In Session Today : Part III

It's funny how things deteriorate so fast after taking a while to build up. Not funny, ha ha, it's heart wrenching.

What r u gonna do? How do you feel that she asked for a month break?

It's weird posting about sessions again. Hmm.

I asked about his vacation, and he said it went well. No pictures like he promised.

Said that things were okay for the most part while he was gone. I said, "You know, things that are important a week ago aren't as important now."

I decided to tell him about the dream I had where he was living on my childhood street. What I came to was that he represents the adult me that's trying to protect myself from going back to a time/place that was nothing but painful. The me in the dream is the me that still wants to cultivate the relationships that I can't have.

Then I mused how weird the session was. It was lighter, more surface level. He said it made sense, because it had been a long time and we're just reconnecting. I said that it was weird that I wasn't crying yet (with like, 20 minutes left in session). He laughed and said "yeah, why aren't you crying yet?"

Then a pause, I was there, willing to talk, but didn't have much to say. So he starts, "well, I know that we've talked about December a little bit..."

Well, that got the tears flowing. I laughed as I started to well up and said, "well that did it. I don't want to think about this." I cried for a minute, tried to recenter myself. "This is all so stupid," I said. I went on to explain how these feelings that I have for him have nothing to do with him as a person. It's just that he's one of very few people who have ever given 2 s**** about me.

He responded that it's possible to have relationships that mimic what he and I have in the real world. I told him that I didn't believe him, because communication in therapy is a false construct. It can't be mimicked in the real world. That in therapy, I was the worst version of myself, and that he's putting on the mask that is the best version of himself. I may have implied that he was a good actor.

He asked me what I meant when I said the worst version of myself. I told him that I've said things to him that I would never say to another human being. Things that are not socially acceptable to say. He said that being vulnerable didn't make me "the worst version of me," and that it's kind of endearing that I can be as open as I am.

I apologized to him, realizing that I had cut him off. I asked him what it was that he wanted to say about December. He said that he wanted to make sure we were using our time remaining productively. I agreed.

We talked about schedule at this point. I told him how much it had pissed me off that he didn't do the scheduling stuff when he said he would. I'm scheduled through the end of October now. When I put my planner away, I sighed, starting to cry. He asked me what was wrong, and I kind of shrugged my shoulders. "Was it what we were talking about before?" I nodded.

"Well," he said, "I don't want to be dismissive of your feelings, but I'm not the only therapist that can help you, you know. When the time comes, I know a lot of people who I think you would work well with."

This is what he said that upset me. I heard what he actually said, but I internalized it at the moment to mean that he didn't want to work with me anymore. That he's somehow not right for me anymore. Of course I didn't say this to him. Why?

So at that point I told him that I wish I hadn't come today. That I didn't want to come back, and I wasn't sure why I did. That I was just setting myself up for more pain. He had some analogy where he related our situation to ripping off a Band-Aid.

Then he "requested" that I reflect on why it is that I don't feel like I can have connected, meaningful relationships with the other people in my life. I laughed, and I said that I knew why, so why reflect? He said that I probably did know from an intellectual place why, but he wanted me to tap into the emotion, but that it was time to stop.

I was more than happy to leave at that point. I stood up and walked out before he was even able to get up. He always walks me out, and today, I left him sitting in his chair.

Don't know what I'm gonna do yet... but still have time to decide.

Honestly? Initially I felt like I was being forced out the way she said she wanted to take a month off but couldn't because she'd already committed to others. What I heard her say was "I want a month away from YOU." I don't feel that's what she meant anymore. It was for the best the way it all happened at least for me. I know now that I never would have realized that I was emotionally dependent on her, and likely also never would have gotten to the point of working through this (bottomless) need for maternal approval that I have, and really start filling that need within myself. It was too easy to let her fill it. I'm going back and forth right now between feeling sad about how it all ended and regret that I hurt her. It's weird.

ugh that is awful. was very sad to read. i can't imagine how you are feeling. the thought of me being in that position sickens me *hugs*

Started with a new therapist Wednesday. My old therapist that I was very attached to and who was very good has taken a full time job at the VA. I was partially open minded about this new tdoc but wasn't expecting much. I was pleasantly surprised. I think this will work out. We spent the first session with me answering question after question as I would expect.

It was a good meeting...she told me to keep working on mindfulness and meditating and to stop the JetAlert caffeine pills that I get from Amazon. It's not compatible with GAD. That will be hard but I'll try.

Glass half empty, glass half full - i thought we WERE having a connected meaningful relationship. I guess i have a very low threshold for involvement? You tell me something personal, and i'm following you home

Funny, I was having this conversation with my husband on the way to dinner. It seems I have a high threshold for involvement.

