Posted by Dinah on October 18, 2008, at 10:13:46
In reply to Invitation to share stories?, posted by lucie lu on October 16, 2008, at 16:42:39
I always say that it took me five years to trust, another five years to trust the trust, and we were just building on that trust to reach the really deep stuff when Katrina hit and blew everything to smithereens. We were evacuated for a month, he moved a conservative three hours away to Lafayette, and had every intention of staying there. He told me he didn't think he could remain my therapist.
I was hysterical of course, but told him I'd of course drive three hours each way to see him. I then drove to have sessions when I was evacuated to Shreveport and he was staying with someone kind enough to take his family in, in Lafayette. We had a session in a stranger's home, with dogs and cats wandering in, and with him in his evacuation clothes (shorts). I brought him a printout of a thread that I started on Babble "To Dinah's Therapist", and that meant an awful lot to him. I could tell it really touched him. I would email him with information I'd heard on the radio, that might be of assistance to him and to his family. Not often of course, but I listened to the radio on my computer, while he apparently didn't. So I'd hear the scraps of information and forwarded them to him, and he did find it very helpful.
When my family returned, and in the midst of one of the most traumatic periods of my life, he told me he was going out of the country on a job for a month. It was structured so that I wouldn't see him for six weeks, starting immediately without even a session to process it. He had already moved, he was taking this job, and he was open about the fact that he was excited about this out of country job and would probably take more like it.
I found another therapist. Well I went through one on my way to the second, T2 and T3. Pickings were understandably slim, as everyone had left town and the few who came back were leaving again. T3 actually did end up leaving in the end, along with my pdoc and most of my other doctors. And they didn't come back.
My therapist's work did keep bringing him back to New Orleans, and we were able to schedule once a week meetings most weeks. He wasn't very good in those New Orleans meetings. He was tired and stressed. Also, I did drive to Lafayette in those periods of time when it was feasible to take a day off work. Ten months after Katrina, he moved back. Another few months after that, he was somewhat back to himself.
Our relationship was forever changed by Katrina. It became more mutual I think. I don't think he forgot how I tried to help him during the evacuation, and I don't think he forgot my commitment to continue seeing him. I drove him totally nuts during that time, and was an added source of stress to him. And he wasn't a heck of a lot of good to me either. But even so, I think my commitment meant something to him, and he grew to be fond of me.
Of necessity there was more mutuality in many ways during that time. And once the box is opened, it's tough and tricky to stuff everything back in without harm. While we managed to swing the focus back where it should be in therapy, he does now self disclose far more than he used to. And I think it works for us. There is probably also a greater mutuality in other ways that might be frowned on in textbook cases. But Katrina sort of threw out the textbooks. The important boundaries have always been kept, and will always be kept. They're important to both of us.
I guess since then, the relationship has entered a companionate stage. Although Im allowed to move it back to the infant or child/parent stage whenever I need to do that. Hes more of a real person to me, not just a therapist/mommy. I think that even if Katrina hadnt come around, this would have been the natural progression in the maturation of the therapy relationship.
In the first five years, he taught me a lot of CBT stuff which I found helpful. I did a lot of pushing and pulling and testing and acting out. I must have quit a dozen times. I was rude and horrid to him on a number of occasions. I would tell him things like "I feel nothing for you. I won't miss you at all." or "I don't need you. You can just rent me this office. It's the office that helps me." Apparently I said them with a fair amount of believability. He had his own countertransference difficulties with me, which he actually blurted out on one memorable occasion. You'd think that would have been a bad thing, but it actually turned out to be the turning point in our relationship. I knew I wasn't crazy, that what I was picking up on was real, and there was a reason for how I was feeling. And he was horrorstruck and apparently sought supervision because he stopped acting on the countertransference by the next session.
It took him another two or three years past the fifth year of therapy for him to trust me. During that time he would treat me as if I was still the client who would quit on a regular basis, or would say really hurtful things to him. It was inexplicable to me because those days were over and finished as far as I was concerned, and I couldn't figure out why he kept harping on them. We had another of those watershed moments. I told him to look at me! I hadn't done those things in years, and I wasn't going to do them. I had changed but he hadn't accepted that I had changed. Look at me! And he did, and he started to trust me. But even before he trusted me, I trusted him enough that parts of me emerged in therapy. The first five years of turmoil had let that happen. I trusted him to treat me with respect and kindness no matter what he felt internally.
All of that time, the relationship was therapist/mommy to client/infant(or toddler or young child). The attachment was pretty insecure until very recently. I never believed he cared about me. I picked up way too much on the negative stuff he was actually feeling about me.
I think when I put it that way, it sounds a lot worse than it was. It was certainly turbulent. But through all of it, he provided something that I had never found anywhere else and that I desperately needed. He was my safety. The embodiment of safety for me. From the very first I was terrified of losing him (for all I tested him) because to lose him would be to lose my safety.
poster:Dinah
thread:857800
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20081018/msgs/858077.html