Ghosting/ Break Up

Your situation reminds me of how things unfolded with my past T in some ways though my T seemed very different. He was always emotionally distant with me and authoritarian, but at the same time, was doing therapy with me through texts. A year or so in, he said we couldn't do it anymore. I was ok with quitting texts, just questioned his judgement about it in the first place.

Things just got worse with his distancing and coldness. When I'd describe my longing feelings for him and strong needs, he criticized me; even mocked me. It was horrible and damaging. At the same time I had different parts emerge that had never been 'out'. He handled it horribly. I've seen a T to help deal with the damage from that experience, and it turns out he thinks I have DID (and CTPSD), which is what my last long term T (before the damaging one) thought too. I don't think the rigidness and distance helps with certain trauma clients. In my case, my T was so far off.

But don't forget that Ts make many mistakes, so I personally don't think it's safe to automatically assume that because they are the T, they are right. Not sure what type of work you do, but I see many people around me making daily mistakes. Many small ones, but theoretical ones that impact subsequent activities, and single large, impactful mistakes too. I don't think it's different with therapists. Anyway, just wanted to say-don't rule out going with your gut. Take care.

Well said QuietMind. Several of your posts.

My therapy relationships were artificial. Everything was contrived... boundaries, roles, methods, meaning, the drama, the ruptures. The therapist was a fake person, switching on or off certain behaviors and attitudes as part of a fabricated persona, then leaving the room and becoming someone else (and not like in other professions... this was a freakishly altered persona). And the next client got a similar but slightly different performance. Cheap tricks for money.

As OP said:
"I feel kind of betrayed it is likely a one-way bond, and that his caring so intense was likely fake or at least intentional."

Yep. It's an awful feeling. Intentional... that's a good way to put it.

Trust me. Tell me. Trust me. Stay the course . I will be right with you.

So this the crux of my confusion. This is a particular language in my experience outside of therapy- language of real friendship , language of love.

These words too are exact, literal quotes of what my therapist says to me.

The music and the words don't go together. The words say See this through; I will be right by your side. The music says- when the session is over, he is over.

The discrepancy between what the words mean in a socially fluent daily life world, and how they might be a metaphor-only for something I don't understand in therapy, is very confusing to the uninitiated.

I dont know the answer, but I know how much emotional pain it brings not into the room with T, but outside it back in real life. I am not isolated. But therapy is isolating only in that my focus in my T is heightened and on the real people in my life less.

I am not sure if I will stay the course, bc I am not sure he is right by my side, even if he has a really pretty way with the English language. Tell me ( leans forward, blue eyes look in mine) Trust me. You can trust me. Maybe he is. Maybe that is a metaphor and my prefrontal cortex can deal with that but not my heart . I understand the story of therapy and one's relationship with a psychologist trained in psychodynamic therapy is supposed to truly be the story of a conversation with oneself.

But there is the fact of matter, the fact of the second person there who is not just a tool to use though they may frame themselves to be that. Is trying to know your T a straight up evasion of trying to know myself as one poster above suggested? Or is trying to know a male stranger in my space before telling him my innermost secrets and skeletons only natural?

I want to know to whom I am speaking, and who, when he talks to me in such intimate words- I will be right with you- trust me- is speaking to me. My T seems to sit with me in the paradox he calls " a paradox ". Yes, this is a real and yes this is all artificial.

In retrospect I wish I left the minute therapy became about therapy. My therapist's vanity superseded my welfare, and the relationship became a power struggle.

I no longer believe that therapists are legitimate authority figures nor have authority over us. In fact, I see the idea of the externalized authority infantilizing.

We are customers. I think therapy isn't about therapy; it's about creating better lives. I think the ultimate yard stick is deciding whether the current therapy adds weight to our burdens or lightens them. And if there's a bad patch, I think it's good to decide if we believe if a resolution might be possible.

Sounds like love bombing. My experience was more subtle but same basic deal. Exaggerated attunement leading to euphoria and disorientation. Worse still when input is given by clients or other therapists, with assurances that this is a normal part of "the process". It's ironic that psychologists talk about the dangers of love bombing in relationships, and yet see no problem with clinicians fawning over clients in an attempt to engender trust.

Yes, the simple beautiful language stay the course with me, I'll be right with you. I am very important to you now is very beckoning. If you have lived a life that included a fair number of romantic relationships and close friendships, you recognize this language. It is not doctor/patient/ medical procedure. My T says yes, so it' s a paradox. Let's sit with that paradox; how does it feel to sit in paradox with me? OMFG it is really a rarified and strange experience. The patient is definitely not in charge. The only power I feel I have is to quit.

What is Love Bombing BF?

