Posted by Skittles on March 13, 2005, at 11:42:16
In reply to Re: The Phone Call » Skittles, posted by Dinah on March 13, 2005, at 8:49:53
I've been seeing her for almost a year and am extremely attached. I feel calmed and cared about when I'm with her. She is kind and gentle (well, except for last week - that has been a real shocker). She has incorporated a little bit of safe touch into our therapy and that has been very important to me.
Is is worth salvaging? Yes, it is to me. And while I'd like to try, I have many worries. First and foremost, I wonder if she is really willing to continue to work with me (and if she can do it w/o resenting me) or if she just said what she did to get me off the phone, thinking that she wouldn't hear from me again, that I'd just crawl away with my tail between my legs.
Everything else applies to me and my own feelings. As things sit now, I worry that I'm going to constantly be feeling like I have to measure up - to prove myself to her or she'll terminate me. It's such a throw-back to being a teenager when my parents were of the attitude, "If you don't do what we say, we don't want anything to do with you." I already feel like I should "yes ma'am" and "no ma'am" her if I see her again.
I don't understand why, in session on Thursday, she told me that my indecisiveness over whether or not to come was okay, but Friday it was used against me as an example of why I'm possibly not ready for therapy. Will I be able to trust her again when she tells me something is acceptable?
I've struggled with the calling issue and whether I'm an intrusion or it's too much (and I've actually quit calling). We've talked about it and she told me she'd address it with me before it became a problem. Well, would she really? It seems to me that she let her feelings about enabling me and my so-called ambivalence become problems before talking to me about them.
I don't know how soon is ok to call her or what changes, if any, I must make before then. Should I have already started or do I just need to be absolutely sure I'm ready to start? Does she expect me to suddenly be unafraid and able to talk freely and easily? I can't promise those things. In fact, I think they are going to be even more of a challenge for awhile. I feel completely lost trying to figure all of this out on my own. I am left with no IRL support.
I have chosen to tell my husband a little about this and to ask him to hug and hold me. He has been surprisingly supportive, but there is a price to pay for me. He seems to link any kind of affection to sex, so when I allow him to touch me in any way, all roads seem to lead to that. And as I explained before, that experience is fraught with problems for me. But in the moment when I'm feeling so overwhelmed, I need some kind of contact and he's all I have. I'm fearful that the pain of it all will have me presenting even worse if I see her again and THAT will cause her to say I'm not doing enough for myself. I just feel stuck, like nothing I do will be right.
poster:Skittles
thread:469454
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050305/msgs/470417.html