[Echos Myron redux]

So I had a very painful last portion of my session today.

He said something about the therapeutic relationship being a "means to an end" and I didn't like this phrase even though I cognitively understand he is saying it has a specific purpose etc.

I was annoyed because we had 10 mins left so no time to talk about it yet I had nothing else to say. So I sat quiet and upset. Then at the end I handed him his money and said "you're right. The therapeutic relationship is a contrived load of bollocks trying to artificially squeeze itself into 60 minutes". And I started crying. I was frustrated with myself. I asked if I could have an extra 15 mins and pay him the extra and he said yes. And then my tears magically dried up. He said "what do you want?" I said "I want everything to be different" he said "i think I hear you saying you don't want this relationship to have the limitations of time and space that it has". I said "sort of. I don't want you to see it as a means to an end." Then I said "sometimes I feel if you just tell me you love me and hold me it will fix everything but I know it won't" (still tearful).

I said I hadn't shown him all the pain with the therapeutic relationship before. What I go through between sessions.. Only told him about it. Asked him how it felt. He said he felt sad but said it felt important and thanked me for showing him. Then we were coming to the end of the extra 15. I just said "I suppose I had better go". And we hugged and I left.

I sent him this email after session

Dear T

When I first came to see you, I was weighed down by the attachment and love I felt towards someone who I paid to spend an hour a week in the company of. I remember how liberating it felt to talk about that with somebody unconnected, somebody who I didn't long for between sessions - you. Now, here I am, weighed down by love and attachment towards you.
You recently reminded me how, back then, you said you think you know how to work with me if I develop such feelings towards you. I don't doubt you know how to work with attachment and transference. I am beginning to doubt whether I am capable of working with it as a client.

Today, when I cried, initially I didn't know why I was crying. It was when you said I could have an extra 15 minutes and the crying ceased that I realised I was crying because the hour was up. I felt, and still feel, pathetic and ashamed that I was crying for that reason. I feel even more ashamed that receiving scraps of your time dried the tears up. I feel a great deal more shame at the thought of how manipulative it looks, even though I was not consciously controlling my responses.

Possible trigger:

It makes me want to hurt myself.

I don't believe this is a means to an end. I no longer think there is an end to this. I don't think I am going to magically start thinking differently one day and decide that I am ready to leave therapy. I think I am either going to cut and run after being hit by a wall of shame over my feelings for you (which very much is on my radar at the present time) or you will retire, or die, or have enough of me and I will be left heartbroken again. In fact I think this can only end in heartbreak. So why am I doing it?

This is what unrequited love feels like. Nobody ever suggested unrequited love had any use or healing potential. We all can agree it's a bag of s***. This is worse in a way because I have to sit and explain this to you, and you can sit there as passively as can be and say "I hear you saying you wish this relationship didn't have the constraints of time and place that it has". What use is it to discuss this over and over? What use is it for you to reflect that back to me? And worse, for you to see me in pain, in this most profound, unsolvable, exquisite pain, and to say it makes you feel sad. I felt sad when my cat hurt her paw the other week.

I don't think you can ever comprehend the depth of what goes on inside of me and I don't think I can either. What is the point of trying? What is the point of humiliating myself like this? Crying like a child not getting their own way. F***.

What now? Do I continue to do the thing I felt so glad I escaped when I left T1? There's no point going to another therapist because I have proven to myself that this is just what I do. I just need the f*** out of people till they don't know what to do anymore. I'm sorry you met me. I'm sorry I'm so f***ed up and unfathomable.
Echos

He just replied

Hi Echos

I hope my replying does not make the situation more difficult for you, that is not my intention.

What strikes me in reading your email is the shame you are experiencing. I wonder if we can explore that - the connection between loving and shame? How does the one lead to the other?

I didn't have any sense that you were trying to manipulate me or the situation today - I suspect that if you had tried to control your behaviour it would have been to stop yourself from crying. From where I was sat the tears looked determined to be shed despite your best efforts.

Possible trigger:

I hear that you want to hurt yourself - I very much hope that you won't.

I am not at all sorry to have met you or that I am am working with you.

Please be kind to yourself,

Warm wishes, T

I just feel hopeless and terrible. Him seeing it and just sitting there passively is too much. Not sure what else he can do but it just feels awful and pointless. I don't want to cry over 15 minutes of someone's time.

[junkDNA]

Originally Posted by Echos Myron redux

So I had a very painful last portion of my session today.

He said something about the therapeutic relationship being a "means to an end" and I didn't like this phrase even though I cognitively understand he is saying it has a specific purpose etc.

