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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 12 of 12. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by pinkeye on April 13, 2005, at 14:02:25
All along, I was really scared of trusting a man, because I thought, I would never mean anything to anybody, and that they will one day just walk away from me and not have any impact for themselves - that they would never feel anything about leaving me. I was really scared of trusting someone and developing a healthy attachment to a man. And I think I ended up developing kind of half *ssed attachments because I was scared. I was really scared of someday when they will jsut come and say it is over, and will move on and I will be left alone..
But with my ex T, for the first time, I trusted fully, somehow I thought he was going to be there.. But then as if almost the worst has come true, he sent a mail one day to terminate me and left off. And I am thinking that my worst dreams has jsut come true. That this is why I never wanted to trust anyone in the first place, and that for the first time I trusted, my worst fears have come true.
Logically I can see he was right - he was my tehrapist, and I was just a patient, and I wouldn't have meant anything to him personally, and one day we needed to stop anyway, and we were both commited to other people etc etc. But somehow emotionally it just makes me feel like as if the worst has come true. And I can't seem to change my emotions to follow my mind. It keeps feeling abandoned and rejected and as if the worst that I imagined has come true. I don't want to feel this way, and I know he is really a nice person. But somehow I feel lot of rejection and abandonment and hurt and never want to trust anyone ever again.
Any ideas?
Posted by happyflower on April 13, 2005, at 16:52:20
In reply to worst fear come true?, posted by pinkeye on April 13, 2005, at 14:02:25
I can feel your pain pinkeye (((((hugs))))))))
Your feelings are real and as hard as it is to feel them, you have come a long way in trusting. You finally trusted someone but the problem is that he can't return those feelings back to you. It wouldn't be ethic for him to. But one good thing is that you can see that you CAN trust. You have the ability to trust and in time you will find the right man. It is tough to trust. I have a hard time trusting too. But when you open yourself up, you might find the right guy for you. I did, and have been married for 11 years. I just started therpy and am learning to trust anyone other than my DH, and my kids. I am slowly trusting my T, but that scares me too because I don't want to get too attached to him. I see the pain in others who have been attached to their T's and I hope I don't have to go through that. I am trying to open myself up to have some real women friends. It is so hard, because my mother is my abuser, and forming friendships with other women is hard for me. But you can't meet people if you are closed off.
I bet you are more ready than you think, to open your life for the possiablity of love. I hope you do find real love, love that can be returned back to you.
Posted by happyflower on April 13, 2005, at 16:57:19
In reply to Re: worst fear come true?, posted by happyflower on April 13, 2005, at 16:52:20
I am also wanted to add that it took me years to fully trust my DH. I put him through the ringer with all kinds of challanges for him. It took a long time, but I finally see that he truely loves me and won't hurt me. But it was so tough being so vunerable.
Posted by pinkeye on April 13, 2005, at 17:09:17
In reply to Re: worst fear come true?, posted by happyflower on April 13, 2005, at 16:57:19
Thanks Happy Flower.
I have been married for 4 years. But the problem is I don't trust my husband..
Posted by Tamar on April 13, 2005, at 17:38:35
In reply to Re: worst fear come true? » happyflower, posted by pinkeye on April 13, 2005, at 17:09:17
It’s natural to feel rejected and abandoned after therapy comes to an end, even with a good termination process, and it sounds like you didn’t have a proper termination process, so it must be even harder for you. No wonder you feel your worst fear has come true.
In a way, he did abandon you if he terminated you without doing it in a therapeutic way. But perhaps it’s not the rejection it feels like. In other words, perhaps it wasn’t really about *you* but about his circumstances. I know it must feel as if he didn’t care about you, but I still think it’s impossible for a T to hear all our most personal thoughts and feelings and not care. They must care at some level, even if it’s not quite the same way we care about them.
You said, ‘one day we needed to stop anyway’ but perhaps that day came too soon for you, and not in the right way. Maybe talking about it with a new therapist would help. Is that possible for you?
You also said you don’t trust your husband. Do you mean you don’t trust him not to leave you? Or is it something else (you don’t have to answer me; I’m just posing the question). Is it related to the concerns you expressed recently about having to choose between going back to your country with him or staying where you are without him?
