Posted by LG04 on March 21, 2005, at 8:04:30
Have any of you experienced a situation where your therapist had a countertransference reaction that lasted for a while (like 3-4 weeks) and in many significant ways wasn't able to be there for you or hear you? and got worse and worse until it was excruciatingly painful for you?
this has happened with my therapist and i was terribly hurt in the process. i know that countertransference is a normal happening in therapy relationships, and i'm actually feeling a little guilty about how angry and hurt i feel, like i should just understand that this happens sometimes and move on. it's happened one other time with her, about 14 months ago, where she had a countertransference issue with me that was intensely painful for me until she figured it out and pulled herself out of it. that time it also lasted several weeks.
i feel like she doesn't understand or is minimizing how much damage this recent one did to me, that i trust her much less now and feel very guarded, and very sad about the loss of trust that i feel. i feel like i am back in a place with her near the beginning of our relationship regarding trust. maybe even worse b/c i had developed so much trust in her and it feels broken. i feel like i don't know how this will ever be repaired. i WANT to repair it. but i don't know if i am capable. especially if she doesn't recognize to the degree that she hurt me. i think she would say she didn't hurt me, but that her actions caused me to feel hurt because of how they triggered me. is there a difference? to her, there is. to me, it's one and the same. am i wrong on this? please be honest. i don't want anyone to be on my side just b/c i am the client. i really want to know if i'm not seeing this correctly.
(what happened is that she cut off all in-between phone calls/check-ins. i had no access to her whatsoever except for our two scheduled times to talk. psychologically this just almost put me over the edge, more than the actual fact that i coudn't talk to her. and she didn't say that it would be temporary. she said it would be this way from now on. that it's too hard for her that we do therapy over the phone and this is the only way she can do it anymore. she needs the space in order to stay separate b/c she talks from home and things get too blurry for her. she didn't want the countertransference thing to happen again.
this is after two years of promising me that she would not leave, she will not leave me, over and over again. she would say she didn't leave me. but to me, this is leaving. it was an unlivable situation for me.)
in retrospect, the most incredibly painful part was that she said it was a permanent change. that i would never have her back again in the way that i needed her in order to feel safe. that was the trauma for me. and, i was in a very, very vulnerable place in my therapy with her when the countertransference started so was already feeling so much pain and needing her to "come back again" when she set the new boundaries. i can still feel the total shock inside when she did that. she was taking herself away from me at a time when i most needed her. and she wasn't going to ever come back. (except as i said with the two regularly scheduled phone calls, which is not coming back but staying just beyond reach. that's why it felt like torture. simply not bearable for me regarding safety with her. is that reasonable? could anyone here work with their therapist if there was no way to ever contact them in between sessions? if it was something that was available for 2+ years but then taken away?). i worked SO hard for these 2+ years to feel safe with her, to trust her, and she worked hard with me to earn that trust. it took so long. and it just blew up in my face, just like that. we have had a very close and meaningful and healing relationship. but it feels gone to me.
i desperately needed her to be a little bit more available but she wouldn't do it. i felt like she couldn't see or hear the pain i was in, and that for me, our relationship was on the verge of becoming beyond repair. (and lots of new therapy for me to get over it) It was frightening for me beyond words.
she has problems sometimes setting limits with others and with me and so she felt very strongly about keeping the limits she had set with me in order to get and keep herself in a place where she could be totally separate, and therefore an effective therapist. she acknowledged that she was putting her needs first but that there was no other way she could do this.
i understand her need for space except that i was in such intense pain while this was going on and as i said, she presented it as a permanent change and i had no say in it, zero sense of control. i felt her continuing to step back and step back and it was more than i could take. and yes i did tell her these things, in emails and scheduled phone calls, but she said she wasn't able to compromise. a couple of times i told her that i simply couldn't do this anymore, i was in too much pain. and she said she was completely here for me in the parameters she had set up but couldn't give more and she understood if it wouldn't work for me. this attitude also was terribly painful for me. it just wasn't her, it wasn't the therapist i knew.
finally she did, she agreed to compromise, she said check-in calls would be okay now, and now that i am so relieved, i am feeling how basically traumatic this was for me. it's a big word but that's how it feels. and such a big part of me is now closed off to her. i can feel the little kids in me wanting to hide at the thought of speaking to her. i only remember feeling this way at the very beginning of our relationship when i was just starting to try to trust her. (two years ago)
is my reaction valid? i am afraid she will downplay it and not take responsibility for what happened, that she will feel as if i was having my own reaction to her reaction (this is true) but that it's more to do with the past than with what she did. which may also be true but does that mean she wasn't responsible for how much pain i felt at her (very sudden) new boundaries, without even talking with me about how to handle them? i am trying to see her side of things in order to feel maybe less anger and more understanding, but i am just so angry and hurt about this. i feel like what she did was basically torturous to me.
i was in such a vulnerable place to begin with, b/c her countertransference had already been going on for a few weeks and i sensed that she was "gone." I already felt so alone and didn't understand what was happening and needed her more and more. Once she realized what had happened to her, she explained it to me, and then said she couldn't make herself available to me anymore in between scheduled calls.
sorry if i'm repeating myself.
what do you all feel about everything i've described? yes, i am going to send her a long email describing everything that went on with me and how it all made me feel. but how do i overcome the hurt that i feel about it? and am i justified in my feelings of anger towards her? is it "real" or is it all transference? and if it's transference, does it mean she didn't hurt me? i just think a therapist has to be very, very careful of how they handle their power, especially when the client is in a very vulnerable state. they can take themselves away in a way that is no less than re-traumatizing for the client. that's what happened with me. but is it her fault if she needed to change things to be an effective therapist with me?
i feel like SHE'S the one who had the countertransference, so why did i have to suffer so much for her issue? for her to get herself back again? is there another way this could have been handled given her needs and mine? i am so scared of her right now and that i will never be able to get over this enough to feel safe with her again.
okay i'll be quiet now. i will look forward to any responses or thoughts.
LG04p.s. i know that this is "the day after," so i am incredibly raw from this experience. will it soften with time? i am feeling a lot of pain just from what happened. how can this be repaired? what do i need to do? (that's the only part that's in my control, i can't control what she does or doesn't do).
poster:LG04
thread:473495
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050315/msgs/473495.html