In Session Today : Part III

Today T said something that upset me. He said that the therapeutic relationship sometimes is very intense and intimate and at other times it "doesn't exist".
I couldn't get past it and i couldn't talk about it either, so a looooot of silence followed. Eventually I said this cannot be illusionary. That I can't invest this much in an illusion.
T said he doesn't see it as illusionary and his wording had been clumsy. He said he meant that it doesn't inhabit all spaces in our lives. I said no relationship inhabits all spaces in our lives. He agreed.
We talked about how I feel like I can switch off most attachments. Like I have a "detatch" button (which was protection in childhood) and I become vulnerable when I no longer have that detach button to hand. Like I don't right now with him. I reminded him that I always used to say "I could not come back and I would be fine" which was me reminding myself of my detach button. But it's not readily available any more and that makes me feel vulnerable.
We talked about a good realisation I came to this week about my marriage and he seemed proud that I had figured some important stuff out and discussed it with my husband.
Then we were coming to the end of the session and I said I will probably miss him again this week. He replied "I will think of you from time to time too" which felt awkward and an attempt to reassure me that the relationship existed to him outside the hour, which totally missed my point that the existence of a relationship is not dependent on thinking about the other or them inhabiting your life (to use his phrase).
I felt unsettled by this and sent him this email...

Okay, perhaps unsurprisingly it feels like there's a clarifying email coming on.
So to me, when I choose to care about someone (and I think that feels like a choice to me - it's about vulnerability, at least for me) that relationship is alive within me always. It's not about thinking about them or them inhabiting space in particular aspects of your life. For me, if you inhabit a space in my heart, you just do. All the time. That goes for you, H, the kids, my friends, etc etc. I don't have to think about them for that to be so. So for me a relationship that doesn't exist all the time just doesn't exist.
So at the end when you really awkwardly said something about thinking about me between sessions it kind of missed that point. I'm not asking that you think about me between sessions. That's nothing to do with me. I guess the distinction is whether the relationship is a reality for you. My feeling is that if it is, it exists regardless of whether or not you think about me.
I hope that adds some clarity. My missing you is mostly a byproduct of the transference I think. I don't see it as defining or strongly characterising our relationship. I hold that (mostly unconsciously) in my heart.
Best wishes

No reply as yet.

It felt like a long session today. We talked about a lot.

It was hard to ease in. I talked about a recent trip to visit my adult daughter, my stepdaughter, and how I came away from the visit feeling reassured that no matter what happens with her dad, she and I will be okay, that I probably won't lose her. She is precious to me.

I talked about feeling stuck.

I found myself talking about all of the values I am trying to hold side-by-side, to balance:
Compassion and caring and valuing the people around me/Having good clear boundaries
What the family around me needs from me/ What I need and want for myself
Living and creating a stable peaceful daily life/Coping with flashbacks and trauma processing, or not processing

Then just talking about one small piece of one flashback experience overwhelmed me. I couldn't breathe. This time instead of nodding and pretending to listen and waiting for it to pass, I asked t to stop. Well, gestured, since I couldn't talk. She walked me through a grounding exercise, which was soothing.

Then we talked a bit about trauma processing. I can't seem to tell if trying to block it out right now is functional, since I am choosing to focus my energies on stability for my family, or not functional. Next time, we'll talk about that and how to deal with it.

Just home from t's and eating dinner. I thoroughly enjoyed my session this evening. She noticed right off the bat that I've lost weight, she could see it in my face. (yay!) I talked about how that started a couple days after I was there last, that I found myself not having the urge/desire/need to eat so much and so often, after that last session on 1/4 where she let what I wanted matter (I didn't want to schedule, and I've said that before but she's always gotten out her planner book thing and tried to anyway, but this time we'd been talking about the maternal transference stuff and how what i wanted never mattered to my mom and how t activates that when i say i don't want to schedule an then she tries to get me to anyway, so that day she DIDN'T try to, and the next night I realized how much it meant to me that she didn't, that she let what i wanted matter, and i totally felt a physical something mending deep inside me) and after that was when i stopped eating so much. i said i think it was the psychological hunger that went away. now i eat when i feel physical hunger only. she was so amazed at that. said "we haven't talked about that before." i said well we have a tiny bit but not hardly at all. she said something else but i forgot what.

Then I talked some about all the events of last week, gave her a bigger picture than what she got on my short, tearful phone call Friday, and we worked on a couple of dreams, I told her about my class that started last night, she told me a little about a dream work seminar she attended last weekend, she told me that it felt like it had been a long time since I was there last (felt longer than the 4 weeks it's been) and she said she was beginning to wonder if she was going to hear from me again. I said well, so was I. she asked what i meant and i said well, i just felt happy, like i was doing well handling my life, tired from the overtime but happy. And i handled last week by relying on my family and friends at least until friday morning. she said she was very glad that i called. she said was it like you were wondering how you would know when to call? i said well not really, i just wasn't really thinking about it at all a lot of the time what with working so many hours and all. At least until the hospital thing kinda came to a head on Friday... oh yeah! I told her I took her advice about taking care of me and that I had texted my friend back who'd been asking all week what she could do to help and I told her she could help me relax and we got together and had some wine, a good dinner, and a lot of talk on Saturday night! She thought that was wonderful.

