Posted by Daisym on April 6, 2008, at 1:30:55
In reply to Re: Your Therapist's Web Site » DAisym, posted by seldomseen on April 3, 2008, at 7:11:52
You have got to be one of the bravest people I have ever come across. I know we talk about how wonderful your T is all the time (If mine weren't so great, I would want yours too (and sunnydays' and dinah's!)), but you are the one that is doing all of the work.
***That is a very nice thing for you to say. I don't think of any of this as brave, it feels necessary. In fact I often wonder if I'm too honest.
Regarding this feeling
" But it didn't matter when I started, I had no idea that I wouldn't want the ending. The deeper and more attached I get, the more the ending feels like death - inevitable at some point, not preventable, and devasting."Have you considered that this feeling just means that you value the relationship with your T a lot and you don't want to lose it?
**********I consider this often. I think this is why I want to keep him as my therapist, more than anything else. But jealousy always makes me feel small and petty and very unsettled.
Sometimes I think we've learned too well NOT to value relationships because they "turn" on us or just end.
**********I never realized until doing a lot of work in therapy that I didn't really have relationships - except with my kids and my siblings. These are a mixture of good and bad. But everyone else was kept at away - they valued me and what I could provide, but I didn't share myself. That doesn't mean I didn't like them or respect them...I just didn't need them. So if things ended, I moved on.
Our T's are not going to turn on us, but this relationship has the potential to end.
********I pretty much trust that my therapist isn't going to turn on me, but there are plenty of stories of this happening. As we go deeper, and I allow him to see more and more the shadow side of me, I worry about this.
My T and I have a contract that this relationship will not end until both of us mutually agree on it. He'll be there as long as I want him there.
*************Yes - but the universe might have something to say about this. It can be unbelievably cruel, in my experience. My therapist says this too - that it is up to me, that we'll talk about it, that he is going to work a long time.
Right now, for me, it's never going to end. I fully intend to go to a nursing home to see him if I need to. The ending is under my control.
***********I think we need to lobby for the therapist's retirement village - like old actors. That way they will be all together and we can all go visit and swap around some. And we will know where to find them.
Maybe you and your T can talk about this and do something similar.
It really helped me to feel safe about valuing our relationship
**************It isn't that I don't feel safe in valuing the relationship. It is that I value it too much and the need to feel secure and contained just isn't dying down.
poster:Daisym
thread:821049
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20080405/msgs/821819.html