Why do I suddenly feel empowered?

Isn't your therapist psychoanalytic? I've found that style of working brings out intense transference and feelings of dependency on the therapist.

Both of my long term Ts are psychoanalytic, so the needs represented my child needs rather than adult needs. It's not that they are separate, its more that the child parts are drawn out front and center. The transference gets really intense, sort of covering up the adult. In session, the adult may dissapear completely leaving me feeling literally like a child. I have dissiciative issues too, but not referring to that here.

I don't think the containment needs to this degree as adult needs as much as I think they are feelings from the past surfacing in the present.

Your thinking here strikes me as sort of all-or-nothing. Either you are supported all the time, in session and out, or you are on your own. But I think maybe the idea is that you get support in session, you know it will be there again later, so inbetween you can just go out and do your thing without help. If therapy was food this would be like eating only at meal times, maybe. You eat, it's enough so you're not hungry and you don't have to snack constantly, and then you eat again at the next meal.

I'm glad this has been such a good change for you!

He’s psychodynamic but he was in psychoanalysis 4 days/week for 5 years so that’s his background. Technically we are not doing psychoanalysis since he is not analytically trained and we meet just once/week, don’t lie down on a couch, etc. He has said multiple times that I’m very “analytic” and I keep forgetting to ask what he means by that. I assume it means I’d be a good psychoanalysis client, but not sure what to do with that comment since my therapist is not an analyst. Is he saying I should switch to psychoanalysis? Confusing.

Sort of similar here. What mine said was that he usually "makes clients wait and doesn't reply right away if at all, but he was always replying right away to me" and I thought OMG, what the hell is wrong with me? LOL

Then I realized, HIS feelings for me, were colliding with my feelings, it made things really tough for us with emails. He's fully admitted about how he reacted differently with emailing me than other clients. Lots of details I don't wanna share publicly.

Anyway.... I realized it wasn't that anything was wrong with me, it was that he wanted to reply as much as I wanted to have him reply. It lead to a many misunderstandings and a huge rupture that almost ended everything for us.

Thankfully we are good now, in a way, I think I feel closer to him. Maybe it's the secure feeling of the relationship I now have. Yes, like you, I kinda figured it was a thing all therapists did. I had many misconceptions about therapy.

Out of curiosity... since we seem to be similar in how we handle things and feel about therapy (like wanting to be independent and not depend on our T) do you know your attachment style?

On limit and limit setting. - PubMed - NCBI

Aggression, Containment, and Treatment Enactments in the Psychodynamics of Limit Setting

Thanks, I can read the abstract which is interesting and you’ve given me hours of google-worthy material. I also thought this was interesting (and nice and simple) re: holding/containment which I think is exactly what’s going on:

http://relational-integrative-psycho...ng-handout.pdf

3 days and counting

I had a similar experience with my last T and it was probably the biggest benefit of therapy for me. I had a very disruptive habit of emailing/virtual communication with people for years and I just kept jumping from one person to the next... they all engaged and reinforced it, that's why it never stopped. My T was happy to engage via email in the beginning but it because less and less, he kept it very minimalistic and in the end stopped responding altogether. After a while, I just lost the interest in writing to him and never started that habit again with anyone in a similar compulsive way. It was a huge relief and opened up a great deal of mental energy and time for other more productive and healthier things. I am really careful now not restarting one-on-one communication like that with anyone and don't miss it at all because the healthier relationships I have now are infinitely more rewarding.

When I take those online quizzes I’m fearful avoidant. Haven’t taken it in a while. Thanks for the reminder. I should retake it. There’s a good one online that gives you your attachment style in relationship to your mother, father, significant other and friend (but I always answer the friend one with my therapist in mind).

I'm also fearful avoidant. So that makes sense.

LOL Ya that's the one I took and I did the same for friend

I remember those days, at the beginning; that curiousity is so memorable. It was interesting-actually amazing how the feelings unfolded, all the self-discovery, and what it meant. Many seemed or were brand new to me. I read and read and read because I couldn't learn enough about what it all meant.

Other times it felt so beautiful. All those raw, child feelings repressed, dissociated, or disavowed. These feelings, ostensibly part of normal growing up, were never experience by me as a child due to trauma. I missed out on so much...

A competent T is vital, as it could have went the other way. I get a sense of safety from yout T, albeit from afar.

Happy reading and discoveries!

which test is that?

Attachment Styles and Close Relationships

I like this one. Your T did it abruptly, maybe like ripping off a band aid. We are not infants, and maybe a protracted reduction prolongs the ability to go to the next level and growth.

Very interesting thanks. Also might explain why my t is taking the soft gentle gradual route as already had the ripping off bandaid experience as a toddler. And if it happened now = serious crisis time. So in my case a protracted reduction is actually good.

Therapy is such an art - no wonder it so often goes pear shaped.

Not to hijack, but I think the ‘good enough mother’ treatment of therapy is extremely dangerous and I have a physical negative response reading about therapy patients as infants.

We aren’t infants. Moreover therapists aren’t our parents.