We talked more about h and my relationship, i told her it's felt different since the hospital thing, since he started feeling better, it's like he's back to his old self again, the "he's my best friend" self I used to know, and just in a few days our marriage is closer than ever. We're playing again, having fun together again, he's been expressing how much he appreciates me being there in the hospital with him every day, saying "I love you" again even which he hardly ever had been saying anymore. I feel like I've opened up so much as of last week - reaching out to my mom and my friends to get me through all of that, I have opened myself up so much in order to reach out and it feels so good i don't want to close up again. oh yeah also i told her i feel like i am seeing h as a separate person again, not as the h-and-art combo that we've been forever, but appreciating his separateness and mine too. I said I kind of had to pull myself out of the "us" that we'd become last week, because of having to also take care of the furnace repair and my car repair while he was in hospital. and i said i'm staying out!!

So, I really like this "as-needed" basis a lot. I don't have to feel pressured to schedule like when she'd always used to get out her planner thing. And I told her that I would call again after we get all the hospital bills paid. I fully intend to, at least, because I'll be able to submit receipts to insurance and get 50% back since our family deductible will have been met after we pay all of h's hospital bills.

So that was my session today. We hugged and said goodbye and then I left, not knowing when I'll see her again, and feeling completely good with that.

I feel WAY too vulnerable.

We went round and round about my mother.

Blondie seems to know what's the issue with her.

But, I can't seem to get clued in.

I Met with dr. T yesterday . We went on a walk . Discussed my hand pain (carpal tunnel). He asked if I got pain meds when I went to the Dr. I said no, and that I had told them upfront that I don't want any bc I am an addict. We talked about my possible promotion at work to full time. T said he thinks it would be good for me to be in a management position because it will bring out my healthy adult part more to the front. And show me how my internal parent can soften a bit when dealing with issues with cashiers.

We walked our usual route. It takes 30 minutes . It was cold. T asked if I've hung out with anyone. I said no, I don't talk to anyone. T said I know. He encouraged me to text my former roommate.

We got back to his office and started playing rummy. I told t i am out of seroquel. He asked if I've noticed a difference. I told him I've been hearing the voices sometimes. I told t i am going to pdoc after our appt. He asked if I'm giving him his letter he wrote, I said yes. T said good .

T encouraged me to text my former roommate again, asking if it would help if I did it there with him. I said no. T said why not? I said I want to be a hermit right now...its safer. T kinda gave up and said well it's important to know what you want.

T asked if I've been watching any good shows lately. I said well actually I was watching my 600lb life when you came to get Me! T cracked up and said that's what's wrong with society. That there's a show for that .T and I started talking about his favorite show... it's always sunny in Philadelphia. That's when t said bangin trannies. And I said dildo. Never thought those words would be in our session!!it was funny and t and I laughed a lot.

Time was up. T asked again if I'm giving pdoc the letter, I confirmed. He said let me know what happens. I left

T told me to double up on seroquel. I don't know, I don't really want to. I'm so tired.

I was glad to see him, but I feel guilty because I'm not Capt he used to know, I'm someone else, someone really bad and poisoning. I don't know who I am.

Thanks. He died a few years ago and talking about it now feels normal and ok. My kid and I are doing well.

I have not figured it out completely at all, but I do think bringing it to awareness that you have done it (assumed, or however you want to label) is a first step. I do remember that the easiest thing was to do it in T and to start with body language. I would say when I saw something, "hey, what's that funny look that crossed your face about?" As a bonus it made him kind of uncomfortable, like being on the hot seat. so he'd try to articulate what he thought I'd noticed.

With words, including saying that you need something else or it would be helpful for you to have X or do Y, I tried to derail my feelings-to-interpretations-or-freezing pipeline by starting when I was aware I had a strong reaction going on. Being "hot" in the sense of my emotions were on overdrive (for me, the hot part signals an overreaction). Notice the hot emotions and interrupt what I do (or freeze) with them. The emotions are information and like using the principles of a book I've read, can help me move forward.

I do think your T can be helpful with this. I've gone in afterwards to a session where something happened like you report (and what you did in your email) and tried to walk through and see the points where I could have done something different. T asked when I was kinda in the throws of some trauma work near the end of the session, something like "is there anything you need from me before we wrap up?" That's something we developed in talking about how to be more in-the-moment.

