Couch 203: The Spam and Cool Whip Couch!

It often happens after eating cold food. It is just odd -but I have had it my whole life.
And to add insult to injury - I have the song moonshine lullaby from annie get your gun stuck in my head

The thing is...I think therapy really contributes to my drinking. I tend to drink more on days when I have a session. I have a drink before session to help relax me. I typically have a couple after session, whether it was a good one or a bad one. But it's mostly just been since I've been seeing this T. With ex-T, I was more likely to do Starbucks after, not a bar or taproom. I did often have a drink before or after seeing ex-MC, but not in the beginning. Like, I wonder, if I take a break from therapy, will the drinking fall away, too? Or if I were to see a T who could actually meet my needs?

Google says you should start wearing a balaclava.

I would not connect drinking with therapy like that. You’ve always worried about your drinking in the four years I’ve been here, before you saw this guy. MC was worried about your drinking. Under this therapist it sounded like you have been able to cut back a little.

Correlation isn’t causation—the link is more likely to be therapy is stressful, you drink when stressed. You could just as well eat gallons of ice cream after therapy if that is what releases stress.

The thing is, the impulse to relieve stress by drinking will still be there, therapy or no therapy. Personally I think you should see an addiction counselor for that.

This guy—well, my concern is that you’ll find an MC type who will just reassure you. This guy, I think you made progress, but now it’s all about your relationship and things seem stalled. If you want another therapist, I think you do need one with good boundaries, but one who is more diplomatic about it than this guy. Some mix of him and MC seems like it would be ideal.

I do appreciate everyone's comments and support. Just not sure what else to say right now...T hasn't replied to my reply or to my request to possibly talk before Monday (the one was sent via text last night, so even if he isn't looking at his email, he'd have seen that--he uses his personal phone for work). Perhaps he's just choosing to ignore me. I forced myself to stop rereading his email because it was just making me feel worse and worse. Both about myself and about my relationship with him. I'm just scared to go in there Monday morning before I leave for vacation and have it be terrible. If I don't hear back from him by 10 am tomorrow, I may just cancel (choosing 10 am, because of 24 hours notice).

I think I'm able to do it. I just need something to fill the space that drinking holds.

LT, what happened the other night wasn't a huge deal. Sure, might be embarrassing and you might feel badly about it because you do struggle with drinking, but it is something you can get past. You don't need to brow beat yourself over it. Your T is basically saying that. You have a choice on how you internalize what happened. You don't have to consider it a huge failing.

How can you choose to think about this differently? Perhaps a plan of action for the future so you are less likely to end up in that situation although it was just an unpredictable chain of events that honestly you could choose to shake off as just the perfect storm and let it go.

You are angry, but I honestly don't think you are angry at your therapist even though that seems to be who you are directing your emotions at. You are angry at yourself and you seem to want your T to fix that. But this is a case where you need to forgive yourself (since you are feeling badly about things). No one can do that for you.

Sometimes we just have to say, "Well, I screwed that one up, but it's not the end of the world. I'm allowed to make mistakes. I don't have to stay stuck in this spot. Enough. I'm moving on." If you could do this for yourself, my guess is you could find a bit of peace about things, including your T. But you've turned what happened the other night into what happened with your T via email. Distraction maybe? No need to distract. Try to let yourself off the hook and perhaps you'll find the hope and the reassurance within yourself (which is what your T is hoping you can do for yourself).

I hope you start feeling better. You are a good person, LT. You need to remind yourself of that. You can do that for you.

Your comment is a great example of how T could have responded to LT without compromising his boundaries. Your comment is both honest and warm. Warm doesn’t have to mean touchy feely, warm is just empathic communication.... people keep bringing up this MC and equating warm and comforting with loose boundaries and being unprofessional.... but it isn’t the case. What seems LT’s problem here is not what T says but how he says it and it doesn’t mean he is doing anything wrong. Nothing wrong with his style but imo LT seems to need deep childhood work and he keeps missing opportunities to link this to LT’s childhood/parents and explore that need, and LT won’t do that herself it seems, even though she knows it’s about that, so it seems like they are going in circles....

Thanks for the comment. The thing is, I do try to link it to childhood. I'll tell him (including this time) that this isn't all about him, that it's about something else. I told him that about the standing at the end when I leave thing, too. And he said that he still thought it was all about him. Even though I said I thought the feelings were too intense to just be about him. Like I tend to feel childhood transference sort of things in my chest, like this aching feeling, and when I feel that, it suggests it's something from the past. But he doesn't seem to want to work that way. We've talked quite a bit about my childhood, but not so much in the context of stuff going on between me and him. Or, I'll try to talk about it, he pushes it to something else. He takes things personally that aren't really about him. OK, yeah, on the surface they seem to be about him, but beneath the surface? No. It's too personal with him.

I'm vacillating between terminating or taking a break or else trying to work through stuff with him. I just worry we're at an impasse. But then I think about the good stuff from our relationship, how he really understands some things about me, how he validates many things I feel, how he seems to *see* me more than anyone else has (like notices things that others don't), how we have some things we joke about, how he talks about how I need to write a book or the world will miss out... How do you figure out when it's time to move on? He's taught me quite a bit, and he likely has more to teach me, but is it worth the turmoil, the unmet wants and needs? I don't know...

I think thats the most important thing here. The space that drinking holds. Seems like your therapists also fill that space. I think maybe spending some time thinking about that space and everything it entails would might prove to be helpful

You mean, like after eating the turkey leg meat, people throw the bone on the ground?

Is your city undergoing a rat shortage? O. M. G.