Posted by emmanuel98 on November 8, 2010, at 21:42:50
In reply to Re: ? for long term therapy folks... Dinah, Lucie, etc, posted by pegasus on November 8, 2010, at 15:37:06
Study after study of dynamic therapy shows that the relationship is the most healing part of therapy. My T calls it having a "corrective emotional experience." I had a terribly neglectful mother and abusive father, but I managed to make a good marraige and raise a loving, appreciative, emotionally stable and successful daughter. Because of this, my T didn't want me to get too attached to him and tried to keep our sessions to once a week rather than twice (which is what I wanted). He felt I had already had "corrective emotional experiences" with my husband and daughter and didn't need him to re-parent me, but to help me learn to re-parent myself. Nevertheless, I had a lot of problems with emotional dysregulation and, after I started seeing him, fear of abandonment or being unloved. It took several years to work this through. Despite his assessment of me, I felt so overwhelmed by the experience of being listened to and cared for that I attached to him like a burr. It was really too intense, for him and for me. I went from adoration to raw fear that he was going to hurt or kill me then back to adoration and idealization. He once said I needed to de-deify him. Therapy is so complicated and intense and intimate and personal.
It's been a roller-coaster ride for me. But now, after nearly six years, we have cut back to once a month and I can handle that. I have learned to identify and express emotion and have a sense of a unified self that I never had before. (I suppressed memories and repressed emotions). One of the most important thing he ever said to me was, when I told him he didn't really care about me and only saw me because the insurance paid him, that he cared about me a lot, more than he cared about most friends. And if I couldn't pay, he would still see me and he would charge me whatever I could afford, maybe as little as $10 a session. This profoundly affected me and made me feel so much more secure with him. But the more secure I felt, the more I felt us drifting apart, because I had less to say and we couldn't talk about him or his concerns. So we have begun to meet less and I find he still cares about me and, even with a month between sessions, remembers everything I said the previous month. It's like having a parent. I have gone from infant to child to teenager with him, pushing and pulling at the same time. Now I feel we're settling into a relationship of parent/adult child. But it's still hard to imagine life without him, yet I must. He is 71 and won't stay in practice forever, even if his health stays good. When my parents died, I didn't even register it. If he died, I would be consumed with grief.
poster:emmanuel98
thread:968902
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20101023/msgs/969308.html