I think it's a kind of endless skill to work on. Life seems to give me numerous opportunities every day to practice making my interpretations of what others do as more benign.

Just a post-hoc recommendation: I've watched Mel Robbins' talk on the Creative Live website. It's a talk for "creatives" about changing habits to get over yourself (she might not pitch it exactly this way). About work, but so applicable to personal life as well. She says, you can't change the triggers but you can change the behaviors. I think you'd find it useful. The talks on the website stream for free at random times, or they can be purchased for a reasonable amount.

I made an extra session with my therapist because something in some of the reading he gave me really triggered some serious depression (The Happiness Trap). I was embarrassed about the extra session, because I was afraid he'd think I was too needy or bothering him too much. But as it turns out I'm not even sure he realized it was extra. He shares a practice with several other therapists and they have a secretary who seems to have just put me on the schedule without making a big deal about it. Anyway I didn't bring it up and neither did he.

I did bring up how depressed and angry I got when I read the book. I think that I misinterpreted some of the things that the author was saying about depression. That's one of the problems with self-help books. You can't ask for clarification from the author.

I also think though that I was reacting to some other reading he had given me earlier about something called tapping. It is based on some theories of acupuncture, which I am not a fan of. I told him that I was angry that he had given me something that was not empirically based. He told me that he had other clients who were helped by it. I told him that I figured that was probably the placebo effect and that I didn't think it was likely that the placebo effect would work on me since I was so skeptical of the whole thing. I pointed out that there were some very critical research articles on tapping out there. We pretty much agreed to disagree. He doesn’t really care why it works if it works for some people. I’m not going to do it. I did feel heard, so that was good.

Somehow we started talking about black and white thinking. I told him that I didn’t think that was a huge problem for me. As an example, I told him that even though I thought that tapping reading he gave me was stupid and I got angry at him about it, I still thought he was a good therapist. I can hold both thoughts in my head at the same time. He just sort of looked at me. And then I got to thinking about how just a few minutes before we had been talking about how when I overeat I have a tendency to tell myself what a horrible, no good person I am. And so I had one of those things that therapists call “insights” and realized that while I don’t have a problem with that black and white thinking thing with other people, it is possible that I do with myself. Why can’t I believe that I don’t like when I overeat, but that I’m still a decent person at the same time? I said that and he agreed that would be a good thing to shoot for.

Time was up, so as I was leaving I asked him “am I fired yet?” That’s as close as I can get to asking him if he likes me or if he is angry at me. He told me that he doesn’t fire people. They fire him. He said that he read somewhere that the average number of sessions a person usually goes to is about 8. I was thinking that I was probably going to shoot his average way up, but I didn’t say it.

More parts talk, now that I've established it's fairly safe to talk this way.

I told C today that I didn't want to overthink this (he said that I "think more than the average person" to which I said "is that your way of telling me I think too much?" lol). I don't want to get sucked into this. I don't want to dissect or worry about the things that work well. For example, I believe that there's a part that does my work - goes to my work. Do I care? No. That's working for me. And, it has benefits - it allows really great separation between work and home for me. I don't bring my work home - even when I work from home!

I told C the areas of concern I had regarding the parts - basically, where things aren't working:

1. The angry part that comes out unpredictably and is rather uncontrolled - causing my husband to live in this "I don't know who I'm going to get" anxiety. And, I don't want that to be my daughter's life either.

2. The parts making big decisions/proclamations that don't align with my actual desires. I haven't revealed this here, but one of the parts every time it comes out gets very close to proclaiming it wants a divorce...and

--- a big deal, obviously.

3. Struggles with the little parts/dealing with my daughter growing older - she's nearing the age of my first traumatic memory.

Well, then we got tangled in my neverending web of "I'm afraid you don't believe me. I'm afraid I make things up without meaning to." etc. etc. until I had said far more than I wanted to about my very private "getting taken care of" fantasies until, truly, fantasy and reality blurred, and I felt I was confessing I'd actually done the things from my thoughts...it's a really really weird, windy road. Which, ultimately seems to be a sort of analysis paralysis designed to derail everything...it's easy to focus on it and never move.

Tried to conclude by asking the little part questions: do you still feel the same way about me? Has anything changed between us?

everything is ok, he says.

Still wants to work on the parts talking to one another. He says he understood when I said "they talk to me, but not to one another; they talk to me about one another, but not to one another" ...I am the filter between inside and outside as well as between inside and inside. Apparently he wants to work on changing that?

That is very scary to me.

I've started this post several times and keep deleting it because I don't really know how to say what I am trying to say! Another thread asked about who leads in session. I think she kinds does and I kinda do. This week it felt like I wasn't being heard. I wanted to add something to the "let's check in on this each week" (I let myself feel inferior to my peers) but her response felt to me like - hey - just don't worry about that. Then I had written in my journal about a really tough issue and wanted to talk about it - but I don't know that I can - so I just said, 'I still hate (the topic)' but she didn't take the bait. I know I should just be more direct or decide I can't do it. I could have just been being super critical.

