Giving our power away

How did we get so disempowered? Was it better before, during, or after therapy? And why does it happen in therapy.

I gave him my power (well not consciously). Everything he said or did impacted me. It was like I was weak and dependent. Like his actions determined my fate rather than mine.

@Rayne... I'm sorry you're hurting having a difficult time with this you ask how did we get so disempowered. Unfortunately I think that's something only you can answer for yourself each person is going to be different. On the other hand I think you answered it yourself and your second post when you said you really don't think he was best suited for you for your background. Keep in mind you still hold your power. Reaching deep find it inside yourself. Find another therapist that is not going to encourage dependence someone that wants you to be in control of every session and remind you how strong you are.

Thanks, this thread is helping me work through the issues. Everyone's responses or perspectives were helpful.

(Adding also i cant resume therapy. I had to end with this one due to medical expenses.)

I plan on starting with a new clinician in 2018. I had a falling out with my current T a few weeks ago where I tried to terminate, but he asked me to come in for one final session. When I went back I decided that I would continue with him as planned until he de-panels at the end of the year. We're openly discussing my attachment to him now as part of the therapy, and it's hard. It just is helping me to realize how hopelessly dependent I am on him.

I should tell you-in the beginning, researched everything too, read everything about psychology i could get my hands on. it didnt protect me! That control fizzles away eventually..as intellectualizing is a defense mechanism. It stops working eventually...

Zoi, i think you're being too hard on yourself though, ironically is a trait which goes along with counterdependence. I relate as i struggle with lingering aspects from when i was in that state.

Like here today mentioned, these are unconscious defenses originating from childhood. Reminds me of the self acceptance im still lacking. One thing i am convinced of is times when my T accepts me, I accept myself. Likewise, when he rejects me, i feel self hate. A big part of all this stuff. And he didn't accept me when i was at my worst, needed him most, which really triggered core issues.

Being hard on ourselves, beating ourselves up is self hate, too. I think acceptance is a huge factor in these power dynamics. I cant see how i can accept myself unkess he accepts me. At the same time, a therapists acceptance is part of how therapy is supposed to work.

Paying a price is kind of like self punishment, the opposite of love. Maybe you 'paid' too much already.

Rayne, thank you for the warning about the counter dependence. You are 100% right and you sound exactly like my therapist. We've discovered that I blame myself for everything it was the only way that I could accept the abuse. He said it's normal to feel that way. That kids when they have no other option blame themselves and it gives them some type of hope that if they only improve themselves in some way somehow it'll stop the abuse. We've been working on it it's very hard for me. I blame myself for everything always. Luckily my therapist is always accepting of me no matter what. I really do have the best therapist I am very lucky but I just don't have that dependent or attachment feeling. We talked about that a couple weeks ago too. I don't have any attachment to anything or anybody it was the only way I could survive. My little girl alter does seem to have a little bit of attachment feelings but I don't. I do however have plenty of self-hate and I've punished myself for as long as I can remember. The price I paid was something that was subconscious as well it wasn't something I chose then or continue to choose now. It just is. My therapist says it's woven deeply into the neurons of my brain it will take a very very long time to whittle away at it.

Thank you for your comments it's making me think I wish you the best as well. EMDR has taught me that everything you feel as an adult in some way relates back to childhood it is so hard to mend all of the hurt and pain that resulted from that time.

Yep. I terminated therapy with mine and she left a VM later that day saying, "After reading through everything, I think it's a good idea we end therapy..." she did go on to say "and you can find someone ur more comfortable with," but there was no mention of the fact that I had ended it.

I haven't wanted to hijack your thread but feeling the offense, allowing myself to feel the offense, and then responding rather than being quiet and "nice" and numbing out is part of what I am doing here on PC (1 year post therapy termination) to try to . . .I'm not sure how to describe it. . .participate in life as opposed to staying out of it?

Part of a response-ability for me? Seems like that from this end. Anyway, thanks for your post and this thread, very interesting topic.

