Posted by pegasus on May 6, 2007, at 22:09:36
In reply to last session w/ex-T, posted by pegasus on May 4, 2007, at 12:40:00
Thank you everyone. You guys are so precious. I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t get your feedback on stuff like this. And you’re right. You all are right. He’s telling me what I’m asking him to, and it’s never going to be enough. He’s not my T any more, and it’s painful, and that’s the end of the story. Pretty much.
I get so stuck on the idea of knowing from within myself how he feels. I mean, I guess I do suspect some things about how he feels, but it seems like I can’t actually know unless he tells me. Often enough I seem to be wrong.
For example, for most of the three years since he left, I was convinced that the way my therapy with him ended was a result of him having some personal issues of his own that were getting in the way of dealing well with what I was bringing in. I felt so unheard, which made the ending that much harder. It seemed like he only wanted to talk about having this “good goodbye” that he had in mind, and how much we had accomplished, and how good things would come out of it, and that this was just the way life was, etc. It just seemed so clear that my anger was not welcome, and that he didn’t think my pain was as bad as I was trying to tell him.
But apparently, that was not at all what was going on for him. He was trying to encourage me to see my own strength to get through it. He was trying to shore me up. Because he thought I was stronger than I thought I was. He felt like he had a limited amount of time, and that was the most important thing he could do to help me.
So, that was a big miss. I mean, I never would have guessed that was how he was looking at it. So in at least that one case, I did not, in fact, have the correct answer to how he felt, when I tried to look for it from inside me. Granted, my conclusions didn’t feel right, based on what I knew about him from the previous years of therapy. But it was the only way I could make sense of how he was acting with me.
So, then, when we recently cleared up that misunderstanding, I think I wanted to go back and have him tell me what his feelings were during the ending. I’d had it wrong for nearly three years, and that misunderstanding had been pretty painful for me. If I look for the answer from inside, it seems like I’ll be in danger of making a similar mistake again.
And then there were other times when what I thought I knew about my relationship with him came into question. For example, one time I had a session with him and my husband. It was horrible, because he acted toward my husband, whom he’d never met, exactly the same way he acted toward me. And I had thought that he acted that way with me because he liked me, or because we had developed a particular kind of relationship. But, it turned out that he just acts like that with everyone. Which, of course, makes sense, because his job is to connect with people, and make them feel comfortable. It’s just that I had interpreted it as something else – a special connection between us - and felt a fool for it.
And, yes, Daisy, I do desperately want him to say everything that you said. That he misses me, that I was special, that it hurt him to leave me, that I had some effect on his life, that he understands my pain, that he still cares, that he’s still interested, that he’s proud of me. He has told me that he missed me, which was great to hear. And that he didn’t want to end my therapy. And that he loved our relationship. And that he was glad to talk to me again. So, does that amount to the same thing? I don’t know . . . I’m not so sure what I heard him say.
I'm sorry. I know I'm writing the same damn thing over and over. Thank you for being here anyway.
peg
poster:pegasus
thread:755778
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070505/msgs/756426.html