Wow, loving the fact that this thread has given me the opportunity to write about one of the few positives I associate with the trauma journey.
I have been truly utterly privileged to have stumbled upon a T who, in my admittedly biased opinion, is outstanding in every integral way. And in an even more amazing stroke of luck, he was the first mental health professional I ever came into contact with.
His personality clicked for me almost from the first moment. In truth, I think this is a big part of what makes the relationship successful. Not to say that you need to be friends or get along wonderfully, but I do believe that you need to share some fundamental values and beliefs about the world in order for there to be a meaningful connection between you.
And I knew, from our first meeting, that this was someone I could potentially trust. For one who has never trusted anyone in her life, this instinctual reaction came as a terrifying and incomprehensible shock which very almost saw me run in fear and never return. And believe me, I did my unconscious best to sabotage the relationship for months – I lied, withheld information and facilitated my own eventual breakdown through my inability to trust and disclose an unwravelling crisis in my life.
In some ways, he came with me on the rapid, lonely ride down to rock bottom, sat with me while I wallowed there for a while, and has joined me on every step of the interminable uphill slog towards somewhere better.
I know I’m a very difficult to please little so-and-so when it comes to my therapeutic relationship. There are qualities I simply cannot tolerate in a T and I am irrationally quick to form and react to first impressions and to judge people with harsh and triggered mistrust. Hell, I’ve ditched 3 psychiatrists in the time that I’ve been working with him because I simply cannot establish rapport of any form.
He is, without exception, very real and human with me. This counts for a lot in my view. I do not want to work with someone who is artificially perfect or moralistic beyond all reason. I need my T to be human, flawed, realistic and to treat me like an equal adult. He clears the bar on each of these points every time. I cannot trust someone who treats me like a patient or a symptom of a dysfunctional world.
He has a very blunt, straight-shooting style which would likely be too directand confrontational for some people, but which I require in order to engage at all. He has an uncanny nack of knowing when to pull, and when to throw, his punches, and he pushes me hard and relentlessly to critically analyse myself and my every thought and behaviour. His intensity can feel ruthless at times and can drive me to distress with little effort on his part, yet never once has he pushed me beyond the point of no return, and without doubt he seems to know when to pull back when it all becomes overwhelming.
Yet in spite of that toughness, he is perhaps the most compassionate and empathic person I have ever known and seems to understand and relate to the “big picture” of my life in a way that is so uncannily accurate that it’s easy for me to forget that he wasn’t there, doesn’t know my family and didn’t witness every incident of my childhood right along with me.
He is amazingly intuitive, extremely intelligent (I have long since concluded that I need to work with someone who is very emotionally and intellectually bright, otherwise I can tend to become condascending and disengaged quickly), very holistic in terms of his theoretical and practice perspective and extremely engaged and forthcoming with feedback and insight.
I can honestly say that I trust this man more than anyone else in the world. Yes, this fact distresses me on principle, and fills me with enormous anxiety in terms of transference at times. It also fiercely triggers my fear of dependence and my corresponding, though quite in contrast, fear of abandonment and rejection. Needless to say, the very nature of our relationship gives us a lot to work with, and it scares and terrifies me more often than it doesn’t, but I know without doubt that his intervention has been the best thing to have happened to me in a long long time.
I have learned to cry… and it took me a long time. The fact that he has not judged me for this weakness and has validated my every emotion and reaction – the good, the bad and the ugly – has been perhaps the most affirming experience of my life. I feel safe with this person, and I don’t think I can say that about anyone else.
Never mind the fact that he almost certainly saved my life on at least one occasion, having talked me through much of a night I doubt I’d have survived otherwise. There’s something very humbling in that reality.
I know I’ve just rambled for paragraphs in what may sound like an almost obsessive manner. But I feel the need to add that he is beyond reproach in terms of his professionalism and models a style of healthy interaction for me that I would be unlikely to be able to achieve without such mentoring. He goes far above and beyond the call of duty in terms of availability, preparation and planning between sessions, yet sets and maintains boundaries that are undisputed and which give me as much stability and reassurance as his input itself.
I so wish that those of you who struggle so hard to find a good T could meet and work with him, and I am grateful every day for the stroke of fate and destiny that brought me to his door. If I ever do recover, whatever that means, I know he will own the victory every bit as much as I do.
