Sad and stuck

I feel sad and stuck so I sent my therapist an email saying I’m thinking about taking a break from therapy until the end of summer and then reassessing. I told him I needed time away to try to figure out if therapy was helping and to try to snap myself out of the rut I’m in.

I post all the time about wanting to skip sessions (but rarely do) or quit. That’s the rut I’m in. It’s painful because I also genuinely want to go. People on PC have helped me understand the reasons for this, probably even better than my therapist has. You all have helped me understand that my ambivalence towards therapy is multifaceted and likely related in part to wanting something for myself and feeling like I don’t deserve it, and related to the difficulties around being vulnerable and needy when I don’t like to perceive myself that way, and related to difficulties with feeling out of control emotionally.

I’m sad because my therapy (and my PC posts!) has become overtaken by this theme. I’ve been bringing it up with my T but it’s not getting better, possibly even worse. I’m sad because I like him and I’ve invested almost 2 years with him but I’m aware that we’re spinning our wheels, but talking to him about this is not helping. He is empathetic and genuine and professional but I get the deep sense that he doesn’t get what’s going on with me, so I’m left feeling very alone in this. I realize most of this is probably about me, not him, but I also wish he could help me through this a bit better.

Anyway I sent an email saying I’d like to take a break and he responded with the standard “let’s talk about this next week.” Now I need to figure out what I want to talk about next week. I’ve already talked to him about this quite a bit so I’m not sure what else to say. Taking a break or quitting would make me feel liked I’ve failed at therapy and like no one will ever truly get me, even someone whose whole job is to be understanding, caring and empathetic. Anyone know how to fix this? I’m not really dying to see another therapist. If I stop with this one, I’m not sure I have it in me to seek out another one. You all have come through for me before, but I may just be too dense and stubborn to make it work.

I would suggest trying other T’s it is hard to know that it isn’t working if you haven’t ever had a T that “fit”. It took me over 20 years and some 8-10 T’s to find the one I am with now that I really feel will be able to help me.

I've seen people here post that they found breaks useful. I can't speak to that personally. But it does sound like you have determined that you aren't really getting much out of therapy right now. Maybe taking a break will help clarify things. Your reasoning makes sense to me.

As for trying another therapist, I think you have it in you to do so if you want to. After all, you have continued going to therapy amidst the almost constant urges to skip.

I have no opinion about a break - if you feel that this is what you need then sure you should take it but of course it is just delaying things but sometimes delaying things is a good things. I wouldn't any illusion that with someone else this process would be considerably easier, unless this someone else would completely fail to tap the important areas in your psyche.

What I do see though is that you come here and share a lot and feel understood and then feel disappointed that the T does not seem to understand you as well. But I've also got the impression that you are not sharing that much with T but when you have truly shared with him you have felt relief. So, as long as you are still holding back and worrying about him being uncomfortable or whatever, i.e. not sharing freely things that come to your mind, it is going to be difficult and offering only limited relief. It doesn't of course mean that you suddenly can start sharing things freely - I highly doubt so. There is probably quite a lot of underlaying anxiety that just does not allow you to do that, especially because you are someone who has major trust issues and who has probably not been freely yourself with anyone. That's a hard work overcoming that, in person. And that's also why sharing in writing here with anonymous people is probably much easier than with the real T in the room. I'm not saying that sharing here does not have it's positive sides but it probably does not help you much taking steps further in person. Or it creates an illusion that in person it should be as simple whereas it clearly for you is not.

Also, I get the sense that somehow the feeling of understood here should make things better in your therapy. Feeling better does not come from understanding things better from an intellectual point of view. Feeling better comes from understanding things and yourself better from the emotional point of view. This will then decrease the very basic anxiety, the general trust into world and people, understanding other people and seeing them as separate persons who they are. This is not intellectual knowledge that can be explained, this is only something that can be felt and experienced and that's why therapy is a relationship because in this relationship those things can be felt. Sure, now someone reads and says that those things can be felt in other relationships as well but no - for some people, those who are so warded off, cautious, and lacking trust, it just doesn't work. What you get from here in this forum is intellectual knowledge and a certain type of understanding that helps you feel good and tolerate the therapy, but the real feeling good that lasts is something else and comes from something else.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't come and share things in this forum. Maybe it's the only way that you are able to tolerate therapy at all but I just wanted to point out that the support of this forum and therapy are quite different things and I don't think it's fair to compare them like this.

