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Re: Is this the end of therapy? Long » Daisym

Posted by antigua3 on May 13, 2009, at 11:57:14

In reply to Is this the end of therapy? Long, posted by Daisym on May 12, 2009, at 23:36:42

No, it isn't the end of therapy, Daisy. In some ways it's the beginning of another phase. Hate to say that it's another painful one, but I think you already know this.

Your T appears to be a little off in the usual way he deals with you. Losing a good friend takes time to recover from and he may be bringing that into the room, an insistence that you need to get better because he may be worried about his own mortality.

Secondly, I don't think you ever manipulate him and I'd check back with him to see if that is what he meant. I've asked my pdoc that same question before and it led to an interesting discussion about expectations--of what I could expect from him and what I couldn't, and an affirmation that I wasn't manipulating him, and if he thought I was, that was his issue to deal with.

The push and pull of trusting and blaming ourselves comes up at every new stage of therapy. I think you know this. But it hurts so much to have trusted so much, and to think that this issue is over with, only for it to rear when we need to go deeper.

It sounds like he is pushing you now to lead the way. You've told him as much as you can about what happened and now it's time to move to finding ways to deal with it that work for you. It's painful. I hate it. It hurts all over again, and the pain is just as intense, if not more, as the first time we opened up.

He's asking you to take those little girl feelings and start to grow up. You may not be ready for that yet, and if you're not, tell him so.

It really sounds like he's bringing his pain into the room and hearing your pain may be hard for him to deal with at the moment, so he's pushing you.

Just my thoughts. He has been too good of a T to you for you to leave. But he's human and some of the idealization may be losing some of its luster for you. You don't want that, but it's part of the process.

I recently came to truly accepting that my T and pdoc are just people. Sounds simple, but it is a huge revelation for me. My pattern has always been to take the negative things I hear from my pdoc and put them on myself, to take responsibility for things he has actually done, and not me. Separating these out has been huge for me. He's not a God. He's a person. And he makes plenty of mistakes, and it's my job now to recognize when these errors are his or mine, and to not accept the shame that I've always carried when I carried the blame for others, my father mostly.

Lastly, I don't think this is negative transference at all. And you know I'm the Queen of Negative Transference. It sounds more like a disruption in your relationship that you need to take charge of and talk to him about.

Hang in there. You've worked way too hard to stop now.
antigua

 

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