You said:
Then he "requested" that I reflect on why it is that I don't feel like I can have connected, meaningful relationships with the other people in my life. I laughed, and I said that I knew why, so why reflect? He said that I probably did know from an intellectual place why, but he wanted me to tap into the emotion, but that it was time to stop.

Why do you think you have a tough time w/connection, if you could share?

My trauma history. I have been hurt loudly and often, so I think deep down the thought of forging connections with people terrifies me. When I connect, I am usually hurt again.

Exhibit A: I thought it would be safe to connect to my T. Boy was I wrong.

I've also noticed I haven't called him RoboT today. Just T. Hmm.

Perhaps he is telling you this because he cares and wants you to get help even though he is retiring (or whatever it is). My t would mention I might should see another T in the beginning of our journey. I would react the same way. Be upset and feel like he's trying to get rid of me. Years later I now see he just cared and wanted me to get better even if it meant without him

Yeah, T, who I suspect will announce her retire any day now, said recently when I asked her about it that she would give a lot of thought to who would be a good fit for me as a T. I saw it as her caring enough to find a good fit. (Though part of me wondered if she meant someone like her or someone who maybe is a better fit for me.)

It wasn't for me the fact that he brought up helping me find another therapist when he de-panels that upset me. I'm thankful that he (sounds like he) would be diligent in helping me find someone else. It was more that I felt like he was being dismissive of the obvious transferential feelings I have for him. Like that he couldn't handle them, didn't want to handle them, whatever. I'm too much for people to handle. I ask too much of people.

And in my life, this is usually the part where I run away. Let me burn the bridge at the first sign of trouble before the other person gets the chance to reject me.

That's what it was. I felt rejected by him today.

I get it...Have you talked much with him about the transferential feelings? Maybe that should be a discussion for next session? Though I know it's hard to talk about...

No, it hasn't. I mentioned it outright once, and then had my meltdown before his vacation. I'm wondering if he wanted me to talk about the meltdown today, and got frustrated that I wasn't.

He called or texted you several times (okay, more than once) before the appointment. You did not show in your writeup of the session where he was rejecting or frustrated.

But knowing theres an end date would make me completely a mess.

Yep. This. "Is it me? Am I too much?" It screws with my head constantly and I get so lost.

Got you. Thank you for sharing.

I've been feeling sad recently. Particularly last night and today. Besieged by bad memories. I've been doing a lot of crying.

I came into T's room full of anxiety. He said I seemed frustrated. I knew what it was - it was the effort of trying to hold in all the sadness. I think I felt that if I let it go it would be too much for either of us to handle... and yet trying to hold it in didn't seem like a great plan either.

We sat for quite a while in sadness. I was clutching my favourite feather elephant cushion to my chest and sobbing quietly. I made the half-joking comment that at least if we sat in silence for fifty minutes it might feel like a long time instead of being over far too quickly. T said he was happy just to sit with me.

We sat a bit longer.

I said I was sad. He asked what the sadness was about. I said I didn't know. Everything, maybe. I couldn't find the words. He said he couldn't work out if I wanted him to leave me alone or not. I said I didn't want him to leave me alone... I wanted him to make everything better. He said he wasn't sure he could do that. I said he definitely couldn't. I cried some more.

He asked if I'd like to try to explore my sadness in a different way, and gestured towards the sand tray. I said yes - okay. I wasn't sure but I figured it was worth a try.

He got the sand tray set up in front of me... while he did this I was curled in a tight ball, knees to my chest, gripping the cushion, shaking slightly with sobbing. For some reason I felt extremely vulnerable.

I swirled my hand around in the sand as soon as I had the chance. I like how it feels - cold and smooth and gently tickly. It was calming.

I said I didn't know what to do, where to start. He said not to think about it, to just pick some objects I was drawn to and put them in the tray.

There was a sweet, dumpy little girl clutching a puppy and a kitten in her arms. I put her in the middle of the tray. Then I surrounded her with things - monsters, mysterious obstacles, spiky things, foliage right in front of her face so she couldn't see. Then I balanced a little dragon on her head.

Then I found my soul frog (who I used in a previous sand tray) and buried her.

T asked me about it a bit... I said the girl was me - innocent, pure me. Little me. He asked about the dragon on my head, asked what words I would use to describe it... I said it was spiky and sinister. He asked what it feels like to have a dragon on my head. I said... I think I said tiring.

I paused. He asked what I was thinking.

I said I was thinking about a conversation I'd had with a friend the night before. My friend had talked about how being pregnant had been difficult for them, and I said I had found it difficult too - I was sick a lot.



I said if I could vomit up all my bad memories that's what they'd look like.