P.S. This is not any hard or objective truth, I'm writing based on my personal knowledge and experience.

I would also try seeing a different T if you take a break from this one. I felt really stuck with my ex-T (and ex-MC) and thought it was me. Initially planned to see current T for the short-term, like a month or two, then go back to ex-T. But current T had a different style and perspective, and he helped me to get unstuck. So I stayed with him. He's said before that a therapist only has so much in their "bag of tricks." How often people do need to change therapists to make more progress, that one therapist might be able to really help with a particular aspect, but not be so good with others. Maybe you've sort of hit the limits of where you can go with this T? Not being your fault or T's, just where his skill set is and how you match up. T has also said how so much of it is about the therapeutic relationship, more so than even the methodology (studies have shown this).


Also, when I was having doubts about T maybe 6 months ago, I went to another T for a single session to consult, and it helped give me some clarity. Meeting with his backup (well, was on phone) when he was away earlier this year also helped give me perspective (I'll see her next week, too). Maybe you could consider just seeing someone either for an initial consultation or just a month or two, see how it goes? And just because you invested 2 years with this T, that's not all lost by switching to another T. I found it much easier to open up to my T after having seen ex-T (for 6 years!). It's not like I was starting from the beginning, I was starting where I was, with what I'd learned from her (and ex-MC). Just some stuff to think about.

I appreciate the advice you’ve given about seeing another T. I’ve looked into that a bit and seriously considered it, but it’s tough because I also feel attached to this particular T. I also sort of wonder if switching T’s is a way of avoiding or delaying things (as feileacan has said). Maybe I’d just have the same issues with any T, but I’m not sure. Obviously it worked out well for you and that’s good to hear.

Ugh. What you say makes sense to me and I feel like there may be some truth to it. I just have some doubts about my T being able to “tap into the important areas in my psyche.” I feel like meeting with him stirs things up and then I’m left alone.

But he already has tapped to very important areas in your psyche, hasn't he? Not that he has done anything in particular for that and I don't think it would be even his role to do anything actively. But he has provided you a space where those ambivalent feelings that you had no knowledge about and had not experienced before have had the possibility to come out.

Well what is is role then? I don’t believe I should have to go to this forum or to Google to find all my answers. I agree that he has helped those ambivalent feelings come out, but now I’m left feeling tortured and don’t know what to do with it. Shouldn’t he help in some way???

Just wondering if you would benefit from a therapist who allowed email and would provide email responses. I may be totally off base and if so, please just ignore me, but just wanted to throw it out there for you.

I had one T that was very good at stirring things up for me to work on. Her particular style of therapy was to create transference from some painful aspect from your past and then to assume that now, as an adult, you would have more resources available to you to be able to fix it so basically then . She made me a total wreck and ruined major opportunities in my life but kept telling me to “Trust the Process”. Next T never ended up being just expensive venting sessions. The one after that brought things to my attention very bluntly and then just sat there leaving me to feel guilty and shameful but not have the resources to fix it. I was very attached to all three of those T’s and worked with each 2-3 years thinking it was just me.
Current T invites me out of my comfort zone, gently brings up things about me that I need to look at, stirs up old pains and then stays right by my side coaching gently as I find my way through them.

So, for an example that goes across all the T’s... Goal: bigger social circle

T1. Noticed a relationship that had gotten toxic and was making me too scared to try others. She created a similar bond to the problem friend and then started replicating the betrayal from that friend (minus the severe verbal abuse). Created a ton of pain but every time I would try and do reparative work she would basically just say “nope” and let me cry.

T2. Noticed a problem relationship and said it was abusive. Let me talk on and on about the relationship and just kept saying it was toxic. Never helped me with either how to set my boundaries to make it healthier or to move on from the relationship.

