Posted by mair on November 10, 2002, at 20:56:36
In reply to Has anyone successfully lost a therapist?, posted by Dinah on November 9, 2002, at 12:52:22
Dinah
I think of myself as being difficult too, and it seems to be pretty easy for me to convince myself that my therapist would love to terminate, but can't because she knows I have so many trust and abandonment issues that would be exacerbated by her withdrawal. There's almost no way she can effectively counter this other than to tell me as persuasively as she can, that it's not true. Even on those occasions when I believe her, I'm only reassured temporarily.
I think of myself as being difficult because for every step forward I take, I seem to take ten backwards. When I started seeing her 4 years ago, it was for some very directed CBT. However, she seems to have decided a long time ago that she'd get nowhere with me by just using CBT, and for the last year and a half, I've been seeing her twice a week for fairly intensive psychotherapy which is hardly what either one of use bargained for in the beginning. I get frustrated by my lack of progress and assume that she is getting impatient as well.
I'm not sure this is appropos of anything other than I wonder if you are a difficult patient only in your eyes and not in his. My therapist tells me that my abandonment issues notwithstanding, she'd have to jettison me if she really thought she couldn't make progress with me. So maybe the mere fact that you're still with this therapist means that to him, you're not really as difficult as you may think.
Mair
poster:mair
thread:1493
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20021109/msgs/1505.html