Posted by Dinah on March 13, 2005, at 12:00:15
In reply to Re: The Phone Call (Dinah and everyone), posted by Skittles on March 13, 2005, at 11:42:16
How vulnerable have you made yourself to this point? Have you told her what you just told me? Have you explained how what happened to your mother made you feel and how it guided your responses in the past week?
Repairing a relationship that is worth salvaging doesn't mean doing what she wants to please her so that she'll allow you to continue with her. That wouldn't be much of a repair or a relationship. But opening up to another level, letting her know how you have an impulse to try to please her so that she'll allow you to stay, being honest about how all this makes you feel, that opens the door to repair. It takes two, and if she's skilled at relationships, she'll respond in kind.
My therapist's greatest skill (other than exuding calm) is his skill at relationship repair. But there have been times... I quit and came back many times in the first five years of therapy. I said hurtful things about not feeling any attachment to him. And then things changed for me. But he kept reacting to me as if nothing had changed. And again, I asked him to look at ME now, and if he could accept that I wasn't the person I was before, and react to me as I was now. Otherwise our relationship was going to get stuck. And he did, or he tried really hard and mostly succeeded. But that took a lot of vulnerability on my side, a certain amount of vulnerability on his side, and a willingness on both of our sides to commit to working it through.
If you're willing to do that, and she's willing to do that, this can be repaired.
On the other hand, I made some changes too. One big change was that I promised myself that if I ever mentioned leaving again, it was going to be because I really really meant it, and had thought it out thoroughly and rationally first.
(Maybe she's just having an extraordinarily bad week, and is distracted by her upcoming trip.)
poster:Dinah
thread:469454
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050305/msgs/470423.html