T3. Noticed I didn’t have much of a support circle and what I did have was not strong, healthy or reliable. Told me to go out and make more friends and forbid me to talk about the friends I had. She never helped me see how to make the relationships I had healthier or how I was contributing to the poor relationship patter and never coached me on what healthy friends were or how to find them.

Current T. “I want you to consider what it is that you have had so many painful rejecting relationships. As a child you did not have any choice to your relationships. Now, as an adult you can make choices to be with safe, loving relationships. I want us to explore more of this in our sessions. You deserve more than pain and rejection.” So, he has challenged my lack of self worth, asked me to reflect on the relationships, empowered me to make choices instead of taking who ever comes along, and committed to being by my side as we do this. He also lets me know how my pattern of relating impacts him, like even though I feel very safe with him and trust him more than anyone he doesn’t feel connected because I am always “trying to figure him out”.

Now, some people can grow and heal with the style of T’s 1-3, they just need support, needed it brought to their attention, need to act it out with a “safer” representation of the unhealthy relationship... what ever. But... 2-3 years with each of those T’s did no good no matter how attached I got. I have been with current T about 6 months. My marriage is getting healthier, I am looking at possible social connections differently, and I am slowly getting more comfortable looking for social connections because I have more confidence in my ability to avoid toxic relationships.

And he is helping, by offering you the space to work out these feelings inside you. I'm not only referring to the physical space but for the psychological space as well. You are welcome to bring all these emotions into that space, which I doubt you are fully doing yet. But the space is there nevertheless, waiting for you.

The answers you get from Google or this forum can only provide you temporary relief. That's not what therapy is for. Therapy is for more permanent relief and answers providing that cannot be found neither from Google nor from this forum. Nor can your therapist provide them. These answers lie within you and the only thing the therapist can do, is hold a space for you to find these answers. When put like this, it sounds like such a trivial thing, like almost nothing and yet is is very powerful.

So, it's not true that is not helping you. It's just that you do not seem to recognise his help as help. Rather, you seem to have a different idea what help should look like. It wouldn't help you if he would do something that would make these ambivalent feelings go away. Yes, it would feel good and look like help, but it really isn't. He is helping you much more by letting these ambivalent feelings be, tolerating them together with you, so that you could gradually learn to better tolerate them as well.

One question to you though: why don't you ask all these questions from your T? Why don't you tell him exactly what you have told us here, with the same intensity of your emotions?

That’s an interesting question and has been a source of conflict between my T and me. I’m not sure what the right answer is. He initially responded to my emails but stopped in part because he didn’t think they were helpful. I don’t completely disagree but wish he’d occasionally respond instead of stopping altogether. I felt like I had the rug pulled out from under me when it happened. I still email him and he says he welcomes that and reads them, but doesn’t respond. I may have compensated by posting on this forum more frequently.

I have tried although I don’t always have the intensity of emotion on the days I’m scheduled to see him. I can’t force it to appear at will. That’s why I like email. I can express myself in the moment. Plus my emotions are just more muted in session.I will try again though. Sometimes I’m embarrassed that I’m still talking about this ambivalence thing, but maybe you are right that it’s a bigger deal in my life and it’s not just about my ambivalence towards therapy.

I think a therapist's role is to provide a safe, nonjudgmental space and be a trained, empathetic, curious, interested person with whom you can hash out your stuff. A therapist cannot provide answers. You need to do that on your own. For example, you say you don't feel you should go to google or this forum for answers. This implies that you get answers from this forum. Does it work for you? You still feel unsatisfied, right? So it's not working. Something's missing.

I totally get it though! I'd get so frustrated with my therapist (which he knows) because he wouldn't tell me what to do or tell me what's what. At some point, he told me that he sees his role as a midwife. Lately, I'm coming around to appreciating his viewpoint.

While this process is dang slow and frustrating, anything directive that comes from the therapist wouldn't work. Exactly because it comes from him. It would be like all the stuff that came from one's parents or society or other external sources. It would feel superimposed upon you, and after a while, you'd feel like it doesn't exactly fit.

