No More Money, No More Therapy (for Now)

[Pencil]

But yes, there are a lot of emotions and I’m having to look at those and feel the sick scared sadness of not seeing her any more.

I'm sorry you are also going through this - it describes how I have been feeling since January.

I've been avoiding this thread the whole morning as it is such a difficult topic for me to deal with. In January, when I tried to express how I was feeling, the responses I got made me feel there was something wrong with me for feeling the way I did.

I was angry with her, but I also felt utterly bereft. I still have contact with her as I am still, erm, settling the account, and no matter how she reacts to my mail, I get upset. When she's caring it upsets me, when she's businesslike it upsets me. And yes, she is simply a professional charging for a service, but why do I find the situation so weird that she can be concerned about me, and yet not care at the same time. I make no sense, I know. As an adult I'm perfectly fine with it, but [here I won't say what I want to say as I don't want a clash] I feel totally abandoned. I struggle with this daily. I don't expect you to identify with the level of intensity of my emotions and struggle, and I'm not suggesting that you do or that you don't - it's just that this thread gives me the opportunity to say something about this, and this is such a major theme in my life at the moment, and one that I never refer to because of the reactions in the past. The point is also that I have massive abandonment issues, and all of these are activated in this situation with the therapist.

All I can hope for at this stage is that enough time will let it fade, but there is a feeling of panic when I think about it.

I have to go somewhere now, but will be back. It's clear that I can deal with only little bits of this at a time.

 

[Rumors]

Is there ever a feeling for you, Pencil, to be able to compartmentalize the therapist relationship as just that and trust it for what it is? Sorry you aren't able to write it out. If it is your diary why don't you set up the boundaries for posters? Not good you feel like you will be attacked. Sorry.

Hashi, I think because you are able to sit here and recognize all of this and write about it gives you the advantage to be able to work this out in a manner that is best. Your comments about the jealousy I could see myself doing in an instant. I can also sabotage any relationship, professional or otherwise, I feel is a threat to my core stability. If there is no good reason, I can make some up in my head. I don't know why except it is the need to be the first one to end it? Who knows but I hope you are able to find the right answers so that you can have the most therapeutic relationship in the future with any therapist.

Good luck!!

 

[Hashi]

When she's caring it upsets me, when she's businesslike it upsets me.

One reason why I decided no contact at all would be better was that I think I'd invest too much in that contact and inevitably react to it in ways that would be unhelpful. For me, it's mostly if she says too little (which is quite likely if the contact is minimal) and if I don't feel she really gets it (ditto). It's also the simple fact of too little. It's just not enough, and I think would only remind me that I'm not seeing her.

It must be difficult if there's another reason for contact. If it was me, then I think the fact that it centred around finances would be additionally tough to deal with.

I think therapy is wonderful, but I also think it's weird. I think it's bizarre that I walk into a room, sit down and get soul-naked with someone for precisely 50 minutes then hand over money and leave.

I think I'm relatively OK with the professional/caring aspect. Maybe because I work in the charity sector, so I'm used to having to balance that myself. I genuinely care about the people the charity is for, and I also keep things professional because otherwise I won't be helping them as best I can. If I don't take enough care of myself, no-one benefits. I'm sometimes more in the caring zone, give some of my own time unpaid, don't claim expenses I could claim etc, and I can see that to someone else it might be hard to understand how I'm moving back and forth between that and stricter boundaries around what is, at the end of the day, a job. I think it must be the case with any way of earning a living that has an element of caring built in.

Therapy is still quite unusual in this country, and if anyone has experience of it that's usually bereavement or relationship counselling, which has a very different dynamic from trauma therapy. The level of trust needed, and the nature of the issues, are not at all the same. When I was losing my previous therapist I was telling someone about it and they actually laughed and said it sounded like Romeo and Juliet. For me, it was more like the betrayal in the Garden of Gesthemane (when Jesus was betrayed and abandoned by his supposedly loyal supporters to his fate of crucifixion).

I think on the forum too, individual experiences of and reactions to therapy can be very different. I'm sorry you weren't understood and you've felt unsupported and as if there was something wrong for feeling the way you did.

Please feel free to post here about it, and please feel free to say whatever you like about how you experience things for yourself (structural dissociation, inner child or whatever). It may not be how I experience things, and therefore I probably can't respond in any way that's meaningful to you, but perhaps someone else could.