Forming healthy attachments to men is very problematic to any woman who has a less-than-ideal relationship with her father, and therapy should offer some solutions, but if it’s terminated too abruptly it can just add to the problems. I wonder if you might benefit from going through this with a new T. What do you think?
I hope the pain passes as soon as possible.
Tamar
Posted by pinkeye on April 13, 2005, at 18:07:21
In reply to Re: worst fear come true? » pinkeye, posted by Tamar on April 13, 2005, at 17:38:35
I have spoken to my new T about this.. she says, what I am feeling is really about my father, and not about my ex T.
But it doesn't relieve me of the hurt that I feel and the abandonment.. And I can see your point, but somehow it just hurts and hurts and hurts. I try to push it away and move on, only to go back to hurting a few days later. Somehow I really trusted my old T, and wanted to do it right so much. But now I feel like screaming to myself and wishing I didn't have to go through it once again. I cannot imagine how stupid I have been to like and trust someone who doesn't like me back yet again. I knew all along he just thought of me as a patient and was indifferent to me. And that is what he told me in the end also. And I know he was honest and sincere, and I didn't really matter to him. But just that it hurts me. And I really don't know how to move on. Somehow I feel it is all my fault.
Posted by Tamar on April 13, 2005, at 20:06:13
In reply to Re: worst fear come true? » Tamar, posted by pinkeye on April 13, 2005, at 18:07:21
> I have spoken to my new T about this.. she says, what I am feeling is really about my father, and not about my ex T.
True enough. But if you didn't do termination properly with your ex-T, then I think it really is about him too, in a way. You might have transferred your feelings about your father to him, and then he abandoned you too. So now you have two abandonments to deal with. Is that a possibility?
> But it doesn't relieve me of the hurt that I feel and the abandonment.. And I can see your point, but somehow it just hurts and hurts and hurts. I try to push it away and move on, only to go back to hurting a few days later. Somehow I really trusted my old T, and wanted to do it right so much. But now I feel like screaming to myself and wishing I didn't have to go through it once again. I cannot imagine how stupid I have been to like and trust someone who doesn't like me back yet again. I knew all along he just thought of me as a patient and was indifferent to me. And that is what he told me in the end also. And I know he was honest and sincere, and I didn't really matter to him. But just that it hurts me. And I really don't know how to move on. Somehow I feel it is all my fault.
Yes, it does hurt. And it hurts even more that they don't seem to acknowledge just how painful it is.
If you actually didn't matter to him, then he was really missing out. You are a wonderful person and it's hard to believe that you could fail to touch his life in the way you touch the lives of people here. If you really didn't matter to him, then it's *his* fault, not yours. Poor silly man, not to recognise just how great you are.
I don't know if it's possible to push it away and move on. Somehow I think the most painful thing is having to feel every moment and every little detail of it, over and over.
It's hard work feeling that hurt every day, but eventually (I hope) it will get more bearable. It just takes longer than we expect.
(((((pinkeye)))))
Keep posting about it, and keep talking to your new T. It's the only way through it, I think.
Tamar
Posted by pinkeye on April 13, 2005, at 20:34:47
In reply to Re: worst fear come true? » pinkeye, posted by Tamar on April 13, 2005, at 20:06:13
Thanks Tamar. It is very nice to hear some soothing words when you are not at your best. I wish I could borrow the words that you said for myself jsut for today. Somebody atleast thinks I am a wonderful person. Today, I needed to hear those words very badly. Thanks a lot.
I have a hard time thinking my T didn't handle the termination right. I think he went about it in a right way. Maybe he could have told me he liked me atleast a little in the end - even if he didn't mean it. That might have saved me lot of hurt. But other than that, I think he didn't make any mistake.
Posted by Shortelise on April 13, 2005, at 20:50:45
In reply to worst fear come true?, posted by pinkeye on April 13, 2005, at 14:02:25
As Gertrude Stein said, a rose is a rose is a rose. Hurt is hurt, pain is pain, be it about whomever.
"Just a patient"! Bah! Y'know, I hope there is a special place in limbo for the T's who get themselves into spots with clients they can't get out of so they fire them. I'm being nice, you see, I'm not suggesting there should be a special place in hell. Limbo would do, so would purgatory.
Pinkeye, you are going to work this through, right? You are going to feel this pain, mourn this loss, relate it to whatever else it relates to, and you are going to get on with your life, ok? Well, I hate it when people here tell other people what to do, but I really wish you would do this. It makes me so mad that your T's failings affected you so much.