It feels to me like this tension IS the therapy while you keep insisting that it has taken over the therapy. So why I wonder do you keep insisting on this, instead of sitting with the tension and following it, not resisting it? (I totally get that it's deeply frustrating. Feeling out of control when one is used to being in control feels crazy-making. But then again, maybe that's the point?)

Anyway, best of luck, whatever you decide!!

I was asking this because I somehow guessed that you probably don't have access to your emotions in session. That would explain why you feel he does not understand - emotions are the cue that help people to understand us and if you are not giving out this cue then it is very difficult for people to understand us, including the T.

Please be patient and gentle with yourself though. You cannot really force yourself and if you can, this can be rather harmful. It might take time (a lot of time, in fact) for you to feel comfortable and safe enough, so that the emotions can come in the session in the presence of another person.

Sure, email is easier because the other person is not there but my belief is that doing this all via email wouldn't help you because it would give you comfortable way out without having to struggle to find your emotions in the immediate presence of another person.

It is possible that this T is not the best for you, who knows? He seems very decent to me though based on your description. However, his true value comes out only after you really start weighing heavily on him - if you really start pushing him hard with all the ambivalence and all the intense feelings that you potentially have. Does he survive or does he break? I would place my bet that he survives. I would not be willing so easily to bet on someone who would work hard to make you feel good in the moment because that can be a disguise of the T not being able to tolerate your difficult feelings and thus needing to ward them off in any way possible.

Short of him replying to your emails; what else could he be doing to help you? In session is there something that he could be doing or saying that would help foster that sense of safety so that you can bring out your emotions in session? What has worked in session in the past to help bring out the or any emotions? Are you able to share these types of emotions with other people? If yes, what allows you to share them with the other people that seems to be missing in the relationship you have with your T or what does your T have that the other people don't that leaves you uncomfortable with sharing these emotions?

What could you do with the time that wasn't so much about analyzing you or your situation but was about building the relationship so that you could feel comfortable sharing your emotions with him?

I am not sure what all you have tried to do to bring those emotions out in session. You talk about being able to write/email about them because of being able to better express yourself in email. Have you taken those emails in and read them to your T (regardless of if you sent the email or not)? If you have, what happens? Are you able to access the emotions you were having at the time of writing the email? Does the discussion stay about the content in the email? Does it become to intellectual - thus staying away from the emotions/feelings side of what the content was trying to address/describe?

Could you maybe back up and move to something that's safe to talk about in terms of emotions? Are there some emotions you feel safe to share with him? If so can you start there, start by sharing things that bring out that emotion and start to unfold from there?

I guess I'm saying if you want to get out of the rut, do something you haven't done before or do something that worked before. Personally, I go back to my goals - have I gotten to my goals yet? Nope? ok, then I'm not done yet so there's no leaving therapy. I remove leaving from the table of options and start looking at what are my options since I'm going to continue with therapy. That's my way. I agree that getting stuck in the place of ambivalence can create a life of it's own. Only you can figure out what your way of dealing with it will be. One other question for you - have you thought that maybe one of the reasons for the ambivalence is because there are so many possible ways/things you could be doing to deal with whatever brought you to therapy in the first place, that a part of you is holding out .. hmmm I don't think I'm saying this right... wondering if you are not going all in with this therapist, or the therapy model, or something because there are other choices and you can't really decide which one you think will be the best one to help you? Something like that.

*caveat - therapy is working for me in the sense that I do see overall progress and change; however slow it is. I acknowledge that therapy is not for everyone and/or not everyone is ready for therapy when they try it. I wouldn't have been able to do this type of therapy in my 20's-mid 30's. I also recognize that the therapist plays into the overall picture.

As I have written before, I did not find that therapy helped me resolve whatever it was that needed to be resolved. It may have, eventually helped to expose some deep issues -- but then left me there with them, alone, without skill, without ability. Just left. That has been for me a destabilizing and deeply disturbing experience leaving me as much and perhaps more dysfunctional than I was before. Not to mention the pain and agony.

Your hesitancy in going forward may be for good reason? Your posts here may help you explore and examine that within yourself. Doesn't sound like your T is helping very much with that.

I find that judgement unfair. How can a T help to explore something that is not expressed in session?

