Posted by DaisyM on April 9, 2004, at 19:34:43
In reply to Re: Flight into Health ???---(minor point...) » DaisyM, posted by 64Bowtie on April 9, 2004, at 5:22:32
Thank you all for the suggestions and support. I don't really know what all this means. The past few months have been really hard and the previous two weeks torturous. I saw my therapist 8 times in 14 days. And then something shifted this week and I felt so much calmer and contained. I felt like the grown up part of me had reemerged and I didn't feel so weepy and needy.
I felt a strong need to protect this mood in all of my sessions this week. Part of that protection was moving myself (emotionally) away from my Therapist some...stepping back from needing him so much. He felt this, asked me about it on Monday but we didn't really discuss it until yesterday. I actually told him I didn't want to discuss it but he said he felt we really needed to.
He said he thought I was reacting, probably unconsciously, to several things. One was a session (last Thursday) where I reported feeling pushed by him about always taking care of everyone, including him and I thought he wanted me to change that behavior faster than I was. And then a phone call the next day that didn't go terribly well. He said he could sense that I didn't find him helpful. During this call, I said, and he echoed, that I'm not a little girl anymore. He also said he sensed that he was impatient, not with me, but with his inability to solve the problem. I felt his frustration but of course, interpreted it as I shouldn't have dropped out a new issue during a check in call. But I didn't dwell on the call. There was just this uneasiness and the passing thought of we've usually do better on the phone.
Over the weekend I felt less and less emotional. He thinks I shut down my feelings as a response to all of this. That feeling better is a way to distance myself from him. I'm back in the "I don't need you, I'll just take care of my own problems" mode. He is worried that I want to cut back sessions as a way of avoiding him and more specifically, to calm down my fear of overwhelming him, of becoming a burden in some way. We've worked on this fear a lot.
I keep hoping that I have enough of a handle on my intimacy issues to know when I'm throwing up walls, but if he is right, I didn't make the connection this time. Usually I feel awful and upset, and I need to "fix" what ever I've done.
I was really upset after the session last night. I knew I didn't want to talk about all that. I floated about during the discussion a couple of times and we didn't really finish. But today, I'm OK pretty much. Those emotions went right back in their box.
So do I cut back sessions? Keep the sessions, and try to work on my issues about becoming a burden? Eat so many Easter eggs that I explode before Monday, thereby avoiding the whole thing?!
It stinks that even my good mood might be "just" be my unconscious throwing up yet another defense against me allowing the help I need to really feel better.
poster:DaisyM
thread:333848
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040409/msgs/334628.html