Posted by Solstice on November 7, 2010, at 7:33:31
In reply to ? for long term therapy folks... Dinah, Lucie, etc, posted by workinprogress on November 7, 2010, at 1:11:55
Hi WIP -
What a cool thing to explore. And what a VERY cool thing for your T to say. Attachment. For those of us who are 'attachment-challenged' just the word itself can be frightful! When my T brought it up (and that word was brought up early on, and regularly thereafter), I winced every time for the first 3 years.
No doubt you've seen all the previous stuff on here about what's been written about Attachment Theory and different attachment styles... which we develop based on what kind of attachment we were provided very early in our lives.
I wasn't offered safe attachment. My parents were not physically abusive. And they are good people. They just weren't available. Physically available, yes. Emotionally/spiritually/intellectually/personally available, no. So as a child, when I tried to attach with the deep longing all children have to attach, nothing was there. Or it would appear to be there (like a mirage), which when I'd touch it with all the innocent hope a young heart can muster, it would evaporate. No where to take my hurts, my need for affinity, my hopes & dreams, no parental hands to safely hold my young affection, my young image of myself as worth attaching to.
Your attachment struggle seems to be a fear of people you attach to abandoning you? Mine was a fear of attachment itself.
My reaction to my early expriences with attachment was to simply not believe attachment was possible. Or real. Or that maybe there was something wrong with me that made my early attachment figures recoil. So in therapy, when after several months my therapist said something (totally shocking to me) like "Solstice, I want us to talk about your attachment to me" - let me tell you - I must have turned white as a sheet just hearing those words put together. The very concept was intensely frightening to me. My insides froze. The intimacy of T's suggestion was overwhelming for me to even consider. Any awareness I had of a need to attach had always brought shame. What created an especially acute challenge for me was that I had apparently attached to a previous therapist.. with desperate abandon. But he did not tend to the relationship. He had blind spots, didn't monitor his own counter-transference. He got defensive when there were ruptures in the relationship. For that attachment to fail like it did was my undoing. So my current therapist had a real project, for sure.
My T talked about attachment on a regular (but not constant) basis. Anytime something came up that made it appropriate to bring up, T never missed the opportunity. Explored my impressions of my attachment to people in my life. And said pretty much the same thing yours said.. "I am here for you to attach to me. I will be your 'base.' It will be good for you to attach to me. I will not leave you."
The process itself probably took more than three years before *I* felt securely attached. I'd say it's felt very secure to me during the last six months or so. It's a lot easier to understand the process in retrospect. I was afraid to depend on anyone. Afraid to rely on T. I would go thru this thing of being in pain about something and, of course, therapy was my safe place to be in pain. So I would do this dance of attaching to cope with a painful experience, then (inside myself) running away from the feeling of attachment as soon as I could. I think it took a LOT of my unconscious testing of the relationship. One time T called it a "love test" and I nearly passed out :) My T did not overwhelm me by non-stop pushing the concept on me, but my threshhold was so low that T bringing it up once every 12 sessions was a LOT for me. Thing is though, that the ever-present-ness of it was good for me (much as I winced). In an odd sort of way there were periodic things that happened where I sensed a vulnerability in my T that seemed to help move me toward attachment. And T would periodically say something that, because I was SO afraid of being attached, sounded so incredibly intimate to me that it would rattle me. Not because there was anything wrong with what T was doing - but because of my deep issues with attachment, and then retraumatization by the previous therapist. Hearing T describe something about our relationship in intimate language decreased my "run" threshhold, I guess. Here's an example: I can text my T at any time, but have agreed to not expect a response. It helps me to in-the-moment tell T something that's plaguing me. So I was feeling despair about something, and texted T about it. It was after a good period of relative calm. It must have been at the end of the week, because T contacted me and said "I want to meet with you Sunday at 2, can you be there?" We takled a little bit, and I was okay enough. When we met, I said I was glad (but surprised) that T was able to offer this opportunity on a Sunday. T's response: "I know you said you were ok, but after hearing the despair in your text, I needed to put my eyes on you to make sure you are ok." The "I needed to put my eyes on you" was profoundly intimate to a parched child's heart. Events like that were therapeutically pivotal in opening the door of possibility of attachment for me. If T could "need" something with me that I considered intimate, then maybe I could 'let' myself attach. Maybe this wouldn't be like trying to attach to a porcupine or oil-slicked pan. It's almost like those kinds of things attached to me, and I could close my eyes and pretend I didn't see it - while it burrowed it's way in. That made it tolerable. I didn't have to do the movement, maybe. T did the movement, and I just tolerated it, until I figured out that it was real.. that it would be there again... that it wasn't going ato disappear.
I also think lots of rupture and successful repair is a key part of the process. Over the first three years, I learned that attachment was safe by repeated experiences with T that were somehow or another representative of past unsuccessful attachment experiences. Somewhere around mid-point, T said "Any time you need me, I'll be here.. and I'll know you are getting better when you are too busy to see me." T joked about me calling to cancel appointments because my 'dance card' was getting too full. Some of the comments I heard along the way confused me (because of my broken templates), and I had to work them out with T later. Ruptures would happen because of the way I interpreted things against my background of experience. But each and every time I had a worry about our relationship and confronted it - no matter how I was about it on my end - I don't have a single memory of T ever responding in a defensive manner. To me, that was a crucial piece. I'd encountered so much of it in a previous toxic therapy, that I don't think I'd have done as well as I have if my current T wasn't so gifted in that particular area. (But please don't think my T is 'perfect' - believe me - that's not the case! My T's imprefections just happen to not stress my big triggers - which is why it's such a good fit, I think).
So bit by bit, piece by piece, and at times it looked like it would never happen, but I did develop attachment to T. For a while, I was probably attached but I didn't see it that way. I'd be in therapy, talking about something, and because I felt so safe I was very transparent and responsive to any probing - so I didn't filter myself. So I'd say something and get a "Solstice.. that sounds like attachment to me." Yikes! was my inside reaction. But for the first time in my life, my attempts to attach on a primal level were welcomed.. acknowledged for what they were. I was never 'turned away.' If anything - it's like my T was so convinced that my becoming attached was the Holy Grail of our therapy, that T was always on the lookout for any little thing that could be construed as attachment. Maybe it was that serious eagerness on T's part that created the sense of safety I felt about it. Still, there absolutely were times I was overly sensitive and thought I was being rejected when I wasn't. There were times I misinterpreted things T said or did. But because T required me early on to commit to bringing up ANYthing that disturbed our relationship, those things were always addressed, and that was another factor crucial (for me) to the attachment process. It's almost kinda funny now.. because the notion that I'm attached to my T no longer makes me feel dizzy. I don't think "Yuck!" I don't run and hide. I don't feel shame about it. Or fear. And that feels good. Really, really good.
I'm tempted to apologize for the novel here, but you kinda did ask for it when you asked about people's attachment processes with their therapists!
Hope my story was helpful to you. So many of the stories I've read here have been helpful to me.
Solstice
Solstice
poster:Solstice
thread:968902
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20101023/msgs/968923.html