T asked if that's what all the stuff surrounding me in the sand was - the bad memories. I said yes, that's what a lot of it is. Some of it is stuff that's going on right now.

T asked me to change the sand tray - make it how I would like it to be. First I went to bury the 'bad things'... then I realised that was no good, that's what I try to do most of the time anyway and it doesn't work - they're still there, lurking. So I lined them up in a neat row, made a slight incline with the sand opposite them, and placed little Luc there looking across. Then I dug up the soul frog and put her by little Luc's side.

T asked how it felt to look at that. I started to say I felt sad, because that's how I wanted things to be and they weren't that way... But then T pointed out that I was smiling. I said... now they're over there in a line like that those objects don't look so scary, so horrible, so threatening. They look... interesting. They look like a journey to take, an adventure to have.

I started to feel happier looking at the scene in front of me.

T asked me to find some 'allies' to join soul frog and little Luc... I looked in the basket and very quickly knew what to choose... I rather triumphantly picked them out, placed them flanking the girl and the frog, and grinned. Dinosaurs!

We talked a bit about the dinosaurs. T asked how I would describe them. I said... brave and curious. He asked if that's how I'd like to be about the prospect of exploring some of my bad memories with him. I said yes. Then I got kind of smiley again and he asked what I was thinking...

I said I thought the dinosaur on the left was him.

He smiled... and said that he was ready to be 'courageously curious' (a combination of words which he had some trouble pronouncing) with me if I wanted to explore. Then he said he'd back off too if I wanted him to - that we could do it at my pace.

I got my phone out to take a picture of the tray and T asked if he could take one too. He took one from directly above, and showed it to me, and I said... no, that's not right, you have to see it from my angle.

Then there was a weird moment where I thought - oh, he might sit next to me, oh, what if he thinks I'm trying to get him to sit next to me, oh no - and so I leapt off the sofa still clutching my cushion and gave him space to take a picture.

He asked what title I'd give the scene. After some discussion I settled on calling it "Assessing the Situation".

Then I took the sand tray apart. We still had twenty minutes left. We spoke about my partner - again. I said that I'd found it a great relief to spend the previous session telling him all the resentments I held that I couldn't tell anyone else. Sharing all the pain and sadness and anger that I'm holding on to. But that whenever I talk to him about how bad things with my partner are, I feel more attached to him.

He said "I think you really don't like being alone."

I was surprised - it's true, incredibly true. But I didn't know where it had come from, why he'd said that. I said "...yes...?"

He said he thought that the more I distance myself from my partner, the more I think about leaving, the more attached I get to him.

I said... yeah, that makes sense.

He said... something about how he'd try to help me, by being 'transparently honest' (a phrase I raised my eyebrows at - 'cos I don't believe he's as transparently honest as he claims to be) - he said that his being that way would challenge the fantasies I have about him.

I don't think that's true. The more honest he is with me the more I love him. It's not that simple.

But I didn't say that. He saw the sceptical expression on my face and said "ah... you don't agree?" and we laughed, and I said "I have a minute and a half left."

...and then I curled up on the sofa and watched my last ninety seconds tick away, trying to crystallise that moment of being there with him, trying to commit the smell and the temperature and the texture of the cushions to memory.

Sand trays intrigue me!

My T drew this masterpiece:


freeimagehost

MC today. Sat down, made some small talk. I told MC I had a random question for him: "Are you moving to the Bahamas?" He said he hadn't planned on it. I said I asked because he told me that in a dream the other night. And that he was also speaking in a British accent. He said, "I have no plans to move to the Bahamas, but I do intend to adopt a British accent." H said to MC, "Just so you know, I don't dream about you!" I was like, "I dream about all sorts of people!"

I commented how the past week had gone fairly well. He said in that case, did we want to talk about some bigger issues that we wanted to address, like as goals. H and I each mentioned a few things, like financial stuff, feeling loved by the other, parenting, etc. For several of them, one or both of us said that actually, it had gotten better. MC made note of that, saying it was a good thing, that we could step back and see we'd made this progress. He compared it to standing on the side of a mountain, seeing how far you'd come.

Of course around this point, the panic started kicking in that he was going to talk about termination and I started to get a little teary. MC then said of course we hadn't reached the top yet, that there's room to work on things, and I felt a sense of relief.

I said there was something related to last week that I wanted to talk about if that was OK (they said yes), but that I wasn't sure if it would make any sense. "Welcome to my world," MC said. I said it was about how after last session, I had asked H that night if he had wanted to talk about it more, like if it had worried him. He'd said it wasn't that he wasn't worried, but that he didn't feel the need to talk about it anymore. I said that I felt like I both didn't want him to worry about me and DID want him to worry about me. How I had sort of wanted to talk about it more.

