Posted by Annabelle Smith on November 10, 2010, at 20:43:59
I thought I would give an update and just need to talk.
Today I had a termination session with the new therapist that I have been seeing over the past couple months. I felt unreal during the whole thing-- like it wasn't me sitting there. My mind was blank, and I couldn't speak or think. A voice came out and thoughts were put forward but they weren't fully mine. I left feeling so awful. I don't know what I needed to tell him-- I think I wanted to scream at him that things aren't ok and I need help. I am going back to the therapist I was originally working with to seek that.
I have been feeling so out of control and have been having problems with binging again. After I left the session, I told myself that I would sit with the chaos and unreality of my self, but couldn't do it-- a couple candy bars later, I felt even worse. I tried to throw up, but all I could do was gag and get a lot of junk coming from my throat but no vomit. I wanted to drown out everything that had happened by burying my whole chaotic experience with him and then purge it out, like it had never happened.
I think part of the pain comes from knowing that he doesn't understand me. I got the sense that this therapist gets me very well on a surface and explanatory level-- he helped me see many things in a new light about my relationship with my family and lack of a sense of self and direction that stem from that. But I don't think he understands me on a deeper level beyond words and explanations-- I needed an emotional attunement, a sense of a safe place to "be." I wanted to be understood in this way-- not just with wordy explanations but with real attunement. I want to be able to really share the emptiness and ache with someone-- I wonder that if it is shared, then maybe it will lessen, maybe it won't crush me so much. As we finally discussed labels, he told me that he could see me as having some borderline symptoms but not as being borderline-- he told me that I wasn't suicidal and that I wasn't self-harming. I wanted to tell him so badly that that is not true-- neither of those things are true. He doesn't understand. It's not that I need the label of borderline, or any label for that matter. I agree with this therapist and others who say that the DSM IV labels are restrive and do not account for the complexity of persons.
What bothers me is not that I don't have a label to hold onto; what bothers me is that even someone that I go to for help can't understand, can't enter the chaos. I feel so unreal.
Does anyone know what I mean when I say that I feel unreal? I can't fill out the term-- I have tried and tried, but can't define what the "it" is that is wrong. Something is awry. It is like my voice is reverberating back and forth in my head and it won't stop. It's like I live in a castle that no body else can enter into, like I am drowing in words, there is no direction, just a dizzying spiral. And the unreality is that it is all in my head-- I can't even communicate this with anyone, as today evidenced. I have failed in this therapy.
I hope so desparately that my new therapist can help me. I worry what happens if he can't. Maybe I am idealizing him too much. Today in the termination session my therapist told me that I play the helpless role in therapy and am not as helpless as I put on to be, that I am actually very resourceful and competent. That is only half-true, I think. Sometimes I am. But there is this part of me that in every moment of the day is scratching under the surface for release from hell. In every interaction with another person, this self wants to break down and give up-- but it can't. Only in therapy is that possible; that's why I don't know how to 'be' in sessions; now I am free to be whatever, no role, but I feel overwhelmed by that-- it makes me feel helpless.
Is that real or fake? I don't know. My going back and forth makes it all seem chaotic and unreal.Can anyone relate?
poster:Annabelle Smith
thread:969714
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20101023/msgs/969714.html