Posted by Dinah on April 16, 2009, at 21:46:44
In reply to Too much pain **Trigger**, posted by TherapyGirl on April 16, 2009, at 20:33:50
It's like a death that many neither understand nor acknowledge. But those who have had that sort of therapeutic relationship will always understand.
I'm glad she's finally talking about it, although I'd guess she put it off for herself as much as for you. Everything you say is true. It's hard to feel they ever cared when they're willing to leave and just have that be the end of twenty two years of caring and intimacy. It's hard to imagine the sort of caring that allows for that. I finally have accepted that there *is* that sort of caring, however little I understand it. But it sure is self contradictory.
Yet perhaps the slow death of keeping in contact, of losing the relationship you had with her, but can't have in a nontherapy setting, would be even more painful. Maybe they know that too.
Tell her it really is this bad. It's not just the depression. In some ways it's worse than death, because death really is (with some exceptions) involuntary. Even death feels like an abandonment, but her retirement is even moreso. So like a death, you lose someone important to you. But you also know she's out there, she's just not in contact with you. So that's got to be worse, IMO. I mean, not that I'd ever want my therapist dead just so that I wouldn't feel abandoned, but that doesn't mean abandoned doesn't hurt with the pain of injury added to loss.
Maybe she's not hearing what you're saying when you say you can't make it. I always use the analogy of feeling like you can't carry a heavy weight a step more, yet still making it to the door and inside before dropping it. Yes, technically you "made it". You survived. But that doesn't acknowledge all the parts of you you lost along the way. Making it doesn't just mean surviving. She'll rip a part of you out. She'll take away a sturdy leg on your support stool. Maybe she doesn't have a choice, but she shouldn't turn it into a question of whether you'll survive. She should acknowledge all that you will lose and the pain you will feel.
Sigh. My own therapist doesn't really understand this. I suppose it's possible she won't either. Maybe it's self protective? It's too much responsibility for them to acknowledge just how much harm they have the capacity to do?
"You'll make it through this." Ugh. My general answer is to tell my therapist that what in the h*ll does that have to do with anything. Is it supposed to be a good thing? I'm not afraid of not making it through "this", whatever "this" may be. I'm afraid that I *will* make it through. Life is infinitely scary just because I know I will survive.
This should be a death that she understands and acknowledges.
I wish she would acknowledge this, so that you can incorporate this into the remaining time you have, so that at some point you may be able to have the sort of reflective ending that I think Ladybug had in the end?
poster:Dinah
thread:891135
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20090328/msgs/891151.html