Hi Pencil,
Firstly I'm not sure we're completely understanding each other about your current/previous therapist. What I'm trying to say is that I don't see a deliberate strategy to destabilise you in terms of attachment in order for you to look at or process that. You hinted at that but I didn't understand if that was something you were wondering about or her stated professional aim. It seems that is not her stated professional aim?
What I suspect (but obviously can't know) is that this therapy relationship, in the nature of all therapy relationships, has brought out the attachment issues. It may be that this therapist really doesn't have as obviously warm and caring an approach as a different therapist might. But then I'd say two things:
a) That doesn't mean she's trying to push your attachment buttons deliberately.
b) What I also suspect is that if you saw Different Therapist and started out feeling she was warm and caring the attachment issues would still hit at some point, because they will and they do and that's what happens. At some point Different Therapist would "do something". Perhaps in a similar situation Different Therapist would not continue any email contact with you at all. Or she would decide to take a 3 month trip just when you needed her. Perhaps she would simply start appearing colder and less caring. Or forget promises that she made to you.
I'm not saying that this is personal to you, I'm saying it's archetypal - within the homeopathic/allopathic approaches. Any therapy relationship for any client and any therapist brings out attachment issues. If the attachment issues are severe then they will manifest severely.
Of course, it could be that your current/previous therapist wasn't the best fit for you to work through this with. If so, I'd say that is not to do with how and warm and caring she is - I wouldn't recommend seeking out another therapist only on the basis that she is warm and caring. I'd say that it's to do with how skilled and experienced she is at working with severe attachment issues.
When you talk about fence and pasture, if understand correctly you're saying that the boundaries are the fence (amount/type of contact) and the thing you see as provoking attachment issues is the pasture (content/warmth of the contact). However, I think the pasture is also about boundaries. The content and warmth of contact is also governed by boundaries in a therapy relationship. Because it's a therapy relationship and not any other kind. I'm sure that you've read enough posts on the forum about people going shoe shopping, baking cookies or chatting about each others' personal lives with their therapists and wondering why they're not making progress, to appreciate what I mean.
So the way I see it is that if you're in a position to find another therapist then you need to be looking not for safe attachment (because I don't think there's such a thing) but for a safe enough approach to attachment issues.
As I said before, the way I see both homeopathic (set out to explore the feelings) and allopathic (reparent/give what you didn't have) is that I'm personally beyond the point where those things would help me. Maybe you're not, and you'd find something like reparenting helpful. If so, I think you would need to approach that realistically and accept that it's impossible to skip a lot of stuff that would come up. I also think it needs to be seen as reparenting yourself with guidance and support from a therapist, and not a therapist reparenting you. Or even reparenting yourself without a therapist.
In my case, what I see I need to bring in is not something that has a parent/child construct at all. I'm hesitating to say what I think would help me because I think you see things very differently for yourself that I do for me. But essentially it's to do with leaving to one side the consciousness of all the development I missed as a child and instead of trying to do anything with or about that, going straight to the consciousness that I want to have now.
To take the analogy of trying to clear up a disordered house - instead of getting lost working through piles of clutter, or going out and buying more storage to pack everything into, it's about stopping and visualising how I would like the living space to be, regardless of how it is now. Then everything I do is for that vision. While I might still have to throw out stuff like unwanted presents or purchases I wasted money on, that isn't my focus and I don't have a dilemma over them. They're things I can let go of In a moment while I create the living space I want.
How that translates for me back into attachment is by changing my beliefs about myself and attachment and connecting to what would represent healthy attachment for me now. That will require a dual awareness - not denying my starting point but allowing it to be there while also choosing to follow a different reality over that parallel one.
It also means being willing to leave my wounded self alone and turn to other parts of myself instead. If I put that in terms of archetypes, it means that I don't try to change the shadow side of my Orphan Child archetype. I let her be as alone, bitter, resentful and vicious as she wants. And I turn to other archetypes that can help me with attachment instead - the Companion, the Lover, the Goddess, the Servant and so on. But for someone who works in a different way it would be however they work. It might be solution-focussed CBT, compassion focussed therapy or anything that resonates with them and doesn't involve looking backwards.
