Posted by Tamar on October 26, 2005, at 7:49:14
In reply to Thinking of canceling my next session, posted by happyflower on October 25, 2005, at 21:19:31
(((((Happyflower)))))
You sound angry and frustrated. It sounds to me as if you’re feeling neglected by your T and feeling that he doesn’t really care about you.
I wonder if you’re feeling frustrated because you hoped to be able to resolve the difficulties in your marriage more quickly than this. And I wonder also if there’s a bit of transference/projection in there: perhaps you’re particularly angry with your husband at the moment because he isn’t showing you that he cares about you, and you might be projecting some of that onto your T and imagining that he’s just as uncaring as your husband.
I know you’re worried the changes might be temporary. But it seems to me that you’ve made an immense amount of progress, particularly with your PTSD and the issues with your mother.
I think the most painful part of therapy is the uncertainty of the therapist’s feelings. It seems almost cruel that they won’t tell us we’re special and they won’t tell us they care about us, especially when they must know it would make us feel better. It feels like they’re withholding love on purpose, just to make us feel bad.
And I’ve read some of the theory so I know a little about why they do it. They can’t replace the important relationships in our real lives so they want to encourage us to focus on those relationships. They don’t want to mislead us into thinking that they’re prepared to form intimate relationships with us in real life, because an intimate relationship in real life wouldn’t be therapy and we’d have to start over with a new T. They can’t magically fix us by comforting us and they don’t want to encourage us to expect the impossible from them. But reading the theory is one thing; believing it’s true is something else!
I was thinking about this stuff recently. I have many friends who I love very much but I don’t need them to tell me they love me; I know they love me. And I guess ideally we should be able to get to the same place with a therapist. Eventually we should be able to believe they care because of the way they listen to us and the way they work with us, rather than wanting to hear them say it. But in the meantime it hurts that they won’t say it. It feels like they’re not saying it because they don’t feel it.
However, I really believe they do care, and that they care very much. It must be difficult for your T to see you suffering, knowing that he could just tell you how much he cares and that you’d feel better. But I guess he knows that he can’t fix you by telling you he cares… he can’t be the hero who rescues you from your pain. So he wants to help you to find your own way through it and become the hero yourself.
You’ve had a great deal of sh*t to put up with in life and you’ve come so far already, so I think you’re pretty heroic!
I hope you feel better soon.
Tamar
poster:Tamar
thread:571908
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20051025/msgs/572013.html