I was annoyed because we had 10 mins left so no time to talk about it yet I had nothing else to say. So I sat quiet and upset. Then at the end I handed him his money and said "you're right. The therapeutic relationship is a contrived load of bollocks trying to artificially squeeze itself into 60 minutes". And I started crying. I was frustrated with myself. I asked if I could have an extra 15 mins and pay him the extra and he said yes. And then my tears magically dried up. He said "what do you want?" I said "I want everything to be different" he said "i think I hear you saying you don't want this relationship to have the limitations of time and space that it has". I said "sort of. I don't want you to see it as a means to an end." Then I said "sometimes I feel if you just tell me you love me and hold me it will fix everything but I know it won't" (still tearful).

I said I hadn't shown him all the pain with the therapeutic relationship before. What I go through between sessions.. Only told him about it. Asked him how it felt. He said he felt sad but said it felt important and thanked me for showing him. Then we were coming to the end of the extra 15. I just said "I suppose I had better go". And we hugged and I left.

I sent him this email after session


He just replied


I just feel hopeless and terrible. Him seeing it and just sitting there passively is too much. Not sure what else he can do but it just feels awful and pointless. I don't want to cry over 15 minutes of someone's time.

safe hugs if needed

But in time, The memory of him being there will comfort.

[Taylor27]

Hugs we are here for you anytime so sorry you had a painful session hopefully the end is a long time away for you. Hugs

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by Jessica11

But in time, The memory of him being there will comfort.

Yeah. You dont want your only memory or experience of love to be a clock wire monkey. So the live t monkey is a step up from that. But we need the reparative experience in order to breed or at least survive in the wilds of society.

[Out There]

Hugs Echos. Those are painful feelings. We wanted something from someone but didn't get it ( and if they are gone we will never get it ) and we SOO want it from others. Those are your feelings coming out in therapy , I guess feeling humiliated and guilty about them is how inner child feels. It's really crap to get them out and look at them too. Such tricky steps to deal with , I've been working on it myself recently , so you have my empathy.

[Lrad123]

Oh my goodness. Reading this is just so touching. I can particularly relate to the whole “him seeing it and just sitting there passively.” FWIW, I greatly admire your unabashed, honest expressions of love and caring for your T. I would just sit there stony-faced while dying on the inside. Hugs.

[RaineD]

Your sentiments feel familiar to me. I felt similarly last year. That the therapeutic relationship was painful, that nothing would ever change or improve, and that the entire endeavor was therefore probably pointless. I felt ashamed of my feelings for him too. The love, the neediness, it just all seemed so embarrassing.

Also, I would have felt hurt too if my therapist had told me that the relationship was a means to an end.

But something changed for me last December, after a rupture during which I almost quit therapy. I emailed him asking him to help me stop therapy. He asked me to stay. I felt differently after that. I knew he wasn't just waiting for an excuse to get rid of me.

We continued to have our disagreements, but he was always there for me when it mattered. Because of him, I was able to step outside of my comfort zone and to take my career to the next level, even though it required me to move away, to leave everyone and everything I knew and move somewhere else, somewhere unfamiliar and strange. But I was not afraid because he was there for me.

My love for him deepened. It felt real and vast and solid.

In June, when he told me his health had taken a turn for the worse and he would probably have to close his practice at some point, I told him I loved him. He held my feelings. He showed me that there was nothing wrong with them. They were normal and natural (of course, because everyone who knew him loved him) and nothing to be ashamed of. I learned to tell him in person that I loved him. I loved him with all my heart, my entire being. I did not expect anything in return. It was liberating.

My therapist taught me how to love. And I am a different person because of it.

Yes, he died, and, yes, I am heartbroken. There are still moments when the pain feels unbearable. There are still times when I wish I could die with him. I miss him terribly and can't imagine a future without him.

But I haven't actually killed myself, and I'm not going to. I get up most days and go to work. I have not been incapacitated though sometimes I want to fall on the ground and never get up again.

I can tell you that, if this had happened a year ago, it would have destroyed me completely. I am not the same person I was a year ago. My relationship with my therapist changed me. I am stronger, more resilient. I understand love. I carry his love in my heart always. It is my guiding light, and it gives me strength.

I guess my point is, there is hope. It is not pointless. I couldn't tell you how I got from where I was a year ago to where I am now. But I'm telling you it's possible.

I'm far from done with my work. I have lots of broken bits and unhealed wounds still. The grief I feel is profound. But I am a different person. Therapy changed me. It worked. Sometimes I can't believe it either. But it's true.