Firstly I'm not sure we're completely understanding each other about your current/previous therapist. What I'm trying to say is that I don't see a deliberate strategy to destabilise you in terms of attachment in order for you to look at or process that. You hinted at that but I didn't understand if that was something you were wondering about or her stated professional aim. It seems that is not her stated professional aim?
What I suspect (but obviously can't know) is that this therapy relationship, in the nature of all therapy relationships, has brought out the attachment issues. It may be that this therapist really doesn't have as obviously warm and caring an approach as a different therapist might. But then I'd say two things:
a) That doesn't mean she's trying to push your attachment buttons deliberately.
b) What I also suspect is that if you saw Different Therapist and started out feeling she was warm and caring the attachment issues would still hit at some point, because they will and they do and that's what happens. At some point Different Therapist would "do something". Perhaps in a similar situation Different Therapist would not continue any email contact with you at all. Or she would decide to take a 3 month trip just when you needed her. Perhaps she would simply start appearing colder and less caring. Or forget promises that she made to you.
I'm not saying that this is personal to you, I'm saying it's archetypal - within the homeopathic/allopathic approaches. Any therapy relationship for any client and any therapist brings out attachment issues. If the attachment issues are severe then they will manifest severely.
Of course, it could be that your current/previous therapist wasn't the best fit for you to work through this with. If so, I'd say that is not to do with how and warm and caring she is - I wouldn't recommend seeking out another therapist only on the basis that she is warm and caring. I'd say that it's to do with how skilled and experienced she is at working with severe attachment issues.
When you talk about fence and pasture, if understand correctly you're saying that the boundaries are the fence (amount/type of contact) and the thing you see as provoking attachment issues is the pasture (content/warmth of the contact). However, I think the pasture is also about boundaries. The content and warmth of contact is also governed by boundaries in a therapy relationship. Because it's a therapy relationship and not any other kind. I'm sure that you've read enough posts on the forum about people going shoe shopping, baking cookies or chatting about each others' personal lives with their therapists and wondering why they're not making progress, to appreciate what I mean.
So the way I see it is that if you're in a position to find another therapist then you need to be looking not for safe attachment (because I don't think there's such a thing) but for a safe enough approach to attachment issues.
As I said before, the way I see both homeopathic (set out to explore the feelings) and allopathic (reparent/give what you didn't have) is that I'm personally beyond the point where those things would help me. Maybe you're not, and you'd find something like reparenting helpful. If so, I think you would need to approach that realistically and accept that it's impossible to skip a lot of stuff that would come up. I also think it needs to be seen as reparenting yourself with guidance and support from a therapist, and not a therapist reparenting you. Or even reparenting yourself without a therapist.
In my case, what I see I need to bring in is not something that has a parent/child construct at all. I'm hesitating to say what I think would help me because I think you see things very differently for yourself that I do for me. But essentially it's to do with leaving to one side the consciousness of all the development I missed as a child and instead of trying to do anything with or about that, going straight to the consciousness that I want to have now.
To take the analogy of trying to clear up a disordered house - instead of getting lost working through piles of clutter, or going out and buying more storage to pack everything into, it's about stopping and visualising how I would like the living space to be, regardless of how it is now. Then everything I do is for that vision. While I might still have to throw out stuff like unwanted presents or purchases I wasted money on, that isn't my focus and I don't have a dilemma over them. They're things I can let go of In a moment while I create the living space I want.
How that translates for me back into attachment is by changing my beliefs about myself and attachment and connecting to what would represent healthy attachment for me now. That will require a dual awareness - not denying my starting point but allowing it to be there while also choosing to follow a different reality over that parallel one.
It also means being willing to leave my wounded self alone and turn to other parts of myself instead. If I put that in terms of archetypes, it means that I don't try to change the shadow side of my Orphan Child archetype. I let her be as alone, bitter, resentful and vicious as she wants. And I turn to other archetypes that can help me with attachment instead - the Companion, the Lover, the Goddess, the Servant and so on. But for someone who works in a different way it would be however they work. It might be solution-focussed CBT, compassion focussed therapy or anything that resonates with them and doesn't involve looking backwards.