Accepting that someone we respect screwed up is hard, especially if we are hurt by it and they can't/won't fix it.
I send you ... fluffy pink thoughts. Useless, I know, but nice.
ShortE
Posted by pinkeye on April 13, 2005, at 21:15:36
In reply to Re: worst fear come true? » pinkeye, posted by Shortelise on April 13, 2005, at 20:50:45
My ex T didn't screw up at all. I really don't think he did anything wrong. It is really all about me. I liked him knowing full well he was married, and I was married, and I had no right to like him and expect him to like me back. And I know from the beginning that he didn't like me much.. I had the impression that he didn't like me. But he wanted to help me, and that is what he did, and he did a good job at it. I cannot force anyone to like me right? It was I who was wrong all along, and kept expecting him to like me, when I shouldn't have. I should have known to be indifferent, and I didn't know how to.
Posted by Tamar on April 14, 2005, at 3:46:42
In reply to Re: worst fear come true? » Shortelise, posted by pinkeye on April 13, 2005, at 21:15:36
Maybe I misunderstood, but my sense that your T didn't do the termination right came from the part of your first post in this thread where you said:
>he sent a mail one day to terminate me and left off.That doesn't sound to me like a proper termination process. He should have given you an opportunity at the end to talk through how you would feel without him. Maybe he did that, and I just didn't get that from your post.
About your fear that he didn't like you: I suspect we've all felt that way about our therapists. I certainly thought sometimes that my T didn't like me. But in my case it was definitely connected to my negative feelings about myself. My T didn't dislike me at all; I just didn't feel very likeable and I projected it onto him. Could that be the case with you?
It sounds as if you're being quite hard on yourself, expecting you could have been indifferent to him. I think it would be hard to make any progress if you were indifferent to your T. And I wonder if he could have handled your wish to be liked a little more sympathetically. He might have asked you to explore why you wanted so much to be liked by him: he might have asked whether you were really looking for approval from your father, for example.
I'm not trying to bash your T, but it seems a shame to see you blaming yourself for your feelings, when perhaps your T could have been a little more helpful in exploring your feelings with you.
Posted by pinkeye on April 14, 2005, at 13:08:55
In reply to Re: worst fear come true? » pinkeye, posted by Tamar on April 14, 2005, at 3:46:42
That is true, my termination was done through one email.. But there is a lot of history to it. I kind of had email therapy all along, so almost all that was done through emails - him sitting in my country 20000 miles apart from where I live. I visited him for a few sessions (about 5) every time I visited my homeland, but then I have done that only twice during the course of 2 and a half years. So I don't know if there was a better way to have done the termination. And he retired from practice himself, and couldn't continue to be a therapist for me. So that is why I don't really think he did a mistake. It was as best as it could get. Maybe he could have told me that I could have a few exchanges with him over termination, that might have helped a lot. And emails lack a lot of emotional tone - especailly because I don't see his face or voice.. So he might have meant things differently than what I assumed when he said there was no question of liking me or disliking me and all he wanted to do was to help. AFter that email, I didn't get any response to subsequent emails that I sent, so I just assumed he is not going to write again. There were all sort of strange scenarios which are not the way therapy is done in the US. And he didn't charge me at all for his services. And he was kind of a family friend's friend that is how we knew him.
And I was very attached to him, but I also know his family a little, and I even know his wife in a sense.. And he knows my parents, and I know his parents etc. So it was really a different kind of therapy experience. I think that kind of led to lot of confusion for me.
And you are right about my own fears being projected. I think that is what I am doing. Or my expectations are too unrealistically high.
And you are right about me taking responsibility for more than I should be. My new T also keeps telling me that - about other things. She says that I am taking far more responsibility for things which are really not mine. In this case, I think he didn't do any mistake, but neither did I. I can see it was pretty much impossible to go into therapy without developing some sort of attachment and liking towards your T. I am not going to be hard on myself anymore.The thing is, after all this also it still kind of hurts.. And I wish it doesn't. My husband is really turning out to be a nice guy, and I want to be loyal and affectionate towards him - atleast hereafter. And I think I need to move past this hurt somehow to be able to do that fully. But whenever I realize my ex T didn't like me, I go back to hurting.
Thanks for listening to the long story. :-)
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