[Flowerb]

I've been seeing my T for several years, multiple times per week. He is consistently caring, open and very much wants to hear about my feelings for him. As a trauma therapist, I think he has a lot of experience with clients like me who struggle with becoming close and dependent. We've worked on ways to make some of the fears decrease - I'm very afraid I'm doing therapy "wrong" and he'll stop working with me.

Knowing where these fears come from doesn't make them go away. But lately there is this other feeling - unnamed but painful. It is a longing of some kind...but for what? Sometimes I wonder if I've been allowing t to take up a lot of brain space so that I wouldn't have to face how empty my life is. I'm busy - work and kids and all that - but no intimate relationship to speak of. If I ask myself if I'm wishing for my T to be my friend or partner, I could say yes but giving him up as a T wouldn't be worth that. I know that I need to fill up my life with "real" relationships - ones that can exist outside the therapy walls.

But if I hold really still and just let the feeling come up, mostly it is a longing to be rescued. I suspect it is an old feeling - wanting someone to notice how sad I was and to make the bad stuff stop - but I'd also like someone in the here and now who offers comfort at 2am. I want to be rescued from all the memories and bad dreams and the horrible loneliness. I want someone to keep me safe, from the world and from myself. I want my T to offer this security. But how can he do that? There are too many boundaries in the way.

So what is it that I want from my T, that he can do, that he isn't already doing? I know that ultimately the person to keep me safe is me. But I've taken care of myself, by myself, my whole life. Isn't there another answer?

And please, God, don't tell me it is match.com.

> I'm very afraid I'm doing therapy "wrong" and he'll stop working with me.

Hey. I hear you. I'm afraid that my therapist will stop working with me, too. I'm worried that he will grow bored with me, or that I will say or do something that will make him not want to work with me anymore.

I think that part of it... Is that when people have been abused / had traumatic experiences they often come to see themselves as dirty or disgusting or undesirable or unacceptable etc etc. The view is unconscious (trying to challenge it typically doesn't help). My therapist keeps saying he is there for me and he isn't going to leave me - but I find it hard to really feel this / believe it. Even though I know, rationally, that he is there for me and that the past traumatic experiences aren't my fault... Feeling that way on an emotional level is quite different.

> But lately there is this other feeling - unnamed but painful. It is a longing of some kind...but for what?

Maybe... For a perfect parent. A parent who is attuned to your needs, loving, compassionate etc. A parent who is powerful enough to protect you. Maybe what you are finding is that your therapist can be really very emotionally attuned to you so that you feel cared for and validated. Maybe... You are desiring more of that outside therapy. maybe... You are partly grieving that you haven't had more of those experiences in your life. Maybe... You are becoming aware that you don't have those experiences so very often in your relationships outside therapy.

The idea is that eventually... Your ability to emotionally connect with your therapist will generalize so that you can emotionally connect with other people outside therapy. There will be a number of reasons why you don't feel so emotionally connected to the people presently in your life (some to do with you, some to do with them). There are things that you can do to increase intimacy... Can you talk to your therapist about that?

With respect to the rescuing... It is true that you can't roll the clock back and have your therapist right there with you holding your hand, soothing you, protecting you during the times when you felt alone and traumatized... But... Your therapist can be with you right now in the present while you relive the memories. The incongruence between the unsafe memory and the safety in the present is supposed to help you process the memory such that it loses its power to capture your attention and have you feeling pain. That is one theory, anyway...

Maybe... You are just longing for more emotionally connected experiences?

[SweetCrusader]

Maybe you just want to feel loved?

You know, I could have written your post... pretty much every word of it. And my understanding might be wrong, because I'm still dealing with the same issue myself... but this is the answer that I've found *so far* for me.

I used to have this feeling like I had a HUGE gaping hole right in the middle of my stomach. Just this big, empty space. It was a hunger that I completely believed could and would never be filled. I drew many pictures of it and I told my T all the time that I had a big hole in me, that I was empty. To make a very long story short, there are parts of myself that need to be reclaimed from the hell of my childhood. One particular part of me, symbolized by a little girl I used to see crying and stuck in my childhood home, fit perfectly into that spot. In time, through the course of my therapy, I healed that particular wound. I had a subjective sense that the "little girl" I had seen no longer existed in the same sense, because she was woven back into me. She fit back into her home, in the center of me. And together, we were more whole. I no longer felt like I had a hole in my middle.

There's another bit of me that needs to be healed and reclaimed. So I still feel like I'm missing something, and in therapy I experience this as wanting something from T. In part, it IS wanting something from T... because T's knowledge, and love, and support, and guidance is what facilitated my earlier healing. So of course I still need T to help me heal this latest part, too. But really, I think what will make that hole fill up, will be a part of me. Really, what I need is myself. T acts as sort of a bridge between "me" and the "part" of me that I haven't quite re-absorbed yet; that remains separate due to the way I split myself off to cope with my traumas.