H said he guessed he could have asked me whether I wanted to talk about it. But that my question had been to him about whether he needed to talk. He said he was concerned and worried a bit when I said things like that, but it's not like he's laying awake at night about feelings I'd said I had 2 weeks ago. I tried to better explain the wanting him to worry, but not, and don't think I was doing a very good job.

MC jumped in and said he had a feeling he knew what it was about, that maybe it wasn't just about acute moments like that but more general. He picked up a pillow, and I was like, "Are you going to hit me with that?" (It goes back to some sessions way back when he'd have H hit me with a pillow in session when I said something self-defeating.) MC responded, "We'll see how this goes first!"

Then he wrapped his arms around the pillow, rocking back and forth, patting the pillow as though it was a baby. He asked if we'd remembered that from him doing that before, and we said yes. Then, continuing to rock and pat the pillow, he said things including, "It's OK." "I'm here for you." "I love you." "I'm not going anywhere." (Cue paternal transference pangs...) Then he said to me that maybe that's what I'm really looking for from H, but on a more adult level. That I want the reassurance, the emotional connection. I was tearing up at this point and said the fact that I was crying meant that what he said was probably true.

I said it was like this article I'd read in a Parenting column where when she was asked about how to help anxious kids, the columnist said to "fill their tank," like express love/caring to them, hold and hug them often, etc. MC said he thought it was interesting that I'd referred to a parenting column. Because it sounds like what I'm looking for is for someone to act as a protector and caregiver, which is a bit different than a marriage. I said I guessed so, but that can't people have those roles in a marriage, too? Like acting as protectors and caregivers for each other? Maybe not at the same time, but at different times. MC agreed with that. But his point was more that my need partly came from a different place.

I asked if that meant that H couldn't fulfill it. MC said he didn't think that was the case. But that I had to be mindful of what's coming from stuff with H and what's from my past, as in childhood. Because H can't help with that stuff.

We talked about ways that H could express that to me. Which led to me saying the brilliant line, "I think it needs to be verbal...like...words." I started laughing once I realized what I'd said, and MC and H were laughing, too. When he was done laughing, MC gave me this warm smile that, combined with the look in his eyes, seemed affectionate, like a father smiling at his daughter.

MC then said that my difficulty in explaining what I need makes sense because it's not so much about words, but about emotion. Like the emotion behind what H would say to me. I said that probably wasn't too helpful to H! We talked bit about tone of voice, with H saying how I tend to misinterpret his tone with stuff.

MC said with the emotion thing, that H shouldn't think about it too much. Or else it would be like--he demonstrated as he was talking "OK, sit up straight, tilt your head, then smile" and he gave this big creepy fake smile. H was like, "Oh God, now I can't unsee that. That was some American Horror Story kind of stuff right there." I was like, "Yeah, that was pretty creepy!" MC apologized.

I said I knew we had to stop soon, and MC looked at the clock and said he was due to get his next client in 1 minute, so he wasn't late yet! (We'd pretty much started on time, so we were in there close to an hour.) Scheduled for next week, H declined shaking MC's hand because he's getting sick. I said I was OK as far as I knew and shook MC"s hand and held onto it maybe a half-second longer than usual. H did give me a hug at my car, which was nice.

LT, there were a few funny moments there, but for some reason "I have no plans to move to the Bahamas, but I do intend to adopt a British accent." really got me. Oh, MC

The pretending-to-nurture-a-baby thing was kinda odd... Given that he knows about your transference, it seems like a rather careless thing to do? Like, obviously that's gonna stir up some feelings for you...

Yeah, there were a few other funny moments that I didn't mention because it was getting so long. I was expecting him to say something like "I'm not moving to the Bahamas--I'm moving to Jamaica!" so his response was unexpected, making it funnier. Glad you got a laugh from it, too!

I get what you're saying about the transference thing. The last time I felt an overwhelming sense of it (and e-mailed to tell him) was when he was demonstrating to us ways we could soothe our daughter when she was upset/anxious (like, "It's OK, I'm here for you. You'll get through it." And he was saying it in the soothing voice he uses that really affects me. Plus he told a few stories about calming his own kids that time (didn't this time).

He definitely could have made his point today without hugging and talking to the pillow. I'm not sure if he realized it would affect me that way. Or it's possible he realized it might have, but took the chance anyway, thinking it would help me understand his point about H better. I mean, he does seem to believe that transference can be beneficial in therapy or at least that it can be used as a tool.

He's probably surprised I haven't e-mailed him yet (not sure if I will, trying to figure out what exactly it is that I want to say).

What If T is dead and I'll never see him again

He's not. You'll see him again very soon.

Thanks... Just gonna rub my ears and sleep I guess!!!!!! Today's been a bad missing t day.