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Over Attachment Anxiety

Posted by daisym on June 16, 2004, at 23:05:45

Feeling overwhelmed and unable to cope with life last week was pretty bad. To add insult to injury. I couldn't reach my Therapist and this had never happened to me before. He was switching services and they screwed up and he didn't get any of my messages until the next afternoon, nearly 24 hours later. When he (finally) called on Friday, he asked if I was upset and perhaps thought he had abandoned me when he didn't call back. I said no, I was pretty sure something was wrong with the message system because it wasn't his voice, just an autoanswer. He said, "I don't believe you, you must have been upset. But I appreciate you understanding it was a mix up." He went on to tell me that he just couldn't believe, as hard as he has worked to get me to call when I need him, that I DID, and he didn't get the message. I kind of felt sorry for him, he was so frustrated by the situation.
 
I went to therapy on Monday expecting...I don't know what...but I didn't get it. I came away so angry and upset. It took me awhile to settle down and figure out that I was upset because I wanted comfort and sympathy for what I was feeling and how low I had gotten, I didn't want to "explore it." Plus I felt like such an idiot for going to that suicidal place at all, having to tell my Therapist in detail what I was thinking and doing was really embarrassing. I felt like the frightened little kid who got lost at the grocery story -- who is so very relieved to have been found but instead of getting a hug, gets a lecture about how not to get lost again.
 
We did talk about crisis interventions and hospitals and discussed what other supports I had in my life and how I might create some more.  I know I need to have more people to call than just my Therapist. In the aftermath space of post-therapy panic though, I twisted all of that discussion to mean "You need to have other people to call and lean on because I don't want to do it as much. You are just too needy." 

We talked yesterday on the phone and I can't believe how completely honest I was about how upset I was. I said I felt like an idiot about all these feelings but I needed to know if he wanted me to "tell" other people so he didn't have to be there so completely for me.  He said he could see how I might take it that way but that he absolutely did not mean that. That he still expected me to tell him everything, to call him when I needed him and he wasn't at all sick of me. That I could "cling to him desperately" (my favorite phrase) until I was ready not to. I was meeting a close friend after a work meeting for dinner and I wanted to know if he thought I should reveal to her what I'm working on in therapy so she would understand why I feel so nonfunctional sometimes. We went through the pros and cons of this...and he said he hesitated recommending talking to someone else about what was going on in therapy because it might "threaten" the intimate bond I feel with him, because then it wasn't just "ours" and he thinks that bond is still somewhat fragile. (I posted about the conversation with my friend on social.)

I was overtaken today by anxiety and fear just before my session. I made myself go and we tried to explore the fear. I think it was partly due to how demanding emotionally I've been on him lately (would he be mad about yesterday's phone call?) and partly due to a violent memory we've been working on. He let me struggle with it awhile and then finally said, "I'm torn between protecting you from this fear and asking you to stay with it so we can figure it out." Ultimately he rescued me, led the discussion in a different direction and at the end supplied plenty of reassurance that he was OK with being my primary support, he wanted me to lean on him and he reminded me of what I had written in the card I gave him a couple of weeks ago about learning to trust him.

How can you resist being attached to someone like this? I mean, he quoted my card! I'm reminded one more time that though the work we are doing is incredibly painful and unsettling, I am lucky, lucky, lucky to have him in my corner.

(I'll try not to worry about this over-attachment thing for a few more hours yet. :) )

I'm also very lucky to have all of you. If I haven't said it lately - thank you for all your support!

A not quite so droopy Daisy today.

 

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poster:daisym thread:357421
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040614/msgs/357421.html