So, I think once I've healed that bit... I won't continue to experience the "need" that I have for T, or the feeling that I want something from her. I'll have everything I need, right here inside me.

Of course, I'll also have parts of T woven into me as well. Everyone we meet and love becomes a part of us, and makes us a stronger, more beautiful, whole.

I hope this helped, and made sense. I think it's hard to wrap your mind around until you've actually experienced it at least once.

[Perna]

I think wanting a partner is natural, how we're made. We aren't build to do it all ourselves, we're social animals. We can "survive" by ourselves but it's not our natural state.

I'm not going to suggest match.com :-) but I think you do need to go out and meet other people, make some friends if you don't have them, go out with them more often if you do. You have to live your own life, your children have to live theirs and work is not supposed to be one's whole life either. If you don't already journal, I would start, see where your hopes and dreams have gotten to and start moving in their direction?

flower, I identify with so much of what you said. I always feel like there is a hole inside me. A longing to be nurtured and cared for in a close way. You deserved that as a child. I know its hard to find as an adult. I'm still unsure of what to do with that hole myself.

[Mouse_]

sweetcrusader! Excellent discription, I soooooo relate to that right now.

[Flowerb]

an emotionally connective relationship -- to be loved -- to heal - to be whole...

all these fit and are part of the longing. I have the connection with my T. He is very available and he actually will call me to check in at times. And he knows I love him and he is totally Ok with that. One of the things that has happened, I think - is that I never knew I could feel this way about anyone. I didn't know how to feel safe and I never knew I had it in me to love someone with all the parts of me. My marriage was abusive and I think figuring out I could love gave me the strength to leave it.

I like the word "reclaiming" -- it fits really well. There are all these younger parts that still hurt and are scared. They are the parts that cling to T - and refuse to be silent anymore. So I'm starting to feel more whole as I reclaim my past. I like thinking of T as a bridge between the holes inside. He'll need to stretch a lot, there are a lot of holes still.

Mostly I still feel like I'm on the edge of my life and there is this giant chasm - and what I want is on the other side - just hidden inside the trees. So first I have to get to the other side and then figure out what is hidden in the trees. It is frightening to be at the edge like this - what if I fall in? And it is lonely too.

There it is again -- that longing to be rescued. How many more years in therapy can I possibly need!

[Kiya]

*Cries*
i too have pictures drawn with a hole in the tummy. it always feels either... well, empty, or like i swallowed a bowling ball because i can't comprehend the pain that is there. i know it's there and i can almost feel it sort of, but not really.
just lots of pictures of my childself with a big gaping hole.
=(

[MissCharlotte]

I'm in this club too! The emptiness inside is one that I still try to cover over with my adult self. I never thought of it as a hole, but that is a good description. My image is more of a lonely, lonely little girl who is still a separate part of me. I cover her up with the grown up me so that she isn't noticed by anyone.

So, what can T do? Don't really know either....

Peace

[sunrise]

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Flowerb said:so that I wouldn't have to face how empty my life is. I'm busy - work and kids and all that - but no intimate relationship to speak of.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">I think this might be the case with me too, but I am not to the point of being able to admit to that yet. Too scary. You are brave. It is scary to me just to read your words and feel that faint "ping" inside as they hit home.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Flowerb said:I never knew I could feel this way about anyone. I didn't know how to feel safe and I never knew I had it in me to love someone with all the parts of me. My marriage was abusive and I think figuring out I could love gave me the strength to leave it.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">This is very eloquent and touching to me, and reminds me of my own marriage and relationship with my T. Having the close relationship with him, especially since he is male, has been very healing to me, after so many years of an abusive marriage, and in this way, as well as others, he has helped me find the strength to abandon the abusive relationship and move on with my life.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Mostly I still feel like I'm on the edge of my life and there is this giant chasm - and what I want is on the other side - just hidden inside the trees. So first I have to get to the other side and then figure out what is hidden in the trees. It is frightening to be at the edge like this - what if I fall in? And it is lonely too.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">Again, I found this very eloquent and touching. You should be a writer.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
How many more years in therapy can I possibly need!

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">It will take as long as it takes. You are blessed with a partner, your T, on this journey into the unknown forest. Keep him close by your side and it will not be so scary.

I, too, feel empty and the feeling is in my low stomach. When I am really upset, or devastated, that is where I feel the emotional upheaval. I just don't know where all of these feelings came from?

i'm leaving such a relationship too... but i wish i had that sense of love that you have found. Kudos to you for giving yourself that. i am envious.i am also very envious that many of you seem to have very close, caring relationships with your T's

[kaimarni]

oh my goodness gracious...these really hit home...like i could of written so many of them. I've been in therapy for so long and always thought i was the only one feeling all this stuff or that something was terribly wrong with me. You all are wonderful...(tear)