What I bolded - I feel that sometimes I really do. I've swung back around to thinking my t means the best even though I'm still upset with her, and I'm going to go Thursday because I want her support to get through h's current medical stuff. But I do get that feeling.

I'm no expert, but it's usually a described as a feature of abusive relationships, or cult recruitment techniques, and involves things like:

"Flattery, verbal seduction, affectionate but usually non-sexual touching, and lots of attention."

"Deliberate show of affection or friendship by an individual or a group of people toward another individual. Critics have asserted that this action may be motivated in part by the desire to recruit, convert or otherwise influence."

I'n not saying what therapists do IS love bombing, but I do see parallels. Therapy is usually framed as something medical, which i find insane, and so i look for other analogies/contexts to make sense of it, and one is social control and manipulation.

It all kind of comes down to the motive of the therapist, doesn't it? If the therapist is showing attention, caring, acceptance to the client in order to help the client, then it is appropriate. Because at least for some people with low self-esteem finding someone that can actually accept the worst things about them, can be very healing. But if the therapist is doing it to gain love and adoration from the client, then it is manipulative. The problem is, how do you tell what someone else's motives are?

One of my therapists seemed to have clean motives, but it was still love bombing. She was piling on caring and attunement probably due to mindless adherence to therapy orthodoxy, but more because client adoration is her drug. Even though it was not deliberate or malicious, it was still a huge manipulation. I don't think therapists should be let off the hook for provoking addiction or dependency or confusion on the basis that they are trying to help. Just my take.

Also personally i dont want someone feeding me feel-good messages just because i pay them to do so. I actually felt better when i retroactively rejected all the forced, phony drivel that therapists spoon-fed me.

In my experience, manipulative love bombers tend to try too hard, lay it on too thick, with their charming effusion feeling like a certain response is expected. It’s a performance with an on/off switch.

I had a session today,and it was still very confusing, but differently so. My T seemed sad,and he said he felt like the space didnt feel safe to me anymore, that I was hesitant, and he was deeply puzzled as to why. Since I went in to depth with him last session about all this stuff discussed on the thread, it was like he didnt believe possibility the issue could be within therapy; he kept looking for answers in my outside life- did someone scare or hurt me. Considering how much thought went into this thread,mine and others here, and how hard I worked to be transparent and open, this was unexpected and just left field.

It left me feeling like my T sincerely, and absolutely loves the field of psychodynamic therapy, and believes in it so much he doesnt ask questions like is this relationship real , or what is the meaning of the power imbalance, and can't fathom me asking them of myself .

It is hard to explain how worried he seemed, but yet how unseriously took the topics here- like they were a distraction from a real issue, and he was earnestly trying to get me to tell him what is wrong .

It is like swimming in a huge ocean of ambiguity.

You can tell he does share one fear I also have- that we are cocreating a lose-lose situation and we need to reel it in.

I adore my T, but it is like something hit me in the head with a reality baseball bat, and I just want him to care or not care. Telling me it is all a paradox and he both cares and doesnt care? I need to figure out why that hurts to hear, even while I understand it intellectually.

Do you have children? Do you understand the concept of caring about them and at the same time knowing and accepting that they have to live their own lives with all their problems and frustrations and there is nothing you can do to take them away from them? Do you realise that at the same time as you care about them you also have to live your own life and at those moments that you are attending to yourself and other things in your life while you are not specifically attending to them they may feel that you don't care about them?

I don't even understand it intellectually. Probably I don't think that abstractly. I don't expect my therapists to care about me like they would their spouse or child. But I want them to honestly like and accept me. I also want them to respect and believe that I am being as honest as I can be at the moment, realizing that my emotions do change frequently. But it would bother me a lot if the therapist would not believe that the problem was the therapy.

Everyone understands the nature of the connection between parent and child.

What seemingly nobody can articulate is the nature of the connection between therapist and client, as evidenced by the endless stream of "does my therapist really care" posts on every forum and blog.

When people ask a therapist for clarity, as OP has, seems the response is almost always a bunch of incomprehensible weirdness and evasions, leaving the client reeling. This is considered "therapeutic".

I think when people have to ask if someone cares... the answer is in the question. You know, at a gut level, when something is off, just like a baby knows viscerally when the mother is genuinely attuned.

Why are you trying to argue with me? Haven't you experienced that the truth will not be revealed in those words? I don't think the nature of the relationship between parents and children is clear at all. After all, problems in that relationship are one of the main reasons why people end up in therapy after all.

I responded to OP because I have experienced similarities between my T's care for me and my own care for my children.

I care very much about my children. For one of them it is very clear and he never questions, the other one questions it all the time. For him for me to prove that I care I should literally live his life. The fact that I can't do that means to him that I don't care. Because if I would care then I would do it.

