Posted by Dinah on August 7, 2011, at 14:15:10
In reply to help - feels like an impasse, posted by lucielu2 on August 5, 2011, at 5:10:45
I like the ideas others have mentioned. I've definitely found that sometimes the rest of my life gets played back in therapy.
Besides, in the ways that likely matter to you right now, therapy *is* useless. Your therapist hasn't helped you find a way to get your daughter to communicate with you, he hasn't found a way for it not to hurt. She will be going away, you may not have the bonding moment that you want before she leaves, and you will hurt no matter what happens. How can your therapist affect any of that?
Maybe you need to not talk with your therapist right now. Maybe you need to be angry with him right now. Maybe your daughter needs to cut you off right now.
But as I always remind my son, no matter how awful "right now" is, it's not the rest of your life. It feels like it is, but it's not. Relationships with therapists are like waves (to paraphrase Alan Alda in "The Four Seasons"). Overall it has been a rich and rewarding source of help. Right now you're in a trough. But if you hang in there, it's likely the wave will crest again.
Relationships with children are like waves, too. If your children know that you are long term committed to them, that you love them and will support them, and that you'll let them be who they need to be at this moment (particularly once you really have no way to control that anyway), then when they are ready your relationship can begin the climb from the trough.
But not until they are ready, I'm afraid. Not at this age. It's more important to protect the relationship as a whole, and the potential for relationship, than it is to get her out of her room right now. Unless of course you think she's depressed or otherwise in need of assistance.
So maybe that's what is most helpful to me at least. I hope it's helpful to you as well. This isn't the new reality. It's not the loss of your daughter forever. It's a trough, maybe a deep trough, and maybe the relationship won't look the same later, but a relationship with a child lasts a lifetime. This is just one tiny point of time in a lifetime of points of time.
poster:Dinah
thread:992867
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20110706/msgs/993074.html