That's not a judgement to OP's way of doing things of course.

Based on what you have shared on this forum, I am personally not convinced that this rut is tapping into anything useful, it could also possibly be just creating a parallel universe IMO. But like everyone else here, I am biased by my own experience. Still something to think about... can't you intentionally choose not to obsess in this way? Is it a useful thing to create/cultivate an obsession? What could you possibly understand from dealing with this over and over again, what sort of difference could it create in your life? I personally would ask myself these questions seriously, one can do therapy and deal with the same thing forever... but it is useful? Are the "side effects" (these stubborn frustrations) worth the benefit? I know some people would view your frustrations as the main thing and not side, but ultimately the best is if you judge that for yourself. The T would most likely encourage going and exploring further as that's his job and he believes in certain views about all this.

I would encourage you to find another therapist. It took me many many tries with different therapists to finally have found the right one.

I don't think that a break would be helpful. You may just come back to the same thing.

A therapist is not meant to have all the answers. It's not like an encyclopedia where whatever questions clients have, Ts magically retrieve the answer. Ts might also not necessarily 'get' you. That is not always humanly possible to 'get' another human being.

It seems these are unrealistic expectations. Ts may have more expertise and psychological knowledge, general tools and techniques but you are the expert on you. Only you can find the way *with* T accompanying you on this, your, journey to growth.

This might mean sitting with the uncomfortable feelings, with the uncertainty etc. *with* T right alongside you.

I just don't think it would necessarily work with another T.

How is what a wrote a judgment? I don't get it.

It's you that is doing it-making your therapy about this theme, so really, it's up to you to change that. You wrote on 2 separate threads how after you opened up to him, you felt a good deal of relief. The uncomfortable feelings led you to change--to open up to him--instead of reserving your most vulnerable thoughts for email only. But it doesn't happen overnight and takes much repetition to be a fully formed habit/ingrained in your sense of self. Could you do that again?I am not thinking of the intellectual but am thinking about the feeling. My thoughts are that you felt relief, in part, because you could expose all of you to him rather than just parts of you. It must be a relief to allow those parts in hiding--those parts, normally hidden, that seek to be expressed-to come out.

Know that I am not judging you on any of this. I'm telling you what I see/how I see it like anyone else here is doing. You seem to want your T to take care of you, to soothe your frustration and anxiety. I've seen through your other posts that you have trouble with blurred boundaries, not seeing your T as a separate person. Perhaps just as you make yourself an object to soothe or appease others, you see your T as someone who'd be expected to do the same. I don't know if you are doing this here, but you often seem to attribute your own traits/feelings to him. This doesn't happen on a conscious level.

The feelings you describe, such as torturous feelings following by seeking relief from him but being frustrated, disappointed, etc., are about your past. You may have the type of transference that can't tell the difference between your T and the feelings you had as a child for your parents. As you write, your words always remind me of things you've said about your father and how he related to you, and guessing likely your mother. I wonder if you see the connections as you always write about your T rather than link these feelings to your mother and father, as you had done from time to time. And since you cut your mother off, I wonder also if you are repeating that here. I think everything you are doing with this is transference re-enactments. For example, feeling helpless, not understood, followed by thinking he is inadequate, not helping enough, not x, then wanting to disconnect yourself. I realize not everyone believes that, so this is my experience and understanding of this therapy that is now my lens of interpretation of others' psychodynamic therapy.

Have you even mentioned how this is connected to your feelings as a child? Again, I'm not judging. I have rarely experienced intense emotion with my T that was not about my past feelings, and I had very intense feelings spanning over years, and before that, wanted my T to take care of me too. But I do wonder if you are starting to make those connections to your past experiences rather than making it about your T. If not it might be a good idea to seriously consider finding another therapist. I would agree with others that consulting with other therapists, if that's what you wish to do, may be beneficial.

I’m aware of this and I don’t have that expectation. I’m not looking for someone who has all the answers. I think that would feel insincere. I’m looking for something that I’m having trouble putting my finger on, but it’s definitely not encyclopedic answers. And maybe I’m an idealist, but I do want someone to “get” me.