For me it is very interesting because I see my relationship with my son (a teenager now) as some kind of parallel process to my relationship with my therapist. I go to my therapy and I demand something from my T (care for instance, "clear" answers) and I'm frustrated that I don't get exactly what I want. Then I go home and at home my son demands me similar things that I just demanded from my T and by relating to my son I understand perfectly well why my T could not give those things to me because I can't give them to my son either. At the same time, my T has given me a lot over time and thanks to that I have been able to give similar things to my son, too, because via my relationship with my T I have learned what is it that I can and have to provide emotionally to my children - my parents failed to teach it to me and instead traumatised me deeply.

1. On the first point, I think there is another way to understand it, and that is that all the thought and energy was invested in talking about this issue here on the board. I'm not criticizing, I'm just saying that therapy is at least part communication between the two people involved in the relationship, and work (or whatever you want to call it) outside the relationship leaves the other person (in this case T) out of it). If this board was about marriage/intimate relationships and one partner spent days talking about a relationship issue and then brought it back to the partner to discuss, it would probably feel stale and condensed, no matter how lively and engaging the topic was discussed without the partner. To the partner it might feel like getting the book review instead of reading the book, because the intimacy was spent outside the relationship, so the reaction might be expected to be lackluster.

2. Your T is the only other person in the relationship with you. His opinion that this might be a distraction is worth considering as part of what is going on between you.

3. Maybe the issue is not substantive but bumped up a level. Perhaps it's about not getting what you want, it's either yes or no. Sometimes looking at our own reactions that precede the action that bothers us provides some useful information.

I think there is a part of the intimacy of any relationship that can be harmed, sometimes in a way that dishonors the relationship, when people talk about a relationship issue with outsiders instead of or before discussing it with the partner. There's a part of intimacy where working out the issue between the two of you improves the intimacy and communication in the relationship. When that doesn't happen, that possibility is lost. And I think that outside communication does impair communication within the relationship, as there is all the stuff that you've processed that he doesn't have access to, and any way you attempt to summarize and present it is going to lose much from what you've already processed without him.

For sure I hope it goes well on Thursday.

I agree with this, part of it is visceral and nonverbal. My T , at least, explains the "act as if" part really clearly- that this isnt personal.

Some posters are in a place in which they dont want to think critically about psychotherapy, others know it works for them, some are far ahead on a journey of disenchantment and deeply understand why psychotherapy failed them, and many are like me, ambivalent and actively trying to figure out if the experience has value or is harmful or is meaningful .

Are you asking if there is an objective answer to the question, Is the glass (of t) half empty or half full?

I think my ts would usually respond to such questions with, "Why is this coming up now?" Which i could never understand and thought was a super dumb question, but in retrospect, yeah NOW i get why they were asking it.

But at the time, i wished they had been more specific, like, "what does your thinking about having children and the fact that your mother is warning you ahead of time not to expect her to babysit, what does that TELL you about your relationship with your mother?" For example.

So what question do you think future you wishes he would ask? Or whatever.

To me, the fact that he told you to trust him raises some alarms. Not so much because I can identify that it is wrong, as that my therapists have never tried to persuade me to trust them, especially with that sort of emotional appeal. When I have expressed fear about disclosing things, or they knew I was holding back, their response was not to urge me to just trust them (although I think that's the response I was subconsciously looking for). Last time I expressed fear about telling my longtime T something, because I was afraid she would judge me, she only said, "I know you are. Because it's something you wouldn't tell most people." My current T has only said that it is up to me whether I tell her things, but that it might be helpful.

While neither of these responses is particularly reassuring, they did help me feel more personal agency. If my T just outright asked me to trust her, it would feel like I couldn't say no. That by not giving into her request, I would be rejecting T and her help.

What I'm doing is challenging what I see as an aggressive assertion that parent-child and therapist-client ought to be seen as closely related parallel constructs, that the nature and extent of the caring is comparable, and that SE will be freed from her predicament by adopting this view. I find it disturbing to have such an assertion just hanging there. Seems her therapist is playing typical therapist mind games, and someone needs to point out that possibility. If everyone lines up on the side of therapy orthodoxy, that's how people get hurt.

I'm sorry but you're barking at the wrong tree. My "asserting" is just offering a view from my own experience with the hope that that if offers the OP an angle that might (or might not) relate to her somehow. I'm not asserting anything in general about psychotherapy and I'm not saying the something "ought to be seen" in any particular way. Do you see? It is my experience what I'm expressing and they way I've come to seen things according to that experience and there is absolutely no point for you to challenge my experience because why would you do that? To say that my experience is wrong and possibly can't be that way?

In my experience, the therapy process manipulating (exploiting) instinctive childhood responses of powerless, submissiveness and neediness was its most damaging aspect. I was too much in its thrall to understand this at the time though.