Posted by Noa on May 24, 2000, at 17:29:43
In reply to Re: Cynthia, that's real bad therapy…, posted by Cynthia M on May 24, 2000, at 12:36:25
Cynthia, I agree that your situation is complex, and cannot be summed up easily in any way. Yes, there is the rage, and the bipolar, and the nine children, etc. etc. But why should your problem have to be reduced to one or another? It sounds like you felt the crisis worker didn't listen to you or acknowledge your experience of things. Please don't make any drastic changes. Why not get a consult first with someone who has experience with this kind of problem? don't you owe it to yourself to get the most appropriate care?
I think there is some aspect of mental health care that is conducive to feeling a power imbalance and dependence. But I think this seems to be a hot issue for you anyway and you seem to crave this kind of relationship and abhor it at the same time. You said in your post that you do have a wish for them to fix it. Do you think you might get enraged because being with them stimulates this wish, and then when it isn't gratified, you feel so awful about having wished it? Let me tell you, the wish is not bad. I have wished the same, many times. We wish for someone like a therapist to fill a hole that was left gaping, and that we feel we cannot fill ourselves. Mostly, we like to avoid feeling the hole in the first place, so when we are with these helper people, and the wish/need gets stimulated and stirred up, just by being with someone who is available to listen and try to help, well, it can be overwhelmingly frightening, I think. I think you need a therapist who can work with you on determining what kind of therapeutic boundaries you need to feel safer, to not feel so vulnerable to that wish that it stirs up your rage.
Mostly, it can help to start challenging the belief that you are somehow bad for wishing such wishes. When we wish for something that in our experience doesn't get fulfilled, we tend to feel we were bad or wrong to want it in the first place. And it feels so out of control to want or need something that we have not been able to receive (that we probably SHOULD have received from our parents). I wonder if your cutting helps to distance yourself from wanting?
I say all this, because, even though I am not a cutter, I have experienced the wanting and the self-loathing for wanting something that I believe I can't have, based upon the experience of not getting, or of being told outright that I don't deserve. Of learning to squash my feelings of need or anger because I am supposedly not supposed to have them. Well, how the hell does a person stamp out those feelings? We are creative. We come up with ways, don't we?
Going back to the therapy issue...You need someone who will help you figure out how to feel some sense of control in the treatment process. I think seeing someone who knows about cutting would be helpful.
poster:Noa
thread:33767
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000517/msgs/34524.html