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Connecting the unconscious dots - long

Posted by DAisym on August 9, 2007, at 2:21:40

If you'd asked me years ago, I would have sworn I didn't have an "unconscious." I still struggle with the idea of being motivated by something not conscious, it feels sort of out of control, which I hate being. But no matter how I feel about it, it is hard to deny when the dots get connected.

Building trust has been a huge part of my work in therapy -- allowing myself to feel good about the connection I have with my therapist is very difficult to maintain. I've written here about it a hundred times - being needy freaks me out and then I pull away. But he is always very patient and we work it through until I feel connected again and slowly more trust is built. Most of the time I know why I'm pulling back, and I know what I'm anxious or angry about. But not this time. This time it was the unconscious transference monster reaching out from a very young place to shake everything up. I'm sure you can imagine how scary it is to realize that.

It started last week. I had to call my therapist because I was running late and he'd changed his outgoing message to say "you've reached the office of Dr...." I almost wrecked the car -- "Dr."? I knew he'd been working on his PhD but obviously it was now a done deal. So I opened the session with that - "I noticed you changed your answering machine..." and he said yes. "It" had happened a "few weeks ago." I congratulated him on three years of hard work and we talked about his dissertation and it seemed fine. I knew I was sitting on those feelings of "this was a big deal happening to you and I didn't know it, since I'm just a client" but I managed to sort of swallow all of that and we had an OK session. But group that night went badly (we have a new person) particularly around an EMDR discussion.

I brought my feelings about group into my next session and we talked about EMDR. I said clearly I didn't want to do it and my therapist went down this long tangent about how he's read it is very effective and maybe it might help me and how it would be better if he could do it but he wasn't certified to do it but he could refer me, etc. I guess he must have realized how I was taking it because he also said, "it wouldn't change the work we are doing here, I'd still work with you, it would just be an adjunct and it might help with the nightmares, etc." Of course I said I knew that. And of course, I was really upset and felt sent away. I barely talked to him the next session but at the end I finally, in tears, told him how upset I was knowing full well he didn't say "go away." So I was struggling with feelings that didn't match the reality. Over the weekend I truly tried to box away all my therapy feelings. My therapist was away over the weekend, so I knew he was unavailable, not that I needed him. I just stayed really, really busy. All of my kids were home for three days together and they were really cranky with each other. The fighting really upset me, more than it should have.

On Monday I woke up with horrible anxiety. It got worse and worse all day. I knew it was related to therapy and that whole, "did he come back?" question that happens for me when he goes out of town. I spent most of the session talking about my kids and how upsetting it was for me to hear them fight with each other. My therapist kind of blew it off as a boy thing and a sibling thing. We talked about some other stuff, including my pre-session anxiety but he seemed so far away to me. After I left, I just got torpedoed with all this anxiety - the nuclear explosion of impending doom. It was so intense that it converted to rage in about 15 minutes - mostly at not understanding what was happening and at therapy for not being what I needed it to be.

I made myself tell my therapist how I felt after the session the next day. This is new for me because I don't usually say anything until I have it all figured out. He wants me to try and think things through with him, during sessions and not be on my own with all it. So I really tried to figure out the anxiety and anger and where it was coming from. And then it all got twisted up and I ended up saying I needed to cut back on therapy and that I was worried I wasn't getting through it all fast enough for him and that the need and connection for him was painful, not helpful. I wasn't very nice...:( He said he was sad to hear that I was hurting like this and sad that our connection was painful for me. I left upset. I went to group still upset last night and the weirdest thing happened. The new person wasn't there, so it was a much more relaxed group. I said something along the lines of "it wasn't just what happened to me, it was the confusion of having a loving and good dad, and then the abuse started." Someone asked, "what changed - what was different when it started?" I answered, "my dad finished his PhD and went to work so we were put in daycare." And then I burst into tears and shut down completely.

Today we looked at it all together. A very young part of me is terrified (hence the impending sense of doom) that since my therapist got his PhD everything will change and he will leave me. This is not based in any reality and I am just shocked at how the dots connect. I told him I feel a little foolish, like this is a stretch to explain my feelings the past week. He said it makes perfect sense to him, especially given my reaction last night. I think it will take time for me to fully understand what has been triggered. We also looked at how I was overreacting to my boys fighting. When I was young, all I had were my brothers. I was hugely, painfully shy and they protected me from new people. And we all shared the secret of our dad's anger. I want my kids to be friends because in my mind, they need to have each other's back. And we did talk about the part of me that feels a little left out and hurt thatI didn't even know he'd graduated. Today he told me that he thought about telling me but it was just after my dad came and I wasn't doing very well. He said it just didn't seem like the time for sharing positive personal news. I can understand that.

So - I'm sorry I haven't been around much, I've been kind of a mess. And I'm sorry this got to be so long. (not that this is new for me.) Anyone else have one of those "ah ha!" kinds of moments - and how do you make conscious those unconscious pockets of crud?

 

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poster:DAisym thread:774979
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