Even that is a choice though. Due to severe childhood abuse and neglect I am very very attached to my therapist ( I mean, also because we have worked together for 5 years and she is awesome but that childhood need set me up to form the attachment )

I recognized that rejection from her sent me reeling, tbat I could not respond to her in a mature way . I have a great life that I enjoy despite definitely having issues i need to get through, but I was distracted from my life by drama with my T. I got more upset fighting with her than with my wife.

That became a focus of my therapy. WHY was it like that??

That brought me in touch with a ton of stuff...my unmet needs starting from birth, the primal intensity of loss, how I gave all my own power to my mother in an attempt to placate her rage.

And finally we got to the deeply buried fantasy that is i am only lovable, good, successful, thin enough there will be someone who DOES want to be my mom, someone who will save me from the pain and loss and abuse and loneliness.

THAT was why my T had so much power over me. It's not my T who really has it . It's MY fantasy, where I have cast her in the role of mother, that holds the power over me.

This is hard, excruciating work. I am in the midst of taking apart the mother fantasy now, realizing I have lived my entire life waiting for the moment when someone else will love me like that, discounting the love i do have because it's not that love, refusing to love or support myself until I earn that mother love, believing like my real mother did that if I can not earn that love I deserve death

Sometimes facing that feels like someone is ripping my heart out whole. I want to return to the fantasy, to my dangerous coping mechanisms, to thoughts of duo, etc.

It's horrible, but when I'm not wresting with it I am happier and healthier than I have ever been.

And as ihave faced the fantasy, the truth, my Ts hold on me has lessened.

The power was always mine, and i chose to give it away. Yes I made that choice as a child. But no matter how helpless or child like I feel.in my T relationship I am NOT a child but an adult with agency and power. It had to be my choice to face why i gave my T so much power.

I think the power always lies in us
However not all Ts are trained to do that sort of deep work and it can get seriously screwed up even when you are trying to face it. That I don't have an answer for. But i do believe that at the core we hold all the power in our own lives as adults.

I don't have that fantasy since I already worked through those feelings. I don't have those expectations of being saved; rescued. Your T has told you she loves you repeatedly and gone out of her way to show you she truly cares and texting you between sessions and all. I wonder if you would feel this way had your T not fully accepted you as some of us talk about not being fully accepted here?

Expecting him to try to work something out (a five minute call per week, seeing me once every three weeks temporarily, etc) is more about respect, compassion, and human decency than a childhood fantasy. At the same time, it cuts deeply in my core issues. It brought out horrible childhood feelings of worthlessness due to the attachment I had to him. He didn't show concern during our last session--just sat there as I bawled my eyes out.

If my husband (I don't have one) decided to desert me when I had cancer (John Edwards?), even though it may stir up childhood feelings and transference, being hurt is being hurt. All feelings include transference, but this doesn't mean the feelings are less realistic. If Elizabeth Edwards felt her childhood abandonment feelings and thought to herself-while I'm an adult not a child, I agree with you that may help 'get over' something like that, but this isn't entirely about transference. I'm not sure my expectation for him not to immediately drop me the second I couldn't pay may have been a bit high, but not unrealistic.

Anyway, thanks Bay for sharing your perspective about how your fantasies drove your expectations and actions. I'm thinking this is mostly about triggering my core issues, which is too bad because that's not something he was that good at helping me with, i am just realizing now.

Thanks for sharing your fantasy, Bay. I have been getting somewhat in touch with how much of my life and how I view and lived things was as if in a fantasy. My last T did mention "fantasy" off-handedly once. I think it might have been a good "intervention" and observation because she wasn't pushing anything, she just mentioned it. Something I hadn't considered very much and it helped to have somebody observe that possibility.

I don't have a T currently and am not going to try it again. But I really, really appreciate reading about your core issues, Bay.

And yours, too, Rayne. I'm sorry that your T wasn't good at helping you with those. It's great that you can grab hold of what is relevant to you in this thread and pass by the rest. The Elizabeth Edwards example was very interesting and relevant to a lots of us perhaps.

