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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 4 of 4. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Cowardly Lion on November 12, 2009, at 11:04:55
Hi to anyone who's reading
Right, its time I paid back a little of my debt, if that is possible, to people on this site before it changes too much. (Which might happen with Facebook and Twitter linking? Please dont link this post to either of them.)
This is just for anyone else who worries that therapy has become way too important in their life.
I posted a little to this site some time ago, under a different name. My five-year therapy had ended a few years previously, because of the chronic illness of my therapist, and I was devastated. Family life and work were going on apparently as normal, as they had done all through my therapy. Inside I was just wrecked with grief and it wasnt getting any better. It felt like grieving for your loved and utterly needed parent, sometimes for your grown-up child, who just didnt want to have anything to do with you anymore.
It was mad and unbelievable, and even now Im crying just at the memory of the despair and bewildered anguish. I was terrified that I would one day hear that my therapist had died. I wanted to die myself and ever since the worst period of my therapy, three years in, suicide had held no terrors for me. But I am lucky and have family who love and need me and I could not bear the thought of what my suicide would do to them. So no easy way out. It seemed as though I would carry the pain and grief for the rest of my life.
Fast forward (about 45 years, sorry, I wish it were a shorter time). Guess what, the shrink has shrunk! My kind, perceptive, and intelligent therapist will always be special, but I dont miss her anymore than I would a friend who had moved out of ones life. And, thank goodness, my family and friends are back where they should be as the most important people in my life.
So what has helped?
1. Time (but its several years since my therapy ended).
2. The generous and courageous people on this site especially, and on another similar one. Knowing that I wasnt alone in how I felt, not just a one-off weirdo.
3. Books about therapy mainly from the clients point of view, especially In Session, which I first came across on Babble, but also Shouldnt I Be Feeling Better by Now? edited by Yvonne Bates, and Falling for Therapy written by Anna Sands as part of her recovery from her first disastrous therapy which was followed by a much more positive one.4. Most of all but I dont know if I can explain it very well, and if I told the whole story it would take hours, so Ill just have to cut to the chase. I think now, that in the therapy, my therapist might have been unconsciously re-creating a time when she was a powerless little girl who was let down, messed about, and maybe left by those she loved and depended on, only this time she was the powerful adult who was loved but didnt love in return and I was the little girl. I think that she may have had a massive and unconscious need to create a situation where someone (me!) knew what it had felt like to be her. And the literally years of grief that I went through after my therapy ended well perhaps in her adult life people hadnt stepped up to the plate when she needed them, and maybe I had to know how that felt as well.
My kind and conscientious therapist did not self-disclose. Not consciously anyway; but if you go by how she made me feel, then its possible she told me a lot about unacknowledged sorrow of her own.
Of course I could be completely wrong. (And I am certain that much of the pain and grief was all my very own, and that on the plus side my therapist helped me not to be afraid of life in general which was a huge gain.) All I can say is that that idea explains a lot that happened during therapy, and that, from the minute it occurred to me, my therapist began to assume normal proportions and I started properly getting my life back.
Thanks for reading if youve got this far. I hope this might help someone sometime. Everyone has an unconscious part and your therapist is no better at controling their own deeply buried motives than you are.
Cowardly Lion
Posted by Cowardly Lion on November 12, 2009, at 11:18:17
In reply to There is life after therapy but it takes a while, posted by Cowardly Lion on November 12, 2009, at 11:04:55
Posted by Dinah on November 12, 2009, at 14:10:11
In reply to There is life after therapy but it takes a while, posted by Cowardly Lion on November 12, 2009, at 11:04:55
I'm glad you've reached a place of distance and peace.
I'm sure therapists have to constantly monitor themselves to make sure they aren't meeting their own needs in therapy. I've actually had that conversation with my therapist at least once. Not in any way that delved into his issues of course.
I think it would be an all too easy thing to do to react as people first.
Posted by Cowardly Lion on November 13, 2009, at 5:42:22
In reply to Re: There is life after therapy but it takes a while » Cowardly Lion, posted by Dinah on November 12, 2009, at 14:10:11
> I'm glad you've reached a place of distance and peace.
Thank you Dinah. I think it took me so long because I just didn't want to accept that the relationship was totally over.
> I'm sure therapists have to constantly monitor themselves to make sure they aren't meeting their own needs in therapy. I've actually had that conversation with my therapist at least once. Not in any way that delved into his issues of course.
>The scary thing was that my therapist was one of the most self-aware and professional you could hope to meet and kept herself well in the background.
I can't go into details, but she suddenly realised herself, at the time, that in ending my therapy she was re-creating a bereavement; this was just a brief comment, no details. She then did the professional thing and got personal therapy. She acknowledged this at the time in a carefully considered way ('It might be that I also have someone to talk to' dropped rather randomly into the session - I hadn't the foggiest idea then what she meant!)Where she and I would probably part company is that I guess that she thought that her stuff was transiently intruding at that time. But now, from a distance, I think that maybe *everything* that went on in therapy chimed as much with her unconscious feelings as it did with mine. And that was not always to my benefit, whatever her kindness, good intentions and thoroughly professional behavior at the conscious level.
Thanks again Dinah. I think your therapist is lucky to have you as a client.
Cowardly Lion
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