Posted by Annabelle Smith on November 10, 2010, at 23:55:04
In reply to Re: Therapy and termination, posted by Solstice on November 10, 2010, at 22:01:19
Solstice, thank you so much for your response. I read through one of your recent posts here about your relationship with your toxic T and the process of moving a healing T. We also talked about this in one of my posts a couple weeks ago.
You mention hanging in there until I visit my therapist-- which is in less than 40 hours. However, worse than this awful in-between time is the fear that when I actually get to the session, I won't be able to tell him what is going on-- and so the unreality perpetuates itself. Sometimes I feel like just going into a session and dumping about a load of books and tons of filled crumpled sheets of paper on the floor and just say "here"-- that is the chaos. My current therapist (old therapist) knows the therapist I just terminated with actually transferred me to him when he left the center on campus. Being aware that I do project and distort reality, I know that probably, I am distorting this too-- but for now, it is how things really seem to me.
Solstice, I think you will understand this. The difference between the two therapists is how they do therapy and how they "are" when they do therapy. In the termination session today we discussed reasons for my decision to go back to my old therapist. I told him the main reason was because of my deep attachment to my old therapist that I worked with last year-- that our work was interrupted for 6 months over the summer and that I needed to go back to him to heal. My therapist got that today. However, what I didn't tell him is that one of the big reasons that I needed to leave was because I didn't feel safe anymore and I didn't trust him anymore. The safety and trust were there for a little while, but after that one session where I felt blamed for being silent, accused of playing the role of the victim, and then my phone call was never returned, as hard as I tried, I couldn't feel the same trust and safety anymore.
The therapist that I am working with now has a way of being that soothes me. His voice, his gaze, his very presence in the room makes me feel like I am held in a safe place. In our session last week, I showed him one of my posts, and he read it to himself. He held the post in his hands the entire session and afterwards, offered to give it back to me or asked if I wanted him to hold on to it for me. I told him that I wanted him to hold on to it, and he thanked me; in a genuine way, he thanked me and told me that he really appreciated that. That made me feel a kind of acceptance and validation that no explanation can ever give me, regardless of how detailed and brilliant. In fact, I can find explanations by myself-- that's what I have been doing and that is why I am drowing in words and theories. I need a person to relate to who can help me feel human again, who can help me feel like it is ok to exist and that who is willing to sit in the chaos with me, not try to explain it all to me.
In order for a person to be able to sit-with in the chaos, I think this person must know about that place of emptiness too and even have experienced it themselves. Some people simply have not, or if they have, they don't allow themselves to recognize it. I know that the only person who can help me heal in the deepest part of my being is the person who knows that place of chaos and darkness that refuses to be named. I can intuit this unnamable place in the depths of my encounter with the therapist that I have gone back to work with. When I say that my words fail and I am in chaos, I think he knows what I mean, not from words but from having been there too. I could be wrong, but I do know that he gets things on a level that I need most desperately.
Does that make sense to you?
On more thing is that I have been concerned that I am too attached to my therapist. I have heard that a strong therapeutic attachment and attunement is the source for true healing and transformation in therapy. But I have been told that over-attachment can stop therapy from progressing-- it can even make someone not want to get better because then they would have to leave this safe womb, the arms of the compassionate God.
What do you think?
My only thought is that while over-attachment and extreme idealization (even enmeshment) bring with them distressing emotions while in the process of therapy and may at times foster a resistence to becoming independent and better, they still present a very powerful and real situation to work through. For me, therapy is the meta-situation of my life. If I can get through all of this and not feel the distressing attachment, I am entering a place where I am more healed. Until things are not-ok, I will feel this ache; hopefully, as I can share with another person, I will become more whole and healed and will not be so desperate for this therapeutic relationship. There will be better relationships with others and myself in life so I won't need therapy anymore. that would be the goal.
sorry I wrote so much. i just feel so upset. do you have any ideas about any of this?
poster:Annabelle Smith
thread:969714
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20101023/msgs/969743.html