you could lead the discussion a little? Surely you've experienced this with other clients (though likely not marriage counseling ones), right? I know you've had past clients with transference, since you mentioned that it had happened to you before when I shared those feelings. So...was there something that worked for them? Maybe just talking about it will help. Hope to see you in about 96 minutes (but who's counting?)
Love,
LT

Dear T,

Feeling weird. I don't know how. Maybe just tired. I agreed to meet someone tonight and now I really don't want to, but I won't cancel, be a use I don't do that kind if thing. I just get wrapped up. Someone asks, I can't say no, and then I can't cancel. Nothing to do with her, nothing at all. Sure she is lovely. It's just me that can't face it sometimes. OK, most of the time!

Then I get to see you tomorrow. It is never long enough though. Wish it could be for an entire morning sometimes.

I'm still very, very hurt that you gave my session away.

It's still really affecting me. Now you are going to say I "did it to myself" and use that as an example of how I am 'hurting myself' or being a victim. I was actually trying to empower myself by taking a break and thought it would work. Don't have much experience with feeling empowered anymore, maybe i just forgot how to do it in a way that works and was too spontaneous. But now that little glimmer of taking my power back from this depression, the little glimmer has dimmed and burnt out again.

Why couldn't you have warned me and told me someone else wanted my slot? We talk every week and you could have emailed or texted me anytime. I would have quit that treatment sooner and was already thinking of quitting.

Why couldn't you even say you were sorry? That's the part that hurts the most. Like you did it to be mean because I took that 2 day break. It's not like I even had a pattern of doing that--i've never even taken a 'break' before. I don't even go on vacations, you know I don't have that luxury.

My needs never matter. Why does that person's needs matter more than mine? I can even pay someone to consider my needs. Maybe if I could pay more I would matter. I have so little and what I did have you gave away. I don't think I can even meet this week in trying to work around your schedule that's available for non-prime people.

I've been really ill too, can't think of a worse time to not have a therapy anymore. It no longer exists.

Also very confused why you said last session that I said my former time was the "only time I could do". I never once said that. Not once. Where did that come from?

Sigh, please send me a sign letting me know that I did not mess up. I think I'll stop now. I think this experiment has ran its course and a new hypothesis needs to be generated and explored. It feels to risky to continue.

Dear MC,
Sorry for the text. I don't know why I'm in so much pain right now. Maybe because, especially in those few minutes we spent talking before H could get there, when you were joking about the juice, it felt like how the connection used to be? And now it's gone for another week? But please call if you can. I don't even know what to say to you. There's just this part of me going "I need to talk to him." And that hopes I'll figure it out when you're on the phone (I think it's been since like Jan. since we talked on the phone, btw).

Of course, H and D will be home if you call tonight...and H might be home if you call tomorrow...but I can always retreat to another room.

I'm so sorry for being so ****ing needy...I really don't know what's wrong with me. If this is what working through transference is, maybe I should just stop and leave it be...

(Entirely too much) Love,
LT

I know this is a venting thread really but just wanted to reply to say I'm so sorry, this is really painful. I really wish you could find another T who would be caring towards you, and validate everything you are saying here.