[Calilady]

"When this dynamic is happening...when you get to marinate in- at your own expense- a repetitive scenario of suffering because your needs are not being met, well that is just masochistic."

It wasn't applied to situations in terms of therapists, but all other relationships, but this quote from Alan Robarge got me thinkin'. Is it a form of masochism to stay in a therapeutic relationship where we are repeatedly hurt because we don't get our needs met (when we become attached, usually)?

In my repetition compulsion arena, this would usually lead me watering down my needs (and myself) to get the attachment figure to stay, to keep the peace, and to disassociate from myself so it's not so dang painful. Now that I've left the therapist that I was extremely attached to, there is light at the end of the tunnel. While I'm heartbroken, I'm no longer bound and chained to a miserable situation that included cyclical emotional pain and inevitable ruptures.

So what say you? Is it a form of masochism? Why or why not?

[Ididitmyway]

Nah, not really.

I see this as an addiction, not masochism. Even though the person suffers there might still be some part of the experience that feels good, which still keeps them there.

In addition, there might be hope that things could change. This is what happens in the domestic violence situations all the time. Every now and then the perpetrator behaves as if they regret their behavior and promise to change, which persuades the victim to stay in the relationship, and then the abuse happens again and so it goes again and again in the cycle. My last therapist often had an "aha" moments when he would "realize" all of a sudden how his behavior was hurtful to me, would make a heartfelt apology with friggin tears in his eyes, and then things would go back to "normal", and if I tried to remind him what he had said to me earlier he'd look at me like he had no clue of what I was talking about.

Also, I believe, the main reason for us, as human beings, to get stuck in destructive situations or to do the so-called "repetition compulsion" is because it reinforces our sense of identity. Since childhood we identify ourselves with certain situations, and, no matter how harmful they might be, they still represent who we are, or so we think. The hardest thing in the world is to lose one's identity because this might literally feel like dying. So, no matter, how much suffering this identity causes us, we hold on to it, because we don't know who we are without it and how to live without it. Hence, we keep seeking out the same scenarios and the same types of people over and over again until we are ready to give it all up and to "die". Actually, we seek out the same situations not only because we want to remain within our identity but also because we are hoping to master the situation we couldn't master before, to emerge victorious from it, to turn it around, to achieve a different outcome..until we realize that the only way to "master" the bad situation is to get out of it and then to stop seeking it in the first place.

Jokingly yes, it sure feels masochistic. But in all seriousness, while I don't have all of my needs met by T, I do have some needs met that other people in my life can't provide. He's not mired in the daily drudge of my life, so he's able to be a (mostly) objective assistant. He helps me to figure out stuff that I haven't been able to on my own.

I say this while out of the other side of my mouth I say I hate him because he isn't able to meet those other needs that are wrapped up in this transference

[toomanycats]

Is it masochistic for a child to not leave his or her parent even though the parent is abusive?

The dynamic of a therapist-client relationship with this sort of intense attachment is more similar to parent-child than two consenting partners. There's a power imbalance, for one.

We are designed to bond to our parents because to be abandoned by them...to leave them...means death. That level of intensity can transfer into a therapeutic relationship. It's not masochism. It's survival.

[Calilady]

Originally Posted by toomanycats

Is it masochistic for a child to not leave his or her parent even though the parent is abusive?

The dynamic of a therapist-client relationship with this sort of intense attachment is more similar to parent-child than two consenting partners. There's a power imbalance, for one.

We are designed to bond to our parents because to be abandoned by them...to leave them...means death. That level of intensity can transfer into a therapeutic relationship. It's not masochism. It's survival.

But once we identify this, do we not have choice (once recognizing the pattern and acknowledging we aren't children)?

[Calilady]

Originally Posted by daisydid

Jokingly yes, it sure feels masochistic. But in all seriousness, while I don't have all of my needs met by T, I do have some needs met that other people in my life can't provide. He's not mired in the daily drudge of my life, so he's able to be a (mostly) objective assistant. He helps me to figure out stuff that I haven't been able to on my own.

I say this while out of the other side of my mouth I say I hate him because he isn't able to meet those other needs that are wrapped up in this transference

Lol!! At least you're honest, huh?

[Calilady]

Yep. You just explained why I left my therapist. There was power (and heartbreak) in doing so.

In spiritual terms, it's said that first we must pass the test and THEN we get the lesson (backwards, if you ask me). I've felt much more clarity, like I'm losing interst in one-sided relationships. Everyone's situation is different, but I'm grateful I left mine. It was such a hard decision to make, but it was the right one.

Originally Posted by Ididitmyway

Nah, not really.

I see this as an addiction, not masochism. Even though the person suffers there might still be some part of the experience that feels good, which still keeps them there.

In addition, there might be hope that things could change. This is what happens in the domestic violence situations all the time. Every now and then the perpetrator behaves as if they regret their behavior and promise to change, which persuades the victim to stay in the relationship, and then the abuse happens again and so it goes again and again in the cycle. My last therapist often had an "aha" moments when he would "realize" all of a sudden how his behavior was hurtful to me, would make a heartfelt apology with friggin tears in his eyes, and then things would go back to "normal", and if I tried to remind him what he had said to me earlier he'd look at me like he had no clue of what I was talking about.

