Posted by Wittgenstein on October 5, 2007, at 7:53:30
I want to share my week as I feel it has marked a turning point in my relationship with my T.
Last week I felt so held back - I left both sessions frustrated at how unable I was to speak freely. I wrote my T a mail over the weekend trying to express how trapped I felt with my thoughts. I told him I loved him dearly but was in some ways scared of him - felt intimidated by his achievements (although he is humble) and was afraid to open up and that he would find me a fool. For me it was a very daring e-mail.
Monday's session felt just like the session before - difficult, long pauses, trying to make myself say what I thought but failing miserably. I finally asked him what he thought of my mail. He said he had replied that morning but I hadn't checked my mails. I brought up the part of the e-mail where I wrote how I loved him (I didn't express in what way, but I think he understands how I meant it as he later related it to the love I have for my father). He said he found it very brave of me to be open about this and that he was flattered and hoped these feelings and my attachment would bring me support and comfort.
I wasn't sure what to make of his response - I left the session feeling so vulnerable. I pretty much straight away sank into an intense feeling of despair - grief/mourning. A horrible, unbearable feeling and nothing I did made it better. As the week went on, I sank lower - felt like I needed to cry and cry but I couldn't. Everything and everyone around me seemed to be out to get me - any trivial thing upset and hit me like a tonne of bricks. And all the other symptoms of depression were intensified again - the nausea, exhaustion, restlessness.
On Wednesday my partner had to go away for a conference - I didn't want him to worry about my frame of mind so I kept it to myself. At 4:30pm I got a call from my new Pdoc. I'd mixed up the date of my appointment and he was sat there expecting me to show up. Just a stupid mistake but I felt sooo bad (like I'd committed a horrific crime!) - so I cycled over to him as fast as I could (he only lives a short distance away). The session was unpleasant - I just want him to manage my meds - I'm not fussed for his transactional analysis!! He encouraged me to share any difficult feelings so I admitted to feeling terrible and he told me to distract myself, exercise bla bla - well I'm doing a lot of things now and this week I felt all the worse while doing them - like trying to be busy and being busy with despair at the same time. Anyway, I left feeling worse than before :( grr
So on the Wednesday evening I phoned my T and asked if I could see him a bit sooner so he said to come the following morning. It was such a good session - I felt so understood. He said he took great pride and pleasure in being so important to me and insisted that our relationship was the most important aspect of the therapy. I admitted that I felt uncomfortable with my feelings - feeling so needy towards another person, how weak it made me feel - like being under a spell - and he told me there was absolutely no need to be ashamed and that he was there for me.
We talked more about my father - how he let me down, sacrificed me for my mother and watched me suffer without saying a word - but yet how much I always loved him and the hurt it caused that he rejected that love. Then I likened the feeling to that of the love in the therapeutic context - how it felt unrequited and inauthentic. I muttered that "I guess you are just serving as an object of my transference" and he quickly countered that with "no, I am a person, of course there are boundaries and professional objectivity but I am still me, I am still here as a person and you are responding to me, not an object, as I am responding to you".
Today I saw my T again. The session gave me such a nice feeling - one of total acceptance. I asked whether I could fix things again having dropped out of university (I know it sounds like a crazy question but it really feels the end of the world to me) - I recalled how the most hurtful thing of the incident in Oxford was how my father said he was disappointed in me. It feels like I will carry his disappointment with me forever. My T assured me that 22 is still very young and that there is plenty of time to do whatever I want - then he told a little about himself. He said when he was my age he was lost and in trouble - confused and with no idea what to do in life. At 29 his father had said the same exact thing - that he was disappointed in him, which made us both smile. It was then that he discovered analysis and began to pursue it - first for himself, his own analysis, and then as a profession. Now he is in his late 60s, an honored professor. It gave me such a sense of relief - today I feel so much better and closer to him.
I feel very lucky to have him as my T - he is always there for me.
Ok... sorry this was so long - I just wanted to share.
Witti
poster:Wittgenstein
thread:787006
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070929/msgs/787006.html