What allows you to speak freely?

No, the divorce allowed me to really relate to her as an adult and put the unmet childhood needs on hold for a good long time. She has Been There, Done That, Written The Dissertation when it comes to marital breakdown and she hit that right out of the park. It allowed adult me to trust her and enjoy her, and I came to use her to work through problems that I could articulate, define and maybe even solve. I feel a whole array of things about that relationship, its end, and the fact that we are parenting together but ultimately, therapy has been empowering and the progress I've made has been obvious to me and the people close to me.

It is a world of difference from the vague persistent pain and shame of childhood trauma and attachment stuff. When I'm in adult mode with her, I can ask for what I need or say when I don't want something even if I have to take a deep breath sometimes. This tea thing makes me feel completely idiotic and helpless because it's obviously coming from some very young and fearful place and somehow my totally reasonable grownup communication skills are inaccessible.

That sounds like you solidified top down instead of bottom up. But now youre left with a soggy bottom crust? Whereas i would look at my therapy as a blind bake, where i have spent the last ten years with a pastry shell full of t-marbles, so now im empty but boy do i have a crispy crust.

I really wasnt able to support a relationship pudding before without falling apart. But im starting to ask for help from other people, if you count Uber as people.

I like what someone said here about maybe the tea is HER caretaking ritual. But it still feels withholding to me. And the fact that she has avoided talking about it is telling to me. She doesnt have to change it, but you need to talk about how it feels. Maybe SHE still needs to deal with it with her own t? Maybe she doesnt understand attachment needs. IMO, people who grew up securely attached dont always understand the have-nots, the fish out of water.

FJ — is she psychodynamic? Coz I find this very odd.

I’ve had two psychodynamic therapists — very far apart in terms of personal style, warmth and HOW they treat attachment stuff.

But, both of them responded — and made it (continue to make it with my current one) very clear that they are responding to my stated (and sometimes, unstated) stuff around attachment.

Their styles differ, in that, former therapist was very textbook-y about it but current one is much more free-form. But, respond they did.

That’s why I find her ignoring such explicit messages (and from what I’ve read, it is very explicit) from you to be very odd.

Anne 2.0 that's really well-put. I think the challenge for me here is to bridge the gap between my ability to communicate emotional needs coming from an adult place and emotional needs coming from a child place. It's not specifically about ranting/venting as about not feeling guarded.

Awkwardly, I talked to her about it today and there is definitely a difference between how she perceives having handled attachment stuff with me thus far, and how I perceive it. She lets my version/feelings stand because she doesn't need to be right or one up me, but I know if she were telling this, you'd be hearing a different story. She would not say that she ignored the issue.

So I gotta ova up and plow through.

Not to perseverate, but would you attach meaning to it if she brought and ate chocolate in session and never offered you a piece?

I think it would depend upon presentation. If she walked in already chewing, it wouldn't bother me at all. If she walked in with a dish of chocolate pieces, placed it on the table next to her, and didn't offer it to me, I would think it rude and weird of her.

The first seems like a private action to me, the second a public one. The same would be true for me with tea--if she walked in with her cup, I wouldn't think twice. If she brewed it in front of me, I would expect an offer. I wouldn't feel personally rejected, but that's only because unmet needs are behind me at this point in my life.

If this is coming from a child place for you, as it seems to be, maybe it's also colored by the child's expectation that mom lives for the child, has no existence beyond the child's needs. So mom not sharing is an injury. I agree with Anne that adult expectations are generally best served by releasing them and by self-advocacy of needs. But that's not how children perceive their needs or the world. And their sense of injury can be pretty deep, regardless of past circumstances. That developmental period during which children start experiencing their needs as not immediately responded to by by their parents is tough. If it isn't successfully navigated at the time, that yearning/disappointment/rage/expectation/abandonment cycle would likely express itself in another intimate relationship. Maybe you trust your T more than you think or else this feeling wouldn't dare to show itself?

For me it was that I paid them for it and their job was to listen to whatever I wanted to speak about. I never really had issues speaking freely when I decided I wanted to speak about something, but I also chose not to talk about a lot of things in therapy, stuff that was irrelevant in my opinion. Otherwise the way feralkittymom's describe it is very similar to my case. My T's actually sometimes describe my issues as "hard to reach" because I rarely complain or purely vent - just not my personality. But I can talk pretty easily about just any subject I choose, it had little to do with the therapist. I did stop talking about certain topics when I felt it was useless for me or I got grossly and repeatedly misunderstood - what would be the point to force something that does not seem to go through?

