Posted by fallsfall on February 19, 2004, at 7:32:21
In reply to Re: Seriously considering firing my T tomorrow » fallsfall, posted by crushedout on February 18, 2004, at 21:56:00
Crushedout,
I spent 8 1/2 years in therapy with her and the whole time I was very dependent. She was like a Mommy to me. I thought she was wonderful and would save me. I have abandonment issues and had trouble with vacations and things like that. So we had done a LOT of talking about how much I needed her and couldn't survive without her, etc.
Occassionally she would say things like "I don't know if I'm helping you anymore" or "I think you have learned everything I have to teach you". Of course, I would panic and think she was going to kick me out. But because of this dynamic, I don't think that she felt that she had the option of bringing up that she thought I should change to someone else. I mean, she tried to (like above) but I immediately panicked and then she spent the rest of the session trying to calm me down.
So I guess what I'm saying, is that I wish that I had been able to put the abandonment issues aside so that we could really talk about whether she was helping me or not. It was my wall that made the discussion impossible. I know that she would have been honest with me. The question was whether I could hear her honesty.
She took my case to her supervision group, and they said that if I wasn't doing better in 3 months that I should switch therapists. At that point I had been in immense pain for 2 months or more, and in a severe depression for over a year. On that day, I could agree with her that if I was still in this much pain in 3 months that I SHOULD switch (but of course, I still didn't want to). I wish that we had talked at that point about how a different therapy orientation might be helpful, or a new point of view.
I decided about a month later to look for a new therapist (it was the only way I could stop feeling extremely suicidal). I decided that staying with her and killing myself was not more painful than leaving. She thought I was leaving because she had taught me all that she could.
I interviewed 4 therapists. Most of them did make the comment that I should try to talk this out with her (even though I said that she supported my decision to leave). They all saw the transference that was at work. I couldn't see it - and she (a CBT therapist) couldn't/wouldn't work with it.
I did journal once about what she should do if she wanted me to leave - how she could word it so that I wouldn't completely freak out (it was something like her saying "I'm no longer able to help you because I don't have any more ways to try" - in other words, if she said that she was "at fault", that she had a limit that made her not able to help me - that I could handle that because then she wasn't rejecting me, she was taking the "blame" for the therapy ending.) She read all of my journalling, but she never mentioned that part.
I guess the bottom line is that if you can find some way to say (and be able to hear the answer) that if SHE feels that for some reason that SHE is not able to help you, that you want to know that. This would give her a chance to say that she is baffled by your case, or that she IS attracted to you and that makes it very hard for her to be objective. The hard line she is taking now may be a reaction where she is trying to re-establish boundaries where they have fallen down before. I guess I wish that you could give her a chance to say "*I* can't give you the therapy that you need".
If she thought that I could hear that, my old therapist would have told me that.
By the way, I've been seeing my new therapist for 8 months now. He's so different from her. Pschodynamic instead of CBT, lot of other differences. I'm making progress with him that I could never have made with her. He really is good. I still miss her sometimes - I miss the security she gave me. I was in to see my Pdoc on Tuesday - their offices are across the hall from each other. He asked if I had seen her in the waiting room yet. I haven't seen her since our last session (I left a phone message saying I wasn't coming back). I'm terrified to see her.
I think that she is a very good therapist. It was just that we got into this dependency thing that we couldn't get out of. I just needed someone *different* from her.
It is very hard to know what to do. You might also want to do a consultation - where you talk to a new therapist about your issues with your current therapist. I found that helpful.
Please let me know how it goes. And know that either staying to work things through, or leaving because you need someone else, are BOTH reasonable decisions. You just (just??) need to figure out which would help you more.
poster:fallsfall
thread:315328
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040218/msgs/315524.html