Posted by backseatdriver on August 1, 2008, at 12:26:33
Oh dear.
My T is gone for four weeks.
Ever since our last session on Monday, I've had hives all up and down my arms, terrible GI distress, no appetite, and insomnia. Emotionally, I'm sad but without agitation, for once.
In our last session, T opened with "Breaks are hard." I agreed. He said, "Does this remind you of anything?" "No," I said. He said, "It doesn't remind you of how your mother left when you were one?"
He was right, of course, in the sense that I have abandonment fears because my mother had a breakdown and was hospitalized when I was one. But I wasn't at that point, emotionally or cognitively, in the session when he mentioned it. It came as quite a shock, actually, to hear him say that.
Since then, I've had the symptoms I mentioned, plus I've been preoccupied, imagining what it must have been like. (I don't remember her leaving, I was too young.)
But what really bugs me is this: When he mentioned my mother's abandonment, I felt like he was passing the buck, asking me to focus on my mother rather than on what he was doing to our relationship by going on vacation for so long, after we have become so close.
Your thoughts? Is he evading responsibility for the hurtfulness of the break with his (premature in my view) interpretation, or is that me? Could my new symptoms be a grief reaction? Have you ever had anything like this in response to T vacations/absences?
-bsd
poster:backseatdriver
thread:843484
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20080727/msgs/843484.html