Posted by Solstice on November 8, 2010, at 12:10:40
In reply to Thanks all... and some more background..., posted by workinprogress on November 8, 2010, at 0:59:45
Emotinal neglect is profound - and the earlier it starts, the more profound it is. No wonder it's hard to take the attachment you feel when you're with your therapist - with you when you leave.
If you stay with it, and if your therapist tends to the relationship, you will eventually feel the stability of the attachment. You won't wake up one day with it. Rather, it's built piece by piece... experience by experience. Your 4X-week arrangement may be perfect for that. Lots of times to spend accumulating the experinces that will eventually 'settle' in the security you need to feel about it. Please just know that feeling secure about it IS possible. Not only possible - it really will happen. Your therapist is right in that it takes time. How much time is impossible to predict. How it takes place, I think, is mysterious. It's not like you can do something specific to solve the dilemma, and it's not like your therapist can do something specific (that she isn't already doing) to resolve it. I think it's in the staying with it. Also - it's probably (was for me) in you allowing yourself to talk about the pain you're feeling about it during therapy.
There are a lot of different things my T has done along the way that seem to have re-written my earlier attachment template. The security I feel now has been the more recent part of it to develop. It did not develop easily. I do know that my ability to see myself more compassionately is directly linked to experiencing my therapist's warmth and care - extended to me regardless. I can disavow it all I want - but it doesn't go away. I can behave as if I don't 'buy' it, as if I don't even 'see' it... but it's still there. I have worked hard to discount it as 'not real' in order to maintain my familiar "I'm not worth the care of others." I thought I had the perfect, terminal argument: "I pay you to 'care,' so it can't be 'real.'" I hung onto that one for a good while - even said it to T a couple weeks ago. But then what do I do with things like my T tolerating middle-of-the-night texts of distress, where I end up with a morning phone call where I'm hearing Unscheduled care in T's voice? It's like I'm trapped - I cannot escape the reality of the 'care'... the anchor of the attachment embedded in rock... and I'm wrapped experience by experience, snug in its inescapable present-ness. Very... very secure indeed. It didn't become secure. It's always been secure. It just took ME a long time to stop refusing to see it as it is.
Solstice
Solstice
poster:Solstice
thread:968902
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20101023/msgs/969205.html