I think what perhaps puzzles Ts with clients like that is the combination of discussing things with ease when we choose to do so and, at the same time, appearing composed and "together". Maybe they wonder what do we actually go to therapy for if no/little complaints and able to manage ourselves? This is, I believe, why my last T ended up mostly just having conversations with me about whatever, as equals. He did tell me a few times that I approached my sessions unlike most other clients.

[QUOTE=feralkittymom;6101621]Mine told me she thinks I'm very stoic--that I'm always put together and greet her cheerfully, that I don't whine or complain. I suppose that means most of her clients do? IDK. That's just not my personality. I'm pretty open emotionally if what I'm talking about has strong feelings, but I don't feel conflicted in general. What I talk about and how doesn't really have much to do with her. I think I puzzle her a bit.[/QUOT]

I did not have trouble telling the woman when I was angry. I figured she is paid and she did state she did not take it personally (although she probably should have). I can't hurt a therapist.
Both of them described me as having a hard to read demeanor. Stoic, impassive, and reserved were all words the therapists tossed out at me. Granted, I think those are good things so I had no real desire to change those.

I'm curious -- what was her take on it?

(Needless to say) Only if you're okay sharing it that is.

Well she didn't overly get into it because I didn't overly care yesterday to hear her perspective. It was such a struggle to explain mine. I'm so much more articulate in writing and sometimes it's very hard to find words when talking about this stuff. It was helpful to have discussed here already.

Her perspective is that she allows me dictate the agenda and do the work at my own pace. She wants to be careful not to do my work for me. I'll be able to listen to her better sometime when I'm not feeling so raw. It was one of those days where I worried that if I didn't speak then, I might forever hold my peace.

I don’t care.

I also use creative cursing to express myself.

Not to put too fine a point on it but therapy — my therapy — is all about >me.<

I’ve never had a shrink express shock over my admitted (or observed) behaviors. Just as I never had a priest melt into a puddle whilst confessing my sins.

(I miss many things about my ex-religion, but I particularly miss confession.)

I have several simultaneous things going on in therapy and I skip between them so that I feel like a very different version of myself depending on what we're addressing.

I can usually talk quite easily about pretty much everything happening in the present and most every aspect of my adult life including things I'm not proud of, grieving, deeply angry/bitter or self-blaming about etc. I don't generally go off on long tirades in therapy mainly because it seems like a poor use of my therapy dollar.

Depending on my mood and the topic, I can now sometimes speak freely about childhood and adolescent events. Other times I still get frozen in trauma mode but that happens way less often now.

But attachment isn't merely a topic. It's kind of an experience, a dynamic process. And in the context of therapy I find it to be a nightmare. So talking about it is much less obvious for me.

I'm not convinced that talking about attachment is all that useful or even possible. And I think that's exactly because it is a dynamic process and highly experiential. To talk about it seems to me to distance from the experience of it. I guess I see attachment as an action, more than as a state (which implies a non-variable bond.) I think I implicitly developed and internalized a secure attachment to former T through the experience of discussing a variety of other topics, especially deeply emotional topics. It wasn't until after the bond was secure, and after the transference was resolved, that we could speak directly and without any emotional ambivalence about the attachment.

You know, FJ, the thing that strikes me as so odd and poignant about your situation is that you've pretty much laid out for her exactly -- no guessing involved on her part -- as to what you need her to do.

Make the frickin' cup of tea. Maybe not every single time. But, one time. Some time.

And, she doesn't?

Earlier on, I'd have baulked at the idea of having someone -- especially a therapist -- respond to such an explicitly stated wish. I would've thought "What's the point? If they'd wanted to do it, they'd have done it without my asking for it".

But, I'm coming to appreciate the fact that doing it after being really clearly told is still a rather big deal.

And, therapists especially, I'd think would pretty much leap at the opportunity to do something so terribly concrete that requires a really small amount of effort but has such huge payoffs.

Even if she doesn't get anything else about how my brain is wired around attachment, her lack of response would make me wonder if she even heard me -- just simply as one person to another and nothing else.

Yeah I know. If I were her I'd just do it out of curiosity if nothing else. What happens when you add tea? It kind of makes me think hard about whether I want to stay in therapy.

Update: Guys. I'm still really treading water here!

I am trying, really trying to slog through this with her. I don't recognize myself. I want to talk and some bigger, more powerful impulse is clapping a hand over my mouth. I sit on the couch miserably and stare at her shoes as though we’ve just met and I haven’t been in therapy with this woman for seven long years. Her shoes last session were red.

The tea thing fills me with hatred and resentment. I can't believe that I have to keep asking. It seems that she is going to make me keep bringing it up. I say “it seems” because I haven't asked her what her agenda is. Instead, I've sat there completely still like an inarticulate asshole casting about for a way to get words out.