I use fantasy loosely. Not a conscious fantasy i was aware of that I daydreamed about or whatever. It's more of a core child belief. I do not deserve to live ( among many other things my mother tried to kill me) but maybe i can earn love, earn my existence.
I don't think my Ts actions had anything to do with it. This underlying fantasy/need, I realize now, has been like a tide pulling and controlling me my whole life.. it's why I've stayed in damaging relationships, why I've lost other relationships that were important to me, why i don't take medicine I need to stay alive, why i always feel afraid and anxious, why ive made many of both the good and bad decisions of my life etc etc etc.

No, I havent worked thru all my unmet needs and feelings! Just said i worked thru feelings of wanting to be rescued. I separated childhood fantasies from adult expectations. He was good at helping me understand myself, my feelings, and i was good at being open, honest, letting it all pour out. Letting my walls down, facing ugly truths....but my core issues actually got worse over the course of treatment.

I just wonder if you'd have the same opinions if your t didnt show love for you repeatedly and demonstrate your worth and how much she cares.not so much the words, but perhaps she showed you that you were lovable? It may just be a different therapy world than many of us go thru.

It does irk me somewhat when I think of that Jeffrey Smith blog about therapy being like "a kid in a candy store" and wanting a fantasy parent to take care of all our needs and so others seem assume it's that way for everyone. I certainly have had those fantasies, but I've been in therapy 5 years (and more prior to this one) and am way past that point. I went through a lot to get there and have realistic expectations despite those strong attachment feelings. My therapist always gave me lots of space to separate transference feelings, and it was a very difficult way to do therapy (eg, frustrating wishes, withholding needs, not giving reassurance, not disclosing any of his feelings about me). That was a difficult psychoanalytic therapy, and I'm realizing now-not the best way to do therapy with someone with my background. It really helped with certain issues that I don't think other therapies would have helped with, but it didn't help my worse core issue--perhaps the most important one. Maybe in 10 years it would have gotten there! This therapy takes loooong.

This thread has been very helpful in coming to this realization. But in the end, I think I'm very hurt and feel betrayed and have to grieve. That is valid. I think this time it has less to do with transference than any other rupture we've ever had--ever. I do still have some the core issue(s), but not all the feelings from therapy have to do with my mother or father. And I am alone outside of the transference, have extra hardships and lack support. So yes, the fantasy stuff is not relatable but helped me work through just like any other words. Thanks for everyone's input.

In the case of therapy, there is a LOT of social conditioning that primes people to give up power in therapy. In some parts of the world, therapy ideology and concepts are ubiquitous and part of popular culture. The media hammers home some of these concepts to the point where it's basically social engineering. Therapy is also part of the healthcare system. These factors and others drive people into the system and into a position of subordination, because your "mental illness" ain't gonna heal itself, and therapy is the only way, etc. Even smart, autonomous people can be manipulated if the messaging is insistent and pervasive enough.

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((Rayne)) I know you think that no-one understands, but as I said, I really related to what you posted here. It was comforting and saddening for me to read it.

Either way, we do care about how much you're struggling right now.

With these posts, and others in this thread, it seems like you're conscious of your situation and your dilemma. How can we offer more support? Do you need encouragement and validation as you develop strength and practice owning your own power now? I'm impressed how you've asked for help, taken what is helpful to you, and discarded what isn't. Do you see your exercise of power in that? I do.

You gave it away. He wasn't worth it. Now, you have now and the next days going forward. Yes, there is grief. But, I have known people in support groups, unfortunately, who I don't think even made it this far. So, congratulations and best wishes going forward!!

Thanks, I went back and reread your post. How quickly I forgot. I'm sorry you are sad too, I'm glad someone understands

Funny you asked what I needed...

I mentioned having a good 2nd to the last session, then a bad last session. Well I told him what I needed-I asked him if he could say something kind to me so it didn't have to end as traumatically. He said because he now felt coerced, he couldn't do that. That was the last we spoke.

The thing it seems like no one understands is-I only feel powerless now from being attached to him. It feels like a dissociated part of me that emerged. I know therapy is supposed to reflect our patterns, but I swear I never felt 'powerless' until therapy. Looking back, it's as if the purpose of the therapy with him was to make me powerless, to break me. Like the example before-I made myself vulnerable, told him what I needed, and he decided not to be kind to me. It seems like our whole therapy was like that. Now I have no money for new therapy and can't get out of this state.

