Posted by Susan47 on January 26, 2006, at 22:20:06
In reply to Re: Personality Disorder (***trigger***) » Susan47, posted by Tamar on January 26, 2006, at 18:03:40
> Susan, I really think James is making a lot of sense.
>
> Also, of course you've never been stupid! You may have done some things that weren't in your best judgement, but you're clearly an intelligent and articulate woman.
>
A few years ago it would've been a surprise to hear that. Sometime in the last couple of years I changed my opinion about myself, along with my acceptance of my manic/depressive side. I don't know how severe either one really is. I don't think I'm severe enough to be hospitalised and I hope it stays that way. I think I've learned some coping skills, and along the way in learning those I've made some bad decisions, yes. It would've been nice if I'd had a therapist who could deal with someone in real distress. I realize now that the man I had just couldn't do that. He fell into distress, himself and made some mistakes along the way. I was stubborn and wouldn't let go or give up or stop. It just felt too painful, I absolutely couldn't deal with it all. Everything was too much. Everything in my life was crashing down, absolutely everything.> Also... I don't think it was all in your mind. I do sometimes wonder if your *interpretation* of your T's look was more of a problem than the look itself. But that's probably about your past experience; it's certainly not a sign of insanity.
>
I don't understand how, really, my interpretation was more of a problem than the look. Quite frankly, I wouldn't have had the interpretation that I did have, had the look not been so openly fascinated with my breasts. In actual point of fact, I had thought the look was comical, in a way, because it was so openly lustful. It was funny, like my breasts weren't really part of me, they were something he was attracted to all on their own. It was funny. You don't see men with that look very often ... they usually know how to cover it up really well. Which makes me wonder why he wasn't trying, so hard, to do that. But I also realize that the looks meant nothing, or would have been signals, were I in any other relationship with him. I wasn't, though, I was in a therapeutic alliance, or supposedly so ... I'll bet he does this a lot, actually. But it's not my worry. And I don't know that that's true, in any case. I only know what happened in there when I was with him.> I'd guess (wildly and with no evidence for my ideas) that the look you experienced from your T was somehow connected in your mind with the experiences of rape you've described in your previous posts. I know that when I was in therapy I had rape fantasies about my therapist (which came out of nowhere and shocked me immensely).
>
> My understanding of him as a man was always filtered through my experience of having been raped. Sometimes I was afraid of him; sometimes I wanted him. But mostly the transference was related to my experience with the guys who raped me.
>
> It was all very weird and counter-intuitive. You'd think my transference would have been negative rather than erotic in the circumstances. And I wonder whether your transference for your ex-T might have been more negative....
>
I don't know exactly what you might mean by "more negative", maybe you could explain a bit more. But the thing about having erotic transference was true for me as well, and I think the anger and the eroticism were mixed to pretty high level, I think they fed off each other, in a way. In any case, I experienced the same feelings you're talking about. I have no doubt my past experiences with men fueled my transference, in fact I think it's inevitable that it would have happened that way. What I don't forgive and won't ever forget, is that the T let me down, as a human being. He let me be afraid of him.> Anyway, I didn't want to make this all about me. I just wondered if you maybe need to think about what your ex-T represents to you, rather than thinking about him as a person, because as a person he's no help to you (just like the men who raped you were no help to you as people).
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> I hope it's OK to have written all this stuff, and I hope I haven't offended you or anything like that. I'm always willing to apologise if I've said the wrong thing...
>
> Take care,
> Tamar
>
>
>
poster:Susan47
thread:602542
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060121/msgs/603254.html