Posted by antigua on November 21, 2004, at 11:14:17
I’m not whining this morning, I promise. I wrote a long post about this yesterday and lost it (too quick on the trigger, I guess, or maybe I really didn’t want to post it until I had given it some more thought.)
In any case, it’s almost Sunday afternoon and I need to work through this, which means I have to write. So here we go.
I don’t like my T very much anymore. After 13+ years of her attention, insight, patience, whatever, I’ve gotten to the point where I feel she’s somewhat irrelevant. This is significant, I realize, because it’s such a strong feeling, aemotional if that were even a word. So I know it’s important, but I just haven’t figured out why. It may be a good thing and I’m having trouble dealing w/my own emotions and my own feelings of loss.
I’ve been very open w/her and we’ve discussed this very honestly over the last few weeks.
I’ve been angry at her for a while. When I fell and hurt myself badly last month while trying to escape from a flashback, I was angry at her because I thought she was protecting me and things like this wouldn’t/shouldn’t happen. She always said we would never move faster than I what I was ready for, yada, yada, yada. She certainly didn’t push me into anything, so my anger really wasn’t justified, but it was real.
When I am in session w/her, I’m fine. I listen to her, respect her opinions and usually agree w/her insights. Afterwards, and for the ensuing week, I feel real animosity toward her. “This is just her job,” I tell myself, “and when it comes down to it, she doesn’t care about me at all. She doesn’t have to think about me for a week and gets on w/her own life.” Theoretically, this is all quite true, but I feel an unwarranted anger as well.
Last week I told her all this. She says I’m using “this is her job” as a defense to protect myself from hurt. O.k., maybe so.
But I’ve realized something else now, and it’s not necessarily bad. She wasn’t there when I fell and hurt myself and had a major breakdown w/the ambulance and hospital personnel, who had to tie me down and inject me w/who knows how many different drugs to calm me down because I was having flashbacks. I fought like hell. I, of course, was fighting my abusers in a way I’d never been able to do, and if the medical personnel had understood my situation they may not have been so harsh and humiliating. I had to fight alone, w/no one to help. Just as I tried to do in my head as a kid against my own father. I never fought him; it would have been inconceivable for me to ever have even thought it was possible. So all my feelings have been bottled up for 30 years and they are finding a path out now. I have dreams where I wake up bashing imaginary attackers and I feel some of the early pain passing out of my younger body—I don’t have to hold my breath all the time. I’m not doing EMDR anymore and maybe that would help, but I have to keep myself in control right now so I can’t risk it.
In any case, my T couldn’t save me from falling, and while I madly wished she would have helped me as a child, my mother couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do anything to protect me. I can never fill that need I had as a child to be cared for, protected and loved unconditionally. I can do it for my own children as best as I can, but that particular need will never be met for me. I accept that now and I’m not looking anymore. My T keeps telling me “you have options now that you didn’t have as a young girl.” Options, options, options, that’s what keeps me going. The adult me is finding ways to heal the hurt girls, but it’s coming from me, and not from someone else anymore: my mother or my T.
While I mourn the loss of what I never had, and never will have, I try not to feel too cheated. I’m not there yet, but maybe I will someday. I don’t want to live in the past anymore, aching and searching for what can never be. I want to find what works for me today.
So, this leads me back to my T. She’s not superhuman, she can’t save me or help me, I recognize that, but why am I so indifferent to her? Maybe it’s just that I put her up on a pedestal and although I thought I’ve accepted she is a mortal woman, I’m mourning the loss of my fantasy, of my perfect mother.
Sorry for the length, everyone, but I needed to write.
Thanks,
antigua
poster:antigua
thread:418602
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20041113/msgs/418602.html