Dear T : I Need To Tell You Something, but Don't Know How(Part XXVIII)

I'm disgusting. You hate me, right? I shouldn't be alive.

sorry for the moronic email

I'm missing you/us again. The relationship. The being heard. Damn it.

You should be alive.

I quit. There is no point in continuing our conversations because I cannot change. I am frustrating you. I'm ready to give up being a stupid person with some pathetic diagnosis. I don't want the meds. I don't want the therapy. I want to be on my own, a normal person. I might write an email. I might just cancel next week or all of December. I might just taper off my meds to find the real me again.

Thank you for your warm hug and support. I couldn't wait to show you the mind map I made and was glad you were excited about it

For anyone interested in my map

Internal parts map

That's really cool! What did you use to make it?

Dear T,
Ack, why did you have to ask me that question right at the end of session? You had to suspect I was concerned about that...Now I have to wait a week (well, 6 days, since I see you Tuesday) to discuss it more. I should have asked for some preemptive reassurance before I left or something. But I'm just going to tell myself that you scheduled me for next week and shook my hand like usual, plus mentioned continuing the discussion next week. So clearly you're fine with it. I'll keep telling myself that (and maybe posting on here!) until Tuesday.
--LT

An app called simplemindfree

I haven't seen u without a beard in like 3 years

Dear MC,
Definitely wasn't expecting you to call in response to that e-mail--and certainly not at 10 p.m. (almost didn't answer, but was local number not in my phone--were you at the office?) Did you sense that my transference was fading and were trying to fix that? I do feel a bit better about you now, I suppose, since you took the time to call and discuss it with me. So, thanks. What you said did help a bit, at least in explaining your perspective and why you said what you did on Monday. I think I get it. Like you briefly mentioned on the call, it's like the teaching your son to ski thing... You're just trying to help me to not be dependent on anyone--not on you or on H. It's just hard...
Love,
LT
P.S. Hope it wasn't obvious I'd had a couple beers earlier... I know I was cursing more than usual!

There are these moments when I feel so alone. It's a really unpleasant feeling. Like this black hole inside me and a darkness all around.

I wish you would give me a transitional object. Like a stuffed animal or something. Perhaps that would help. But I know you won't.

I like the way you are most of the time, but sometimes I wish you were more like a normal therapist, the kind that gives transitional objects to their clients.

ETA: In the past, I'd just get wasted to stop feeling this way. I don't do that anymore, but I still don't know how to deal with this feeling. It mostly happens when I'm in that twilight zone of sleep deprivation and over-caffeination such that I'm tired but can't sleep. I'm sure my brain chemistry is just out of whack because of it. Maybe I should ask you how to deal with this feeling.

Dunno who I’m talking to. Maybe the Ur-Therapist.

I feel like a bird who has been flying over the ocean for a long long time with nowhere to rest and nothing to eat. And the more tired I get the closer I sink to the waves.

Dear T,

The phrase is ‘I’m a terrible person, and I deserve to be hurt.’

I want to get past it. I want to get it out of my head. I want to be able to tell you!

T,

Thank you for offering me an extra session next week instead of having me wait our usual two weeks. I'm scared of processing that trauma memory. I understand why you want to devote an entire session to it, as well as not wait till our last session before I fly.

will you miss me?

Please don't go on vacation.

I'm so sorry I said that to you yesterday. It was a terribly unfair and selfish thing to say to you. But please don't take those 2 weeks off. I'm having a hard time lately and I need you. Thinking about talking to the substitute therapist is stressing me out. I don't want to think about having to summarize my abusive marriage to another person, a stranger, even if you do respect her. Thinking about all the terrible stuff that happened all at once is very painful for me.

You're so f***ing nice. Stop being so nice. I can't handle it. I don't know what to do with it.

I'm having a pretend session w you in my head starting in 3 minutes.

Dear T,

Our session two days later this week (with two days earlier last week due to thanksgiving) was really rough for me. I talked tonight what a rough past 9 days it was for me, the bad panic attack I had on thanksgiving after everyone left, the existential life crisis I had, the fight I had with my husband that made us both cry. But it’s so hard just being able to give you the recap. It’s at times like this emotionally difficult week that I realize the limits of therapy, that I’m even more aware of the boundaries and how quickly an hour a week goes by. And yes, I appreciate you offer out of session contact, but you know my issues in not wanting to rely on people, I could never contact you unless it was a catastrophe, I would die of embarrassment.

There’s a part of me that wants more, wishes we could have met in another context and been best friends. Our personalities are similar and we’re close in age—we could have been great friends in a different life. (You know how much of my life I’ve spent confiding in gay men—no wonder we have such a good connection—although I swear I didn’t chose you for that reason.) I wish you could be my day to day support system, be a good friend who checks in with me, be insightful and caring on a day to day basis like I’m sure you are with your friends.

But I understand the point you’ve raised in interviews about crossing that line from therapist into friend and how hard it is to cross back. So if I had to chose one, I choose you as my therapist. I can make friends, as challenging as that is for an introvert like myself. But a therapist like you and my ability to trust you, that’s one in a million for me. So I acknowledge boundaries and respect them, and realize I have consistency and reliability from you. But it’s so hard sometimes! It was such an emotional week for me that we had to pause it when we ran out of time, I trust when you said we can process more next week. But can it be next Thursday already? I wasn’t done talking....

M.

Thank you.

The pleading one is so safe and happy to be in that safe place.

She feels no fear here.

We are just relaxing in that space and feeling.

It’s something that I haven’t felt before, and neither has she.

Thank you for helping us get there.

Hi R,

I'm physically safe, but mentally I'm on shaky ground. It's hard to explain the whys and wherefores to people who don't really get it. The more I think about it, the more I realise that I shut down as soon as I could...so I never really dealt with it. And now this...classic bait and switch, it never actually happened.

Next Thursday....

Dear MC,
I keep thinking of what you asked at the end of our call Wednesday: "Are we OK?" Something about the way you said it (not like "can we stop talking about this now?" but genuine concern), it felt like you really care about our relationship, too. And that means a lot to me.
Love,
LT