I admire you for your willingness to experience all this so openly in relation to a T, Echos. Even if it sometimes feels useless and perhaps like a form of self injury. I think many people would not be willing to do similar, I know I would not, not in therapy. This openness is a strength that, I am sure, will benefit your own work as a T, even if things won't get resolved in very major ways in your own emotional life.

[RaineD]

Oh, btw, I also wish my relationship with my therapist wasn't constrained in time and space. I still do. And that was/is painful. But, despite those constraints, it was still meaningful, and it was still real.

Boundaries are painful though, and I guess there's no real way around it.

[Ididitmyway]

I have no words of comfort, unfortunately. I know exactly what's going on with you because you told my own story here, basically (this could count for self-disclosure). The same anguish, the same feelings towards the therapists (all 3 of them - all male), the same heartbreak, the same type of letters ( I wrote many of those, not just one), the same shame and feeling of humiliation that this situation inevitably brings, the same pain and frustration about how much power they had over me because the love went only one direction (from me to them), the same humane, compassionate but ..ignorant responses from them that did not make me feel better because, as kind and sympathetic as they were, they demonstrated that they didn't understand a damn thing about what was going on with me no matter how much I tried to explain it and how heartfelt my communications were (both written and verbal).

It saddens me a lot to see you or anyone in that place.

I am happy that I am not in that place anymore and have not been for a long time now. I made my choice of how to end it and what lessons to learn from it. I trust that you will make a choice that is best for you and learn the right lessons for yourself. Meanwhile, take care of yourself. You are not alone in this. I believe that many people on this forum, myself included, have been where you are or, at the very least, can understand what's going on with you better than your therapist can, I suspect. The prove of that is the number of hugs under your post.

[Echos Myron redux]

Thanks everyone. I slept for a long time and I feel slightly less hopeless and despairing this morning. I am glad he got to see the pain. It's the first time in all these years he's seen it right in front of him. I could count the number of times I've cried in front of him on one hand in 4 years..

I'm probably going to email him back this morning and say that the shame is not a result of the love. I don't feel ashamed of loving him. I felt the shame because I was basically begging him for 15 minutes of his time and offering to pay him. That felt desperately painful and just illustrated the hopelessness I was experiencing.

Not sure what I want to do at the moment. I feel better for getting it all out but I don't know what to do next.

[Ididitmyway]

Originally Posted by Echos Myron redux

I feel better for getting it all out but I don't know what to do next.

I am guessing, this will, probably, depend on how you want him to handle this and to continue to work with you from now on and whether he will fulfill that need or not. I think, the most important thing in situations like that is to get clear with yourself as far as what you want and to base your decisions on that.

Maybe you weren't begging. You were asking for you felt you needed in that moment.
He could have said no. But he didn't.
I have a lot of Shame around asking for things.
Pur that together with having to ask a "professional" it doubles it. But that's just my head feeling me is some how wrong. I shouldn't have to need anything from anyone.
It makes asking people in my personal life a, whole lot easier because of having asked for things in therapy.

[Echos Myron redux]

Originally Posted by Jessica11

Maybe you weren't begging. You were asking for you felt you needed in that moment.
He could have said no. But he didn't.
I have a lot of Shame around asking for things.
Pur that together with having to ask a "professional" it doubles it. But that's just my head feeling me is some how wrong. I shouldn't have to need anything from anyone.
It makes asking people in my personal life a, whole lot easier because of having asked for things in therapy.

I don't really have a problem asking for what I want, in or out of therapy. The painful part of this runs deeper than that. It's the relational aspect. The fact that this does not resemble any human relationship in any way. I need him and he doesn't need me and all I can offer him is money. When I am stronger I can rationalise that and see the good that therapy has done me. Not today.

Originally Posted by Echos Myron redux

I don't really have a problem asking for what I want, in or out of therapy. The painful part of this runs deeper than that. It's the relational aspect. The fact that this does not resemble any human relationship in any way. I need him and he doesn't need me and all I can offer him is money. When I am stronger I can rationalise that and see the good that therapy has done me. Not today.

Ah OK. I see where you're coming from now. Writing is one dimensional. It's hard to pick up fully.

[Ididitmyway]

Originally Posted by Echos Myron redux

When I am stronger I can rationalise that and see the good that therapy has done me. Not today.

I wish I could make it a sticky post on PC for everyone to see whenever someone urges a person, who is in great pain, to look at things "rationally". But I digress.

