More Ranting About Attachment Therapy

I just thought of something. You know how when parents have a toddler, and they decide to go somewhere without them, so they get a babysitter? But when the parents leave the house, the toddler get distressed and bursts into tears, feeling like they can't live without their mom and dad? But then later (hopefully), they calm down and get busy doing other things?

Do you think that by not responding sometimes, my t could be trying to train that dissociated child part of me that even though it feels horrible when I need her and she is not able to respond, I can survive it and won't die? So that, over time, it strengthens me?

Again, I can see the validity of that approach. But still, it seems so...I don't know...mean I guess.

Is that really the best way? Would responding more frequently be coddling? Would it keep me from getting stronger? I dunno...it still feels, in my heart, like I do need more support. It feels...somewhat too withholding.

Maybe my t and I just can't figure out how to find the balance and "get it right."

Hi Satsuma,

I'm glad your t allows the contact you need between sessions. If my t was OK with me having that same level of contact, it would work really well for me. But I'm finally at that point where I'm just not going to ask anymore, or let her lead me into thinking it's OK to contact her midweek if I need to, because there are just too many times it creates problems. She says I misread or misinterpret her meaning at times (which is true), and I say that she provides far too little to meet my needs (also true).

There are only so many times that people can cycle through the same situation and pain of unmet needs before the one with the pain/needs has to take a stand and say "Hey, this is NOT working. Reaching out for help like this, and not getting it, hurts far more than going without."

My t and I have talked quite often over the years about recognizing one's needs and getting needs met. My stand from the beginning of therapy was that the pain of reaching out and not getting needs met was worse than asking and not receiving. My t 's stand was that it is beneficial to recognize one's needs as legitimate and ask for those needs to be met, even if sometimes the answer was No.

Granted, we can't always have what we want, or even what we need at times. Asking for something from someone else in life doesn't guarantee we'll get a Yes. BUT...and here's what sticks in my craw...to reach out and ask for support at a CRITICAL moment from someone who has convinced you they will support you, and to get a NO at THAT time...there's where the damage occurs. I don't expect my t to be there 24/7 (although she has asked me that more than once!). I DO expect her to be there WHEN I TRULY NEED HER.

To me, the frequently of support my t offers, or the amount of support she offers, is NOT the sticking point. It's the TIMING of that support and WHO gets to determine if that need for support is VALID or not.

I know when I need support. If I reach out for it, it's because I've already weighed the situation, tried to talk myself out of needing the help, used coping skills, but realize it is still necessary to have some contact with my t to help ground me. Therefore, if my t decides she doesn't think my need is immediate or that I should be able to use my coping skills to soothe myself at that moment, and she decides either not to respond or to barely respond, I'm going to really resent it...especially if she has encouraged me to reach out when I need it.

Who gets to decide if my need for her support is valid? Me or her? My t spent a long time, early in my therapy, trying to convince me that my needs were valid and not wrong. At the time, I didn't feel worthy of having my needs met. I was too afraid to ask. I didn't think I deserved it. It took a long time to get me to the point where I could identify my needs and reach out to get them met without feeling intense shame. I can do that now, and perhaps that, in itself, is forward movement. It is. I can recognize that.

But what good does it do if my t worked so hard for so long to convince me that my needs are valid, and helped me build up the courage to risk asking for what I need when I need it, if she is then not going to follow through and provide it?

What good does it do if I, having already determined that my need is valid and necessary, ask for my t's support, only to have HER determine (based on her own clinical judgement) that it is not a true need (but perhaps a want), so she decides it would be best for me if she not respond, or do so very sparingly?

Doesn't that invalidate my needs? Doesn't it teach me that I can't trust my own perceptions? That I need somebody else to evaluate my thoughts, perceptions, and needs and then tell me if they are valid, acceptable, worthy of a response?

I find that very confusing, because again, that's what I experienced in my relationship with my parents. (I can't trust myself to know if what I feel is OK, if what I think is right, etc.)

I don't want anybody to misunderstand my t. She truly is VERY caring. I know for an absolute fact that she DOES NOT want to reinforce the invalidation and damaging messages my parents gave me as a child. But doesn't this situation my t and I are in right now do that very thing? Why doesn't she see it?

the neurobiology of trauma is a specialty area and very few practitioners have training in it. It is "post degree" fodder and quite different to any other kind of talk therapy or relational therapy. It's more science based and more about fixing the dissociative elements of the attachment trauma.

