Intimacy and attachment in the therapeutic relationship

[Teasel]

I've plenty of admiration for you and what you are pushing through in therapy @barefoot I would find this quite excrutiating. Well done :hug:

 

[barefoot]

don’t mess with a control freak

Exactly! :)

Enough to knock you off centre a little and yet enough to stabilise

Yes, I think this is a good point. I certainly got a bit shaken up by her talking of me leaving. But now I do feel calmer. Perhaps things need to get stirred up sometimes so that they can then settle and maybe land a bit differently (better).

Love your courage given the option to quit too.

Thanks. Though I'm not sure how much it is courage that is keeping me going and how much is down to the intense attachment I feel for her. I feel the urge to run but the attachment makes the thought of leaving almost impossible. Actually, I always absolutely hate feeling attached to her and feel pathetic and find it shameful - it was very hard for me to tell her about it when I brought it up the other week. But writing this now, I am starting to wonder...can I reframe it so that attachment becomes A Good Thing. Because if attachment is the thing that keeps me in this hard process and stops me from quitting and gets me to keep showing up and keep doing the work...? Perhaps it has a positive function?!
Hmm...a radical thought!

Thanks for your support @Bearlinda. It is indeed excruciating! Right now I am just trying to go with "just keep showing up."

 

[Butterflies2023]

I am learning from all of you. Thank you for sharing. It's so hard to become attached to anyone. The only wonderful attachment I have felt is with my own children and now blessed with same lively attachments with my grandchildren. But I go home alone and feel deep down inside I won't ever have attachment to a boyfriend or a husband because of past abuses. Just long chronic abuses - I mean I don't know how it's possible for a body to unlearn something. Instead the body just tightens and turns away. What does a T say or do or teach to help?

@MyWillow ...thank you for the references including Janine Fisher ... I will certainly f/u

 

[MyWillow]

I wasn’t sure where to post this but when I think about the outcome rather than what happened maybe this is the thread.

I had an unintentionally brutal therapy session this morning - we were focussing on stabilisation and just talking about normal stuff but something (a word I think) trigggered a dissociative flashback and I fought it which made everything so much worse (note to self: do not try that again!!!) My therapist was just SO there for me. I’ve previously felt rather alone and confused when it’s happened before. It happened early on so she spent most of the session focussing on breath and body awareness because I felt as though I was getting dragged out of my body every time I tried to speak. She was so quiet and caring and accepting and curious but without pushing me either. She said we need to work on self care. And that I may not be ready to go any deeper for 6 months. Or 12 months. But that didn’t matter. At her suggestion I went to the local cafe for a bit as I was in no state to drive home. It was a truly horrible experience but I left with a deeper sense of trust. I wonder if that’s where it starts.

 

[barefoot]

@MyWillow Sounds like you had a hard session and that your therapist handled it really well.
I always think it must be very hard for them to stay really present while we’re dissociating and totally spaced out. It’s great that you really felt her presence there for you and that she was caring and reassuring. Horrible and brutal though these experiences are for us, I have found that they have strengthened the connection and trust with my therapist.

My irritating tendency is that I then often get a bit freaked out by my vulnerability and the increased connection/trust and then I find/do/say something that breaks the connection and creates distance. :rolleyes:

Btw, my therapist told me about a year ago that we couldn’t do the deeper work because it wasn’t in service to me. I was having lots of brutal dissociative episodes, which would completely right off my week. My therapist said I was basically getting retraumatised session after session when we so much as dipped a toe in the deeper stuff. I felt really devastated about that - I think I probably wrote a thread here about it! I felt annoyed with her, angry and frustrated as hell with myself, I felt like an epic failure and that I needed to try harder but she now wasn’t letting me try again. It was a really tough time as I struggled to see what the point of therapy was going to be if we couldn’t even try to do the harder stuff. And I felt really upset at the prospect of staying stuck where I was with the work and never healing.

A year on, we are doing the deeper work and I haven’t dissociated for about six months. Not sure what changed or how that happened. I think it was just that I kept showing up, we both kept leaning in, we built more trust, we had more ruptures, we built more trust as we repaired the ruptures...etc etc! So I think your therapist is making a good call on holding off on the deeper work and focusing more on stabilisation and self-care.

I had a session yesterday too, which was hard but not in the way your was. My therapist said that much more of myself is being revealed and that just the last few sessions has given her so much information and opened up so many possibilities about the work on the historical stuff. So, although it has been hard and excruciating and has really felt unbearable at times these last few weeks (including in yesterday’s session) we seem to be getting somewhere.

Great insights you are having following yesterday’s session. Lots of self-care for you today as you reflect and recalibrate.

 

[MyWillow]

Beautiful post @barefoot

Thank you.

Yes I’m a bit whacked. Will write more when my head has cleared. I have a litter of pups on the ground. 3 weeks old. They are freaking amazing - as are their Mum and half-sister. So today has been a day of sleep and snuggles with my beloved dogs and cats. Need a bit more of that methinks :)

 

[barefoot]

Ah....gorgeous puppies!
I find animals very grounding. One of my cats used to always head butt my head and face a lot when I was dissociating or spacing out. Gently but firmly. It was like she was saying “Come on! Wake up! Be here with me!”
So, yes...lots of rest and lots of time with your furry family :)

 

[Butterflies2023]

Barefoot ... you are insightful and the way you explained the little ruptures and repair was exactly how it worked for me. My T and I started each session with no talking. I had to make the first connection. I don’t know why he did this? It bothered me - I found it excruciating to make the first comment. Does anyone else have an iidea why it worked this way? Honestly a whole session could have been ya two sitting in silence

 

[hithere]

what you are describing (push and pull) sounds like disorganized attachment. It usually occurs in cases where the prima...

When you write "parts approach" to therapy, do you mean Self Therapy/Internal Family Systems IFS?

 

[Rose White]

I had to make the first connection. I don’t know why he did this? It bothered me

That does sound difficult but strengthening! I get frustrated that my t starts the session off with so much chit-chat, feels like we are wasting time, but I think it’s the stabilization?

I noticed my T is sort of “making me” end the sessions now. She is not cueing me by standing up anymore. She always waits for me to do it. It must be an empowerment thing, I’m guessing?

Still she’s watching me walk to my car like the time when I left in shambles. I think it’s nice of her to do that but I feel like I’m performing for her as I struggle to unlock my car door.

I’m terrified of the ruptures and will smile my way around all of them, even though I read and know that ruptures and fixing them actually lead to stronger therapeutic (and real life) relationships.

Maybe I’m just starting to become aware of these egg shells under me.