[Waterloo12345]

Be kind to your self then today. Your strength will come back on time.

I've not got much to say but am in a similar place. When I'm strong I can see the benefit the relationship is bringing in the long term, when I'm not I send lengthy emails, ending them in love, not yet used words I love you but I've spoken of a lot of paternal transference, ended loads of emails with love, been very very very needy. So I reckon he knows.

Hope you feel better soon.

Eta to add. These are normally 3am emails so you can imagine the content. You are not alone!!!!

[weaverbeaver]

So sorry Echos, that’s a big and painful realisation to come to.
Therapy can be so shaming when we let out our true desires and feelings for our ts.
Perhaps your t does feel similar but he is keeping good boundaries by keeping this about you and your feelings.

I have often felt similar about my t and how strongly o feel about her and my attachment to her but she doesn’t show me that I mean anything to her and it’s so hard.
Please be gentle with yourself and try not to shame yourself further x

What came strongly to my mind is the Oedipus complex.

Based on everything you share about your therapy on this forum, Echos, it is really hard for me to believe that all he gets out of working with you is the money.

I really understand the shame about asking for extra and not just pulling it together and leaving composed. I never asked my Ts explicitly for extra time or effort, but my 2nd often invested it, both going over the formal time in sessions and with emails, and never made me pay for it or accepted when I offered it. I always felt highly ambivalent about it, and the negative part of the ambivalence was often shame about wanting it and having that need. I never explored the shame part in therapy (I did by myself, using my experiences), but I agree it may be a good idea for someone like you, who likes to get into your emotional world so deeply via therapy. I also think that verbally and directly asking for extra help when needed is a more mature approach than expressing that need indirectly (what I often did with my Ts). It is also less likely to lead to misunderstanding.

This seems to all tie in with the prospect of seeing Ts house and family during the construction, which led to many feelings trying to push up to the surface. When the idealization defenses are diminished, you don't focus on the 'other' so much and are left with your own feelings of unrequited love. Your T seemed to allow a slow process over the years (rather than abrupt) and so you've developed a strong relationship, so I think it will be ok.

You have a good and steady T, so things will be good. Both my long-term Ts worked with the unrequited love; one handled it well one did not.

[Echos Myron redux]

Thanks to those who have expressed further thoughts on this. Xyn, I think you are right that he gets more from this than money. I guess these feelings defy rationality (as IDIMW points out, rationality goes out of the window in the face of pain).

Octoberful, I hadn't considered whether there's a link to the upcoming disruption, so thank you for that.

At the end of the day, these aren't feelings that I haven't felt before. They are feelings I haven't shown to him before. I have described them to him, but this feels different, more real. For both of us.

Normally when I feel bad about the attachment etc I post in dear T. When I write "I miss you" on that thread you can be sure all the feelings in that email sit behind that.

I feel differently today, particularly after talking a bit to someone else (also a therapist, with a lot of knowledge about attachment and the presence of 'parts' and their conflicting needs) which helped me feel a little more hopeful. Receiving an email from T (at my request) addressing a professional issue he said he would help me with has helped too. It's allowed the adult part of me to re-engage. With him and with myself.

I know that my feeling better is because a more adult part of me has come to the fore. A part of me with a solid sense of self-trust and independence. The me that other people in my life would recognise and who is actually pretty happy.

The sad thing is that I know the parts of me who wrote that email and who have those needs and who love my T so desperately, aren't satisfied with this self-assured, confident, bright adult who I present to the world. They are still in desperate need of love, in need of my T and they still feel desperately ashamed of that. What's more, these parts aren't well defined for me so their sudden fading in and out can be confusing and unpredictable. Though it seems to only emerge in the context of therapy and when I am alone in my thoughts.

I'm glad my T saw this side of me. I'm glad it was present in the room rather than hidden from him and described second-hand. Maybe this is some kind of progress. We shall see.

I admire you for discussing with your T. Before I started seeing my current T, I asked myself - do I really want to go back to living with those yearning feelings between sessions? I decided that the benefit of therapy was worth it. I have assumed that I'll probably never mention it to my T. I see those feelings as being a side effect of therapy, and also a problem of therapy that does not appear to be acknowledged by the therapy profession.

Originally Posted by RaineD

My therapist taught me how to love. And I am a different person because of it. I guess my point is, there is hope. It is not pointless. I couldn't tell you how I got from where I was a year ago to where I am now. But I'm telling you it's possible.

This. ^^^^ This.
This is why I am here, and why I appreciate all of you so much.