It was painful leaving like that-his last words were basically that he didn't have it in him to be kind to me. I just thinking of ways to drop off the face of the earth. I feel like there's a knife digging out my heart. It's like I deserve no humanity. I don't understand why he'd leave me like this. Why he couldn't just say something kind and leaving it like that. That's what i mean-how much he effects me. Then people come along and say I am choosing to feel this. No one understands that. He knew how much it would hurt me and still does it. That makes it hurt 10 times more.

F***, that's horrible

I dont understand why anyone would do that to somebody. Even if he didn't feel kindness for me when i quit, why couldnt he have just said something, made anything up, rather than go out of his way like that. It just seems unnecessarily cruel, leaving me to reflect on why i dont deserve kindness. No matter what i tell myself, i cant not think its because i dont matter as a person.

Why make things 10 times worse for someone already in hardship. I feel the ending would have been somewhat tolerable if not for that. Thinking back, our whole therapy seemed that way. My needing basic things, like acceptance, and him purposely not giving me anything i needed. In any other realm of life, i would have walked away without hesitation .

Its like i wasnt allowed to have any agency, like quitting (even though i really didnt have a choice), because he had to be in control of everything . When i tried to use my agency, i got hurt over and over. He always has to make sure im powerless. Sounds ridiculous but that is how it seems.

Yes. It was unnecessarily cruel. Worse than that, really.

I still relate to what you say, a lot.

What your T did seems sadistic to me, and sometimes the way my T treats me feels sadistic too. But much of the time I think perhaps it's really just negligent - no matter how much I try to tell him, he will not understand how his words affect me. He will not understand that I have fully given myself to him and that he therefore has the power to destroy me - or to fill me with joy. He can't comprehend the pain that he causes me.

But I think even my T, in a final session, faced with a desperate plea for kindness, could manage to find something for me. For f***'s sake. I'm so sorry, Rayne.

One thing that helped me was discovering that a lot of people have been s**t out of therapy in a much worse state (or are approaching that point). I've read hundreds of such accounts. I'm not glad this happens to people, but it gives me perspective. Makes me realize how dangerous and corrupt this profession is and takes some of the burden off.

I'm so very sorry.

I'm glad you figured it out--that should help you avoid the situation again. I still don't know what it was for sure but I'm not sure if his being sadistic is it though I think he was at times. I think though you had some common issues, I don't think your T worked the same. I think my T did understand how much he affected me--but the way he went about trying to help me with that was really harmful... Good for you for moving on rather than trying to work things out...and ending up like me.

Just recently he told me that he does therapy the same with everyone. I was shocked because when I sought him, he said he specialized in trauma. How can you work the same with someone coming from a horrible background, severe unmet needs with someone who has less impactful issues? Maybe he was trying to get me to a certain point of working through things before he met some basic needs, but the process, whatever this was, was traumatizing.

I also think that if a therapist doesn't meet basic needs of acceptance and show they care, one can be caught in the endless struggles of merely trying to survive the pain of the relationship that mirrors childhood--this prevents you from getting to the next level of development, moving to the next phase towards empowerment. I noticed that people here in good relationships have therapists who are empowering in their actions. Not disempowering like how some of us grew up.

That's the part where I was over trusting. I taught myself a lot and questioned everything, but he seemed competent. I don't believe in purposeful suffering, but I thought these actions had a purpose and that he was being a good T. I worked hard, but he was too hard on me. He broke my spirit, what little I had to start with. I'm in a bad situation as I can't afford to see someone else to undo the damage. But I'm trying so hard to get unstuck, but yeah, he affected me way too much. I think if I left sooner--like you are doing--I wouldn't have these huge open wounds. At the same time, I don't think its healthy to beat myself up for trying to do something positive for myself. He always said I was the problem, never conceded or thought of different ways of working with me or taking any responsibility for how he did therapy. I'm tired of taking all the blame.