Posted by Annabelle Smith on December 16, 2010, at 21:15:45
I feel like I might write too much on here and become annoying to you guys. I am sorry. What I feel is lost in words.
This happens in my sessions. I went to my last session with 5 different things in my hands to share-- they could have each been a session unto themselves:
1- a stack of scholarly articles and research on bpd (I wanted to talk directly about the label and show him that I had researched and have worked very hard to figure this out)
2- scanned chapters from a book on attachment and psychoanalysis (I feel helpless that I am so attached to him and wanted to show him that I am trying to fix it by myself and I am sorry for obsessing over him)
3- my DBT workbook (I wanted to show him that I have been good and have followed his advice and that I AM doing everything I can to get better)
4- a long email conversation with a writer of book on compassion and therapy that I read after I left my sessions last May in such a desperate state of grief. The email was sent in desperation and was about the ache and grief of the loss of my therapist and other issues. I want my therapist to know about and see this.
5- these posts-- about attachment, bingeing, and fear of terminationI want to talk about so many things with him, but I got paralyzed and could very quickly mention a few but spend no time dwelling on them. I leave and feel like hell. And it happens over and over again.
We did talk about the label BPD briefly. He asked me what would happen if we used this label in terms of talking about me and my situation from now on out, and I didn't know. I finally feel validated in one way-- that what I feel is real and I'm not just making it up. That what I feel is bad and hurts a lot; that it's not just normal, that I am not just fine. Everybody else just tells me I am fine, like my mom. Maybe I don't want to be fine. Why?
At the very end, as I was leaving, I asked him if he thought I was wrong to use this label.
He said, that no, he didn't think I was wrong.
Then he said he didn't think I was right either!
He quickly apoologized for speaking in this way but explained that he just has a very different way of looking at labels.
poster:Annabelle Smith
thread:973748
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20101115/msgs/973748.html