Posted by vwoolf on July 27, 2004, at 3:56:13
Last week I posted several times on this board about issues to do with my therapist and psychiatrist, and found that writing and responding to your comments helped me clarify several really important things about my incestuous father and husband that were coming up in therapy which I hadn’t been able to see until then. I want to try and do the same with another problem that is giving me huge grief, in the hope that I will find understanding here too. Please comment if you can, it is so helpful.
I have had a difficult relationship with my therapist since my first meeting with her, when I found her hard and uncompromising. After much soul searching I decided to continue in therapy with her, because I thought it must be some sort of projection of mine onto her, but also because I sort of felt as if I deserved to be treated badly – and therein lies a tale, I suppose.
Over the year I have been in therapy with her, I have consistently been rude, angry and challenging towards her. I have even accused her of being a prostitute, prepared to care for anyone just for the money. She has always put up with everything patiently although I am sure she has not enjoyed it. I have threatened to leave so many times, have told her the most awful things about myself sort of in the hope that she would not stick around any longer, but she has. She keeps telling me that she cares for me and that whatever I do she is not going to go away.
I find it almost impossible to believe that she can care for me. How can she switch on caring for all the patients who knock at her door? I feel I must be just another patient to her, number 57, and caring is much on the same level as the caring you get at the Customer Care counter at a supermarket. I suppose also, to go back to my first point again, I feel that I can’t be cared for, that I deserve to be treated badly and turned away. She tells me that it is because my mother was uncaring that I can’t accept her. I also feel so scared that I will do something wrong and not understand what is expected of me, and that she will ridicule me, or decide that I am useless. At the moment I feel that I am getting it all wrong all the time. Perhaps I just don’t have the intelligence or understanding to be in therapy at all. Everything I say seems to be off the point. She obviously knows where I should be headed but I can’t get there. I feel lost and bad and unwanted and completely alone. I wish I could accept her offer to care for me, but I just can’t trust to it. I think I would die if anything went wrong.
She keeps telling me to telephone her outside therapy, but I feel as if I would be doing something wrong by calling her, as if I would be bothering her – she would ask me why I am calling and I wouldn’t have any reason to give her. I desperately want to hear her voice, but I am really scared of how she will judge me. Or that she will smile to herself greedily and say “I knew I’d get her sooner or later”. Oh, I feel like a silly child.
After the few good sessions I have had with her, I have had images of myself as a tiny baby lying on my back in the sun, with my therapist stroking me and laughing with me, but I can’t seem to stay with that. But I feel such longing and yearning for it.
While writing this I have left a message on her answering machine to say that I want to talk to her – she will probably only get back to me late this afternoon, no doubt while I am busy with my family around me, and I won’t be able to talk, and I will feel even worse.
poster:vwoolf
thread:371035
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040723/msgs/371035.html