Also, I believe, the main reason for us, as human beings, to get stuck in destructive situations or to do the so-called "repetition compulsion" is because it reinforces our sense of identity. Since childhood we identify ourselves with certain situations, and, no matter how harmful they might be, they still represent who we are, or so we think. The hardest thing in the world is to lose one's identity because this might literally feel like dying. So, no matter, how much suffering this identity causes us, we hold on to it, because we don't know who we are without it and how to live without it. Hence, we keep seeking out the same scenarios and the same types of people over and over again until we are ready to give it all up and to "die". Actually, we seek out the same situations not only because we want to remain within our identity but also because we are hoping to master the situation we couldn't master before, to emerge victorious from it, to turn it around, to achieve a different outcome..until we realize that the only way to "master" the bad situation is to get out of it and then to stop seeking it in the first place.

[peaches100]

Great question! To decide whether staying with a withholding therapist constitute masochism, I think several things about the therapy relationship would need to be examined...

Is the therapist actually being withholding, or is it simply the patient's perception?

How much support and connection is the therapist is withholding?

Why is this support being withheld?

How often has this problem come up in the therapy relationship?

When it comes up, are both the therapist and patient willing to talk about it?

Does the therapist have the ability to examine their own contribution to the problem?

Can they together find a compromise that will provide the patient with the additional support they need without violating the therapist's boundaries?

Has any progress been made at all regarding this issue?

[toomanycats]

Originally Posted by Calilady

But once we identify this, do we not have choice (once recognizing the pattern and acknowledging we aren't children)?

Sure, we have a choice.
So does a child who, once grown into a teenager/young adult, recognizes that their parents are not good parents.
But, how easy is it for them to walk away? Are they masochistic for staying?

If you realize a therapist is not a good one very early on, then, sure, walking away is an easy enough choice to make.

If you don't realize it until years into therapy after that bond and attachment has formed? You might as well ask them to disown a parent - because that's what their brain is telling them that leaving that therapist means - chemically, not just emotionally.

[DP_2017]

I feel like it's a form of idiocy .... I feel beyond dumb that I keep going back knowing its gonna only grow and grow and hurt more and more in the end.

I would never ever ever go to therapy again in the future, this has taught me that. While I really like my T and I still have some issues to work through, it has to be it for me, I can't risk going through this again, it's too much for me

[RaineD]

Whether it's masochistic depends on what you mean by not getting your needs met. If the therapist is an incompetent therapist or, worse yet, someone with significant and unrecognized issues (such as a tendency towards narcissism), then, yes, I'd say staying with such a therapist is masochistic.

But if the therapist is good and simply can't meet the needs that cannot actually be met, then staying with the therapist is therapy, not masochism. This is because for those of us who have unmet childhood needs, many of those needs actually cannot be met in adulthood. It is not possible for a therapist (or anyone else) to meet the boundless needs of a small child. This simply does not happen in adult relationships. You are no longer a child, and your therapist cannot be your mom or dad.

One goal of therapy is to learn to accept this. The process of acceptance is painful, and the patient is likely to feel angry and hurt during this process. But sticking with it *is* therapy.

I think Dr. Jeffery Smith explains this best. See his series of articles here: Attachment to Therapist Archives - Integrative Psycotherapy

This is probably the most relevant of his articles, and I recommend it to anyone who is struggling with being attached to their therapist and feeling as though their needs aren't being met. Working with the Inner Child

Psychoanalytic thinking would consider that masochism. (And since 1942 LOL).

The masochistic factor in the psychoanalytic situation.

Abstract

The potentiality for masochistic reactions in analysis lies both in the transference relationship and in the actual relationship between the patient and the analyst created by the therapeutic situation. Of the transference relationship there are two aspects; its emotional content derives from the patient's past, and the patient's past experiences are relived as real in relationship to the analyst. Thus, earlier emotional patterns are repeated with full opportunity to re-establish masochistic reactions. The patient-analyst relation, on the other hand, tends to nourish the repetition compulsion and thus to bring about a neurotic masochism through its establishment of a parent-child relationship forcing submission by the patient and a giving up of defense mechanisms. 17-item bibliography. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Menaker, E. (1942). The masochistic factor in the psychoanalytic situation. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 11, 171-186.

Intriguing, amusing, and horrific at the same time

[Anastasia~]

I did have a willingness to stay when it was painful,. I think the willingness to stay while being hurt is one definition of masochism.

This also brings up the question, with T's who have issues and countertransference, are they sadistic to the patient when they take it out on them?

Pleasure is usually a factor for sexual masochism unless certain other factors are involved. In the context of therapy, I don't think pleasure is considered to be part of the dynamic. The colloquial use of masochism pertains to pleasure, but that's not necessarily the psychological concept.

I grew up with 1 sociopath and one with other personality traits who were sadistic, deriving pleasure from harming me. Of course I did not gain pleasure from the experiences...

[Calilady]

Thanks Rayne. I'm gonna have to read this tonight.