I’m failrly sure my former therapist tried to reparent me, and till the end I emotionally felt like my therapist WAS my mother. I think back on the things she did to encourage that, and feel so manipulated. Rationally, I knew she was not my mother and I found the disconnect between feel and thought harmful and frightening. Also, the reality of the 50 minute session and running into other clients coming and going added to the confusion.

What happens to Winnicot’s ‘infant’ if a therapist gets terminally ill, moves away, stops liking the client, or terminates suddenly for a stupid arbitrary reason?

I like to think therapists that reset boundaries simply feel like it’s for the betterment of the client. Or that the client is ready for more independence.

I use to email T a lot. When something happened that was emotionally painful my first reaction was to reach out to T. In the beginning she answered very quickly. Then she on her words "got a life" so it could be a couple of days before she responded. I was stuck between the logical part of brain that was happy she had a life and was enjoying herself rather than working all the time and the emotional part of feeli ng abandoned and alone.

EMDR T doesnt do email but I can rect her if needed. Rather than texting back she typically will call. For me texting and calling is more intrusive plus I know she has a husband and toddler (until T got a life of was just her and an adult son who lives out of state). So I limit it to when things are major.

I find it empowering most days because I am learning to deal with my emotions better on my own. It sucks some days because I feel alone....

Interestingly he said he had been responding to my emails less and less frequently although that’s not how I remember it or experienced it. So maybe he *was* trying to take the bandaid off slowly. Either way, I threw a little tantrum and feel better now so I guess that’s all that matters.

The therapy he did is a large part of training to be analyst, so I'd be suprised if he is not. It's really the training (and therapist choice on how to practice) the makes the therapy psychoanalytic rather than lying on the coach. The concepts are operationalized regardless of whether its conventional psychoanalysis or psychodynamic therapy, both of which are psychoanalytic if that is the therapist's orientation

It's the therapist that makes the difference. The modality referred to as psychodynamic is otherwise diluted and practiced in all different ways that makes it more of a generic concept.

It sounds like he was making a comment about the way you think but who knows.

Thanks- I never heard of this site before.

That is very interesting how his perception differs from yours, but fairly typical for the human race. i am always surprised to find my perception differs from my therapist's, when it does, and for me this is often an indication that the emotion in the thing is ramped up for me. If what's going on is emotionally loaded, it's as if my attention is inner directed rather than a more calm observation of both myself and the world, so I just miss things.

I'm really glad you feel empowered now, as I think that's what therapy is supposed to do. At least I have enjoyed the increased sense of empowerment and the matching will to go make my life what I want.

I actually would have preferred stopping the emailing all at once, "cold turkey", when it clearly became excessive/compulsive. But this may be because my issue with it was more addiction-like and not really about attachment, unfulfilled childhood needs etc. I also could never taper my drug of choice, just kept relapsing for way too long. That was the case with emaling as well - cutting down did not really work to resolve it completely, stopping completely did. I am just saying this to highlight that there can be different reasons for a client to have issues around outside contact - it does seem, at least on this forum, that the majority is related to attachment (styles) but it is not always the case. I am definitely not anxious/fearful about relationships (I am anxious about other type of things). A bit dismissive but mostly secure in relationships, especially when the other person is that way as well. Still, this happened to me, because I developed that bad habit and it was very hard to quit for good, just like with drinking. The person I communicated with virtually also did not matter too much as long as they were sufficiently interesting - I kept trading them for years so wasn't attached to the people really but to my own escaping/distracting tendencies and habit. Of course it often confused the heck out of people, including Ts, because I believe interpersonal attachment and associated fears are more common than addiction in general and it may not be easy to tell them apart without knowing someone really well.

OP

Was your email cut off because it was "too much" or was there another reason? I guess I didn't really even think of ask that.

For me, I rarely emailed even weekly. Sometimes I'd send 2 in a week and think I was too much and apologize like crazy. Typically it was 1 a week or 1 every other week.

What happened for me to lose mine was because of a major email misunderstanding, that lead to a rupture and then because both of us realized we can't communicate well with each other via email, that it was best to end that. He still ALLOWS it technically but has openly said "But I wont reply" so I just don't bother. If I felt I was excessively emailing, I probably would have "punished myself" and cut myself off, LOL. That's the weird thing about me.

Anyway, was just wondering.

Hmmm I’m not sure I know for sure what the reason was but I feel like he’s said multiple times that I’m not “too much.” He has said that he thinks I need someone to “push up against” so maybe I was indirectly asking for that. I don’t think I was emailing too frequently. As I look back at my old emails, to me it almost sounds like I was asking him to cut me off, but I don’t know if that played into his decision. I think in general the email exchanges were clearly unsatisfying for me and my T was being forced into a position of offering reassurance which wasn’t exactly what I wanted or needed and then I was frustrated. It’s confusing, I guess. He has said he’ll still read emails, but like you, it felt better to me to make a clean break. I reserve the right to email him if I really might be helpful to me to get something out, but otherwise I think I won’t. It’s only been about a month, but so far so good. As another poster mentioned, it feels like my feelings are no longer “bleeding out” between sessions and that has felt SO much better for me. I’m aware that anything can change in this weird world of therapy though.

Sorry you lost your replies from your T. Are you ok with that? I’d probably still be talking to him about it if I wasn’t.