If the assumption is that such a therapist can help the client via co-regulation of affect, then I would ask... with one or two hours per week of contact? That's nuts. The rest of the time, the client is bound to struggle with separation/abandonment.Therapy is structured to be a form of abandonment exposure therapy. The client is lucky to emerge in one piece, let alone achieve any progress.

. . . Eventually, I get zausted, and start questioning if he cares about me in the first place. Intellectually, I know I am lucky to have a seasoned and top trauma therapist, and often I feel that way. At the hard times though, I feel like he doesn't care except during the 50 minutes he sits with me, that he asks for more than I have resources to handle safely, and that I would do just about anything to extinguish the pain in my mind. Before therapy, I had defenses to make this dreamy whisps bad dream stuff, not this lucid, factual pain. I don't know if I can dig down deep enough to survive therapy. . . I don't know if out of sight is out of mind, but it seems like he has a very structured view of what his job and his role is- and he does a tremendous job at that part. He simply doesn't feel it is his job to be a safety net for after sessions unless he is putting someone in a mental hospital or calling 911 . Every once in a while I have reached out to say like- this is too hard, and he does write back something consoling and commiserating .

I can so relate to what I bolded.

What I've come to in the last year, though, is that for me it's the (dissociated) pain that my FOO didn't care. And I dissociated, cut off, part of myself to stop the pain.

The problem for me is that even having gotten that part of me "back" I am still all alone -- husband deceased, adult children have their own lives ( both seem to be doing mostly OK, thank goodness). I had fallen apart after my husband died 18 years ago and was in therapy almost continuously, but in the fallen-apart state I couldn't and didn't rebuild a life despite my best efforts.

I still try. But the failure of my last therapy at the end, her inability to accept my for who I am and my "strange" non-conventional temperament, and her looking down on me because of that is a real repeat of attitudes both within my FOO and conventional female society, too, which most therapists are members of. And part of that cliquish-ness is a rejection of women who are temperamentally different.

Ok the "answer" to that is to look elsewhere. But at 70, how I am supposed to build a life even if I more or less have the "self" to do it? Few skills or talents to do that because of both temperament and trauma during most of my life.

But yes, I still try. My kids care about me some. And, more to the point, maybe, I care about me some. So I still try. It's incredibly hard. But how is that new, in the history of human life on Earth? Of course, it isn't and that doesn't make it any easier.

I did attachment therapy for 18 months. And, the schedule you suggested would not have worked for me. I needed way more than that. If you asked me at the time I started therapy I would have said I needed none of that. I believe it is impossible to plan what is needed in advance, except for a having a therapist that says they have done their work and they are solid, so that whatever your needs are they can handle. That is where trust has to come in. There were times I needed my therapist at 3 in the morning, but I knew she would not be available, (this was her way of taking care of herself). She agreed to get back to me as soon as she could. If it was an emergency or I just wanted a response, then it was my responsibility to let her know by email or phone, so that when she accessed them she knew I needed to be a priority. As far as other emails and phone calls, she would respond if and when she could. Lucky for me there was never a time that she could not respond.

Most therapist can only take one or two clients on at a time that have these needs. In addition, it would be difficult if they had a growing family or they were the go to person in an extended family. I was lucky.

I have a standby therapist that does not do attachment therapy, but is very generous in answering most all my emails, especially if I am having self-doubt for a moment or two. She does more than what you requested in your post. I go from zero emails a month to sending as many as six a day. It's still my way of purging, though the attachment piece is good. The last time I saw her, we talked about the struggles so many on PC have with there therapist not allowing, not responding, or sending one sentence replies when a more substantial responses is being hinted at. She is 75, has just learned to text, but I have no plans to text with her. She said she was glad I was able to send emails anytime I needed to get something out and away from me. And, that I should rest assured that she reads all. She also responds to more than half. I asked her once about what happens if I need the attachment piece again, "If you feel you need that then you will get an attachment therapist." She is willing to read to me if I want it(never have), sit next to me to look at things, etc, but she is just a plain old psychodynamic therapist and will not pretend to do attachment therapy.

I have come a decision that no matter what kind of therapist I employ, if they are not okay with me emailing anytime I need or want then that therapist is not for me.

*You have been with your therapist for a long time and I can understand your reluctance to give her up. But, is there a possibility of hiring a separate therapist to do the attachment piece. People hire a second therapist to do EMDR, so maybe it can be done for the attachment piece.

I would like to suggest an emotionally focused therapist ( Sue Johnson). There also may be other methods for working through attachment issues when a corrective experience is needed/wanted, but I am not familiar with them.