It occurred to me today after session--I have been pretty down in general lately, winter blahs + work stress etc. But I don't act "depressed" around other people, in fact I am very careful not to. So when I go to session it is very hard for me to show that "down" feeling. Plus I like talking to my T so I don't feel as "down" when I'm in the office. Maybe it shows more than I think but sometimes I wonder if I'm hiding too much without meaning to.

I was embarrassed today in my T session. T confronted me about parts and I felt mortified at my behavior. But I put on my big-girl pants and was as forthcoming as I could manage. Felt bad for withholding my knowledge from T before. I guess it's just instinct.

My T responded:

Having had a bit of time to reflect I want to respond to your email, I hope that isn't confusing for you.

I identify with your description of choosing to care for someone resulting in that person having a place in your heart.

And yes, my relationship with you is a reality for me and I do care about you, so yes, you are present in my heart.

Sometimes people I care about 'come to mind', which is what I was referring to (awkwardly) when I said that will I think about you.

Do I miss the people I care about? Sometimes very much and sometimes not at all because it feels they are with me.

See you Wednesday,

Best wishes,

I am still processing

That kind of email would make my day, amazing to hear

I love this. I don't believe my T is capable of being vulnerable like this. Your T really cares

Wow, rs, that's a wonderful reply. And my, what a difference from his old stumbling, anemic emails.

RS - I am not doubting that it is a nice response for you-although I don't understand why or how it is. I sometimes think this sort of thing is why I find those people so irritating and those that find that kind of interaction a good thing do not. If I had received that my response would have been "WTF does that mean? Stop responding" - which is not how others seem to be taking it. I don't see how that is vulnerable or whatever. I am not saying it isn't - just that I don't understand how it is.
I am not criticizing you or the therapist - just musing about the differences in how others interact with those guys.

Thanks Ruh Roh, and yes - he has become so much better at responding to me; I suppose I've given him plenty of practice over the years!
He knows me very well and that is really valuable.

Thanks to DP and SE too

Yeah, it doesn't surprise me that it's not the kind of thing you would like to hear from a therapist. I guess that's why it's good that there are such a variety out there. Lots of different people have lots of different needs and expectations.
I'm glad you found some who were willing to stay back.
(Actually I suspect my T would do that too if the client required it - he seems pretty adaptable from what I have seen of him).

Love love love this! Don't know why more T's can't just be more open and honest about their feelings towards their clients!

What I am trying to say is that I don't see the response as being open, honest, vulnerable etc.
Granted, I don't want that from a therapist - but my point is that the response you got would not be open, honest, vulnerable, etc to me.
To me it reads like obfuscating gobbly gook.
That is why I have to tell those people to just sit there and shut up. Because I can't decipher what the hell they are talking about.

It confuses me as to how you don't see it as being open, honest, vunerable etc? I mean I understand how it is something that you would not want to receive but the email clearly says that the T care's about RS and to me that is a clear indication of someone showing openness, honesty etc.

The OP also said that in their original email their understanding of caring for someone is that they are present in their heart and not just that they are thought about every now and again. The T responds to this by saying;

I am not criticizing RS or that particular therapist.
I am saying that is an example of what I find to be extremely frustrating when dealing with them and when they are allowed to speak- obfuscating gobbly gook is what it is to me. I would not be rejecting of it because I find it open honest and vulnerable- I would not understand it as being that so I could not reject it for that reason - I would be frustrated because I would not understand the point of it at all.

The reason I commented in the first place was because I was struck at how many people seemed to understand it in the same way as you do. And how I think that may be where I have a big disconnect with both therapists and with people here who seem to understand these things intuitively when for me - it is not.

The woman I hired told me she cared about me - I have no idea why she brought it up at all and no - I did not experience it as evidence she was showing openness or honesty - that is simply not my response to such a statement.

This observation is completely separate from what I might want or not want from one of those people.

I can see why most people see it as honest, understanding and all that.

But like you, it’s not something I want or need. My psychiatrist (he was my t) never mixed feelings or relationship into our sessions. One handshake during those years, and he always kept his distance. Without me needing to tell him I needed that. Still, I did feel he was honest and had integrity- so I did trust him.
For me feelings makes me wonder if it is fake or not. I was not there to make friends, but to have someone professional help me sort out my chaos inside my mind. Every now and then I asked if my lack of emotions was something we should talk about. I said no. Don’t lack emotions alltogether, I just don’t always see the use in them. There is a time for everything.
(I did have sessions where I got emotional, but he kept his profesional face on, I might never have been that again if not)

So, yeah- we are all different, and have different needs.
I like that, it makes human beings more interesting