Posted by shrinking violet on September 16, 2005, at 11:39:52
In reply to *writing* letter to ex-t --- good or bad idea? » shrinking violet, posted by Racer on September 15, 2005, at 20:00:53
Hi Racer,
Thank you for your response. You've given me a lot to consider.
You're probably right, in that writing to her probably wouldn't give me much of a tangible sort of satisfaction. I'll never know how she reacted to it, etc., and putting myself out there like that does run the risk of getting more hurt all over again whether or not she responded. I think that's partly why I'm in no rush to write this letter, because I want to make sure enough time has passed so that my feelings don't cloud my judgement. Much of the pain has passed, but there still lingers so many questions and uncertainties. Only she can answer those, of course, and again she probably won't do it directly. Still, I feel that if I can at least tell her how I feel, then maybe that will provide some closure for me. Also, while I do believe (or hope) that my relationship with her, and vice versa, was a unique experience for both of us and not likely to be repeated with another client or T, I do sometimes wonder if her reactions to me were at least partly contrived (i.e. a therapeutic technique) and if that's the case, I fear she'll try the same with another client and hurt them as much as she hurt me. I know she wouldn't have meant to, but maybe if I tell her how much this has effected me, she'll catch herself the next time she finds herself trying similar tactics with another client.
I'm not sure what to do, still. I think I'm going to at least write the letter, and see how I feel afterwards. Maybe writing it will be cartharctic enough and I won't need to send it. I'm not sure.
Thank you for your thoughts.
SV
> I am in the process of writing a letter to an ex-pdoc, to tell him how betrayed I felt by him. For me, it's great to be able to express some of what I felt, and to clarify some of it by having to write it down so that it's comprehensible.
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> But I won't ever send it.
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> I'll probably take it in to my therapist's office and use it as the basis for a session, because I think that there's a lot of good that can come out of that. Talking to her about how the whole situation made me feel, what my reactions to it were, how much time and energy I've put into thinking things that start out with "if only I'd done..." All those things are valuable, and will help me learn how to avoid blaming myself for all the bad things that happen to me.
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> Sending the letter, on the other hand, won't do anything good for me. What would happen if I did send it?
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> 1. He'd read it, but I'd never know that he had or what he thought about it. No satisfaction for me there.
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> 2. He'd read it, and get a restraining order. Certainly no satisfaction there, plus the humiliation of the whole thing.
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> 3. He'd read it, and he'd respond with his side of it -- since I can virtually guarantee that, even if he thought he'd made a mistake in his treatment of me, he certainly wouldn't admit that to me. So that response would be all about how I was wrong -- same thing that hurt me to begin with.
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> Those are about the only outcomes I can think of, unless you believe that pdocs can send flying monkeys to do their dirty work. ;-)
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> I guess what I'm trying to say is that you might find it more useful for yourself to sit down and spend some time trying to work out what you want from this? What are you trying to get out of it? It's very unlikely that your ex-T is going to respond saying something like, "Oh, I just didn't understand -- I"m so sorry I hurt you, and you really are a brilliant star. Please forgive me!." Much more likely that you'll never get a response at all, in which case there might not be all that much point in sending it in the first place, don't you think?
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> I hope that makes sense. Good luck, whatever you decide.
poster:shrinking violet
thread:554680
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050912/msgs/555657.html