Posted by vwoolf on October 18, 2004, at 14:14:41
I have spent all evening thinking about my session with my T today and feeling angrier and angrier. Last week there was a misunderstanding between us - I thought she wanted me to do something, I did it, and then couldn't understand her questioning me around it, as if I had done something wrong. It pushed me into a total spin, hence the suicidal ideation and SI over the weekend. Anyway today we talked about it and the fact that I am always trying to please other people (like I did with my father when he sexually abused when I was little) and can't express my own needs. However this is difficult in therapy when you don't know anything about your T as a person, because everything you think about them is a projection, and you don't know what their needs really are. She asked me what I thought about her and what I thought her needs were. I told her that I thought she was a lesbian, that she leads an interesting alternative life with a lot of political activism and friends, that I couldn't handle it if I thought she was married with children and dogs and swimming pools etc. She said she thought it was because I thought that if she was a traditional housewife like my mother she would never be able to understand me. Which I guess is true. But I think it is also that if she has had only a traditional sort of life she won't be able to understand my sexuality and the difficulties I have been through. The sort of things that meet with dead silence when I mention them on Babble - just nobody identifies with them at all. Which makes me feel weirder and weirder. But now I'm having all sorts of crazy feelings about my T. She of course did not tell me the truth about herself, and in fact I asked her not to. But how can she care, and even more, how can I care if I have no understanding at all about who she is? I hate this sort of relationship, it feels so unfair. There is nowhere to hide. I usually hide myself by fitting in with other people's expectations of me and never revealing my true self. I feel so hurt and vulnerable now wrt my T that I am not sure I'm going to be able to go back.
If you met me you would find me incredibly pleasant and not at all crazy. You would wonder if everything I've been writing to Babble was true. But it is. I just never show anyone who I am. Ever. Not even my husband. Oh God, this is so hard. Because I don't really know who I am, and Babble feels like one of the few places where I tentatively try to say things without caring who thinks what, only to feel so paranoid afterwards when nobody makes any comments because the things I say are so bizarre. So even with Babble I'm trying to please an audience. Damn, damn, damn. I hurt.
This is such a rant. Sorry. I should have tried to reorder my thoughts before posting, but I just feel too pent up at the moment to be able to do anything of the sort.
poster:vwoolf
thread:404437
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20041016/msgs/404437.html