I don’t know her reasons for failing to meet me on this in a satisfactory way. I've never struggled this hard to get through to her about anything else. My best guess is that this is that it's some combination of:

a) her not holding onto (what seem to me) the salient details from one session to the next,

b) in spite of my efforts to tell her, she really fails to grasp the outsize importance and intensity this has taken on for me and,

c) her being uncharacteristically wedded to some therapeutic orthodoxy that says that she can't just be a f~cking human being and make me a measly cup of tea FFS.

The intensity of all this is not just in wanting the tea but in the despair at the prospect of being turned down. I swear it is some version of the infantile fear of endless falling that Winnicott describes. Talking verges on impossible: I feel so much shame for wanting it that I can barely tolerate the reciprocal vulnerability of chancing a No On Tea.

Or maybe just this: she has spent endless hours encouraging me to accept that I have needs and consider what they might be. And here I have this one need and I'm not asking for anything out of control or out of bounds or even out of the norm: other therapists have offered me coffee or tea or had it in the waiting room, but it was just a beverage in those contexts. With those therapists, the therapy was never about the relationship so tea remained just tea.

Maybe I feel a bit paralyzed because in this utterly ridiculous drama about The Tea I Haven't Gotten is kind of the story of my life. The tentative asking, the desperate wishing, the disappointment from the all-important attachment figure and the horrible silence and shame around it are all recurring themes. I swallow the awkwardness for literally years and decide that I don't actually need it, it's dumb, I shouldn't want it, it's too much... that's a recurrent theme too. I’ll give her this: she's right, it doesn't work like that, you can’t will your needs away.

OMG. It's as though she thinks I can only work on this if she makes it as painful and humiliating as possible. Like if I feel safe or cared for in this tiny symbolic way, The Work gets subverted. Which, dude, I don't think it would or could. But, like, even if that were possible, would it be so bad if I got a turn to copy someone else’s homework for a change?

You've done some major in-depth reflecting about this: Go You! Maybe all of what you've written here is what she was hoping you'd come to. I would absolutely show her your post. FWIW, I don't think she's trying to make it so painful, but rather that these feelings as they originate in childhood, especially at formative times, are painful. It's sort of primal pain, and probably a blessing that we're meant to experience at such young ages and not remember it cognitively.

I don't believe this is true. At all.

But, here's a basic question I have -- is she generally of the school of thought that believes in / works with attachment stuff as something core to therapy? Note, I'm not asking if she's just psychodynamic.

I'll bet it was what she was hoping I'd come to. She finds this kind of stuff thrilling. If she didn't have an unmistakably kind look in her eyes, I'd call it sadism.

Oh for sure. She's ALL ABOUT attachment stuff. That's why I've found her way of dealing with this issue to be such an unpleasant surprise. She doesn't play games, I experience her as just a sincere person in a professional role, but her unwillingness or inability to get me on this has felt like a game. Like she won't show her cards.

I could have this wrong of course, but I think I've been at this long enough to differentiate between when I'm hating her because of some emotion that is about another time, person or place and when I'm angry with her over something that properly belongs to what is happening here and now and is truly about her.

As FKM was pointing out, a lot of this stuff seems to be about very early hurt, but I think I can pick it apart:

My intense yearning for her to make me a cup of tea? An issue that belongs to another time and place that I'm trying to resolve with her.

My anger and bewilderment at how she's addressing this? In large part, a here-and-now issue belonging to the present day and to her.

My very limited ability to address and verbalize those feelings with her? A bit of both. My present-day, conflict-in-close-relationship skills are not yet what I'd like them to be, but neither are they as stunted as the shitshow I've been putting forth with her the last few weeks.

Absolutely this^. The issues that clearly fall into the past or into the present are the easy ones. It's these ones that operate on multiple levels that are so difficult--but as they're worked through, I think they also carry the greatest benefit. Thank the Goddess!

The fact that t doesn't judge me and because it's her job. The first three don't apply because I do care what t thinks, I don't feel we have a super close relationship, but I am able to talk.

this thread is appropriate as i have such a difficult time talking about things that make me feel vulnerable, ESPECIALLY in regards to her. I tried for an hour to tell my T last night how cancelling the week prior had sent me spiraling,but could not get the words out.

She suggested writing out my feelings and bringing it to session, that way we can process it in the room, when usually emails i send after sessions generally don’t get talked about.
I wanted to take this as a rejection of my needs, but i do realize she is right. I wrote out all the things i couldn’t say after last night’s session, and i do feel better knowing it is away from me. I may feel differently when i hand it to her to read next week.