Disorganized attachment to therapist/rupture

[NightSky]

I’ve had a new therapist for the last year who has been far more trained and equipped to help me, coming out of ten years with a therapist who wasn’t, and who crossed so many boundaries, and caused so much attachment related distress..
I’ve just had my first major rupture with this therapist. She did nothing wrong. But I’m trying to understand my reaction and how to move forward or I guess just wondering if others have experienced anything similar.
My T encourages email. I have a dissociative disorder, and a part of me that attends therapy sessions very well put together. I don’t usually express emotions. I struggle to connect with the work because it feels like I’m going through the motions. Then I leave, and everything starts to unravel. I have thoughts and feelings I can’t access with another person present. So I do email, not excessively. Maybe once a week if that. Sometimes she will respond with messages that are lengthy and break up what I’m saying into parts language, and offers tools or insight. Sometimes she’ll write a short paragraph. I always tell her I don’t expect any length of response but of course they’re always welcome and helpful when she does it. Sometimes she responds the same day. Sometimes she texts me that she got it and will respond asap, and she’ll email one or two days later. It’s not often that she doesn’t respond at all.. maybe a couple of times. But she’ll bring the email up in session and we talk about it.
This past week I emailed after a session and it was definitely a more vulnerable message than usual. And she texted that she got it and would respond. But she didn’t. And throughout the week we were texting to arrange a time for our second session and I could tell by her tone something was off. Her texts were each spaced out by a day, so we kept missing times that we could meet. (We have a set day; and then a second session whenever she has an opening that week). I found myself getting really uneasy, because I was feeling super exposed after the email and then not knowing when I would see her. By the time I did get in to see her, I had sent her a second short email asking her to not bring up the contents of the other message in person, and that I was feeling really conflicted and confused by a reaction to her I was having.
When I did finally get in to see her yesterday morning,she said she did have something going on. And she was really surprised I had picked up on that. But her energy was so clearly different, to me. I felt really afraid of her. Cried the entire time which I’ve never done. Wanted to take myself off of her caseload because how can I talk about my stuff knowing she has something hard going on?
My old therapist would have told me as soon as I walked in what was happening with her and I would have shifted into caretaker mode. This T won’t do that. (Which is good)
She said my reaction is a younger attachment wound. It’s not about her. And I believe her. But I feel so afraid of her now? I’m afraid something may have to make her leave. I’m unsure of how to talk about anything because it doesn’t feel important.
She kept telling she’s still herself but I can’t feel it or see it. And I’m so confused by this..
With all of my other relationships I have pretty avoidant attachment. But with therapists it seems I have disorganized attachment and it feels so maddening and confusing. And other than doing away with email, which has felt like a really important part of our work, I don’t know how to be flexible with whatever responses I get, including no response- even if adult me completely understands it and does not expect anything. It’s like if there’s no acknowledgement or no sense of connection after reaching out, I feel too exposed.
Thank you if you’ve read this far.

 

[Sideways]

This is the work, yeah? I feel a lot like I’m telling you something you already know, but experiencing yourself rebuild trust after this will be a big deal. The brain has been triggered into “this is unsafe” territory, and the job is to work through that, and establish “nope, actually we’re all good”.

Because she hasn’t changed. She’s still the same person. She has other stuff going on in her life but she’s also still there for you - even if not so much between appointments, certainly still during appointments.

If I was experiencing this? I’d try and bring it squarely into the therapy room to work through it and, because of my DID and the amount of switching I do in therapy, I’d be putting a particular focus on trying to notice and acknowledge what’s happening for me internally during those appointments.

Hope that’s helpful.

 

[NightSky]

She did say this IS the work. But I feel so terrible about it. It’s so painful. I don’t feel pain when I talk about extreme trauma memories. But I feel pain when my therapist can’t respond?? It’s wild. Thank you for your response!

 

[Movingforward10]

Argh. This attachment stuff is so so so painful and consuming.
My diary is full of all of this stuff. The second guessing. The intense feelings. The push/pull with T. The analysing.

This is the work. As painful as it all is.
It really is the work.

Whilst I hate hate hate ruptures , they do lead to a lot of healing. Annoyingly so. I really truly wish ruptures were all about T's behaviours. But, whilst we are triggered by their behaviour, our responses are based in this primary attachment wounds. Which makes it all so intense.

I had a big rupture about email over Christmas. My T said she would email just before Christmas (she was having a month off and I was worried about that length of time without her). She never did email. And it caused a huge ruptured. The biggest we ever had in 6 years. Took weeks for me to overcome it. I truly thought it was the end as I couldn't get past it. But, what actually happened: is that it addressed that core primary wound. That our T's can't be out surrogate parents, and can always offer what they say they do BUT it doesn't mean we're not worthy or that they don't care.

I'm going to guess that you had a parent or parents that didn look after you right? That you have felt not good enough? That her not emailing has triggered this deep shame of not mattering and not being enough to love?
(Or this might be me projecting as that is what was triggered for me and my T!).

It will take time to work through but this is what can be really healing.

 

[NightSky]

I can’t figure out why I have this attachment wound or what the core belief is. I had a parent who was verbally/emotionally abusive some days and very loving other days, and another parent who was always wonderful but never stopped the abuse. And csa outside the home, unbeknownst to parents, but by a relative.
I don’t feel like my T doesn’t care. I do worry about being too much. But mainly I get literally afraid of her when I have expressed a need and wasn’t aware that she had something going on in her life. And I feel like I need to disappear. It becomes so evident that she has so much power to hurt me. Logically I know she doesn’t intend to. But that power differential feels enormous.