Originally Posted by Rayne_

Psychoanalytic thinking would consider that masochism. (And since 1942 LOL).


Intriguing, amusing, and horrific at the same time

[stopdog]

I certainly believe therapists can be sadistic. Of course, they rarely will explore that - they tend more toward it is for your own good paternalism when confronted.

[here today]

My mother sometimes seemed to derived pleasure from hurting me but she was not in her "normal state" when she was like that. Or at least that's how it seemed to me. How did I learn to deal with it? It was very hard to bring all the elements to consciousness but it seems to me that "I" turned the reciprocal hate I might have directed towards my mother back toward myself. And later learned to get a sadistic joy at beating myself up emotionally. Is that the same as masochism? Or maybe more that I had separate parts of myself. In that, I was kind of like my mother.

There wasn't anything like that in my relationships with therapists that I can recall. Yes, I repeated being compliant and putting myself down, but nothing at all pleasant about that, except maybe I was doing it for the mostly unconscious assumed "safety" of not losing the relationship.

RaineD,

For honest discussion....amd putting aside the concept of masochism,

What if you were so deprived in childhood--especially during the critical first two years of life--that in reenacting the parent child relationship in therapy, your needs from the therapist are insatiable, and you spend years in emotional pain?

I mentioned in another thread that if the therapy relationship has the capacity to form new healing brain pathways, it must also have the capacity to form new trauma pathways from feeling traumatized for months, years on end.

There seems to be a really small window of therapist competency in this kind of therapy.

I'm convinced that psychodynamic therapy is a very high risk treatment.

But if the therapist is good and simply can't meet the needs that cannot actually be met, then staying with the therapist is therapy, not masochism. This is because for those of us who have unmet childhood needs, many of those needs actually cannot be met in adulthood. It is not possible for a therapist (or anyone else) to meet the boundless needs of a small child. This simply does not happen in adult relationships. You are no longer a child, and your therapist cannot be your mom or dad.

One goal of therapy is to learn to accept this. The process of acceptance is painful, and the patient is likely to feel angry and hurt during this process. But sticking with it *is* therapy.

[Calilady]

I certainly see where you are coming from on this. It's such a delicate, tricky situation.

Originally Posted by Rayne_

RaineD,

For honest discussion....amd putting aside the concept of masochism,

What if you were so deprived in childhood--especially during the critical first two years of life--that in reenacting the parent child relationship in therapy, your needs from the therapist are insatiable, and you spend years in emotional pain?

I mentioned in another thread that if the therapy relationship has the capacity to form new healing brain pathways, it must also have the capacity to form new trauma pathways from feeling traumatized for months, years on end.

There seems to be a really small window of therapist competency in this kind of therapy.

I'm convinced that psychodynamic therapy is a very high risk treatment.

[RaineD]

Originally Posted by Rayne_

RaineD,

For honest discussion....amd putting aside the concept of masochism,

What if you were so deprived in childhood--especially during the critical first two years of life--that in reenacting the parent child relationship in therapy, your needs from the therapist are insatiable, and you spend years in emotional pain?

I mentioned in another thread that if the therapy relationship has the capacity to form new healing brain pathways, it must also have the capacity to form new trauma pathways from feeling traumatized for months, years on end.

There seems to be a really small window of therapist competency in this kind of therapy.

I'm convinced that psychodynamic therapy is a very high risk treatment.

I don't have any answers. My understanding is that, yes, patients who have been deprived in childhood have the insatiable needs of a small child and those needs will surface in therapy. But no therapist can realistically meet those needs, and working through that--the pain, disappointment, and anger--is part of therapy.

I have no doubt that therapy can traumatize as well as heal. That's why it's so important to find a good therapist.

On the subject of attachment and needs, I really really recommend Dr. Jeffery Smith's work. Aside from the articles I linked to in my previous post, he has an e-book called "Attachment to Your Therapist" that's highly relevant. His book "How We Heal and Grow" also explains the necessity of working through these feelings of disappointment, anger, and pain.

Thanks Rained, it was nice to hear back from you.

The thing about Jeffrey Smith's writings is they are always about the ideal. The ideal rarely happens. I always considered working through as part of the therapy and have done many years of that.

There's a huge area between a therapist meeting insatiable needs and meeting therapeutic area. I've never come across anyone here expecting a therapist to meet all of their needs, or even a most of them. So I want to use this post to distinguish needs vs therapeutic ones.

Definitely hard to find a good therapist. Too bad people have to find out about their therapist's competency the hard way, often years after being entangled; then struggles with ending the relationship.

Thinking back, it seems those who can do therapy 3 times a week seem to have a better outcome. Also those that do some sort of limited reparenting, which I am going to assume expands upon what are defined as "therapeutic needs".

[feileacan]

I'm just answering to the question in the title.

I don't see how staying with a therapist I'm attached to would be a form of masochism, unless there are additional conditions not said out loud, such as the T is incompetent and unprofessional etc. This attachment is the catalyst or glue or necessary environment that enables me to work on the issues that have brought me to therapy. I would be just plain stupid if I wouldn't use the conditions that are necessary to do the work I want to do for doing that work. So, I would call staying with T I am attached to just ... therapy?