Posted by pegasus on September 19, 2006, at 19:47:04
In reply to Session w/Ex-T on Thursday, posted by pegasus on September 18, 2006, at 13:04:42
Ok, here's what I've been thinking about doing with my session on Thursday. First I'm going to tell him that I'd like to tell him the story of my therapy with him, and especially about the ending of it. When we were going through it, I didn't feel that what I was trying to communicate about that landed with him. So, I want to try again, and this time have him try really hard to hear and acknowledge my experience of that, and I'll try really hard to hear what he's saying. Then I'm going to make sure that he thinks he can do that. Otherwise, I think the conversation will be over right there.
Then, here's the story of my therapy that I might even just read to him so I don't forget any of it:
The Story of My Therapy
Before Therapy
Over the course of my life I have come to several conclusions that have created problems for me. One is that I profoundly do not matter. My needs, wants, interests, talents, experiences, feelings do not make any difference to anything. They are not worth considering. It was through this sense of not mattering that I developed a coping skill that involved self injury. Injuring myself was a way to make my pain seem like it counted – because it was physical injury which people usually pay attention to. While ironically, the self injury was acceptable to me because my pain from the injury didn’t count to me. I was a nothing, and fair game to use or abuse in any way that could make any difference.
(There was a positive side to this as well; I wanted to be a nothing. I could be invisible that way, and no one would hurt me, and I had a sense of control over being neglected.)
During Therapy
I’ve read a lot of research about attachment, and I can’t say that it’s completely clear to me how it happens, but somehow however it works it happened in my therapy with you. There was some magic black box with the right ingredients and what came out was a very profound attachment.
Through that attachment, and seeing that you wanted to know me, I started to see a way to learn to value myself. At least in therapy, what I thought and felt and wanted did matter. I developed a habit of grounding myself against your finding me important and interesting. Thinking of your attitude toward me helped keep me more steady when things were hard. I think I was starting to care about myself. I was definitely learning to ask who I was and start to see it, and eventually to communicate it. I started to learn how to verbalize my experiences.
This was work that was being done implicitly from my point of view. I was growing up in a way, and you were the parent of that process. I think the idea is that eventually I would have internalized your finding me important, and wouldn’t have needed you so much to get me there.
The Ending
When you announced that you were leaving, I experienced that as a message that I didn’t matter after all. My feelings, needs, wants, the process I was in the middle of, my experience of it . . . none of it counted. I put all of the lessons of my therapy into question.
I was losing my grounding, the ladder I was climbing up, the way I had found to become more healthy. Did I actually matter for a while there like it seemed? How could I not matter now? And yet there was that same old lesson. You were leaving regardless of what my feelings or needs were. So, my feelings and needs suddenly didn’t count to the person who was teaching me that they could count.
And it wasn’t just the fact that you were leaving when I needed you to stay. It was also the way that our goal became making the “good goodbye” that you described – a very adult goodbye. I had HUGE other needs that I couldn’t figure out what to do with. I tried in a sort of panic to explain what was happening for me, through emails, and a lot of thrashing around in therapy. Because there was still that part of me that had learned that my stuff could matter, at least in my therapy.
At the same time the adult part of me recognized, and heard you telling me, that this was just part of life, and part of what I needed to learn to handle better in my life. That was very confusing. I needed to be adult and cope with it all reasonably, and I also needed my angry and hurt and afraid feelings to matter. I needed help making sense out of it all.
It wasn’t good enough to just say and write the younger unruly part. I needed to feel that it landed with you. That it was ok for me to also feel the inconvenient, unpopular, difficult stuff. If that stuff was ok, then maybe it could have seemed more like I still counted. But I didn’t feel that. Maybe you were in a place where you couldn’t hear and acknowledge my stuff for your own reasons. Maybe my need and doubt were so big that I couldn’t feel your holding it no matter what you said.
Whatever happened, it was a howling, raging pain. It still is. And I don’t think you ever accepted how big it was.
Afterward
I tried to find another therapist, but couldn’t find that same sense of grounding, of wanting emulate someone into a more healthy way of being. At first I could barely stand to talk to anyone else at all. I left T2 basically because she wasn’t you and I couldn’t stand it.
Even after finding T3, who feels comfortable, the magic of attachment hasn’t happened. It hasn’t mattered to me that she seems to find value in me. It doesn’t make me value myself. I just think she’s mistaken. Or irrelevant. Somehow that process is still linked to you for me. So, when you don’t reply to my emails, or just now when you hesitated to agree to talk to me, I feel like the big nothing I always have been. Sometimes I profoundly believe that I don’t really matter. Oh, I know, everyone matters blah, blah, blah. But underneath that intellectualization of it, I’m pretty certain it doesn’t apply to me. And sometimes I still feel bits of being important. So it’s still pretty confusing. I don’t know whether my work with T3 is helping that part of the problem.
With T3, it’s like I’ve found a foster parent, and I’m glad she’s there. We’ve done some good work, and it’s much better than not having had her. But she’s not the real deal; The real deal won’t have much to do with me anymore. I still ground against the memory of your way of being with me. But that’s fading, and what do I do when it’s gone? Back to where I was before?
Why Now?
My recent experiences at work are another example of the folly of believing that I matter. There was an illusion that I was valuable, but then in one week it completely fell apart. It’s clear that I’m not important there. My feelings, interests, needs, wants, experience, knowledge, what I’m good at . . . none of it mattered. Just whether I could work full time and travel. Same lesson as when you left. If I’m convenient, then I count a little, but when something else comes up, I’m very ditchable.
One of the big experiences from when I was a kid that this links to is when I was in the hospital. I was really sick, but I don’t remember being sick. I remember being alone and confused, and crying for my mother, and wanting to be held by her. I remember no one being there.
T3 says that it is significant that I was in the hospital when I was 2, and you left after 2 years of therapy, and now I’ve been working with her for about 2 years. And that age is when one moves into being verbal. So, I’m dealing with a lot of preverbal stuff. I’m not sure about the 2 year connection. But . . . sure, there’s a fair bit of stuff around this that I just can’t verbalize, despite all of these words.
What Now?
So, what do I do now? Try to feel lucky that I have T3, and give up the promise that was once there in therapy for me? Try to find that magic again? How? Is it even possible? Try to convince you to let me stay connected to you in some minimal way? Any ideas?
poster:pegasus
thread:687097
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060911/msgs/687510.html