All I can hope for at this stage is that enough time will let it fade

I'm going to say this tentatively, because I think we do have very different approaches. This is purely a question and not a suggestion. In the way you see things, is there a possibility that enough time can let there be any adjustment towards being able to accept it without either fixing it or being overwhelmed by it?

 

[Pencil]

Is there ever a feeling for you, Pencil, to be able to compartmentalize the therapist relationship as just that and trust it for what it is?

Hi Rumors, thanks for responding. I'm not sure what you mean, would you mind explaining?

 

[Pencil]

When I was losing my previous therapist I was telling someone about it and they actually laughed and said it sounded like Romeo and Juliet. For me, it was more like the betrayal in the Garden of Gesthemane (when Jesus was betrayed and abandoned by his supposedly loyal supporters to his fate of crucifixion).

It can be such an intense, as well as almost life-death issue. From the perspective of people who are relatively unscathed it does look absurd, and I so wish I could be in their shoes. I know exactly what you mean with the intensity of the feelings, as well as the content. I don't know anything about the circumstances regarding your previous therapist, but I do get the feelings a relationship with a therapist can leave one with.

 

[Rumors]

I guess look at it like it is more of a business relationship instead of a intimate relationship? Ugh, that sounds cold but it is, in essence, what I tend to do. I pay someone to help me figure out my f*ckeredupness, in return they ask for nothing and I give nothing. I see them as an employee which I can do. Anything on a more intimate friendship level and I would be out. Make sense???

 

[Pencil]

I also have anger related to stuff from recent sessions (her stuff, not mine) which has done some damage to my trust and my belief that she's the right person to see... and then I feel fear because if she's not, it's hard to see who would be. That's when I really feel lost and abandoned.

When my sessions ended in January there were two issues: I was really angry and upset about something she had said, as well as her casual handling of the fact that I could no longer afford therapy. So there were two issues for me to deal with. While I was annoyed and wanted to send her to hell, I also wanted her to adopt me. These two reactions really clashed inside my head/heart - in fact every fiber of my being. And it made NO sense - I kept thinking that the two issues should actually make a 'stuff you' response so easy, and yet it did not. A few days after my last session I sat down in a park one morning after dropping my child off at school, and started sobbing. Thank God it's a huge park and there was no-one around - for I simply could not stop. And, I'm not the weepy type - I cry about once every 5 years.

We did manage to sort out the issue I was so angry about - it took about 30 emails to and fro, and her responses were carefully thought out and expressed a lot of caring and sensitivity. In the end she said: 'I can see why my statement must have felt so devastatingly misattuned'.

And the weird thing is, if she offered a reduced rate I would have felt too crap about the whole issue to accept, and yet I'm resentful about her letting me go so easily .... I'm not making sense even to myself and I have a really hard time with this.

 

[Pencil]

more of a business relationship instead of a intimate relationship

Ah, okay, I see.

Nope, it doesn't work like that for me. When I'm not totally emotionally boots and all into it, it is a waste of time. I saw a therapist years ago, before my epic PTSD crash, when I was earning a massive salary and had excellent insurance. I was a rational, reasonable adult. I spent a year and a lot of money on a total ... nothing.

And here's where my 'child state' or whatever anyone wants to call it comes in: A part of me is still 4 yo and standing in front of that damn orphanage, and still not realizing that my mother would come back. At that moment my 4 yo brain did not understand that kind of behaviour and I thought she was gone for good. I'm still stuck there, and that part of me is activated every time I get close to anyone. This incident, and of course all the other crap I had that comes with a mother who does that sort of thing, has also left me with totally scrambled attachment patterns. So I have enormous difficulty attaching to a therapist, and when I do I freak out. What a bloody circus!! And my rational mind fully understands all of this, but no matter how my adult, rational mind tells me I an NOT 4 and can NOT be abandoned by ANYONE and that I'm quite good at looking after myself, I BECOME a 4 yo the moment I attach. I HATE this! :banghead:

 

[Rumors]

Hmmm... I am about to ask a loaded question(s)!

What happens to you if someone leaves or abandons you? Do you feel like you are broken? Unwanted? Something is physically or emotionally undesirable? In the end though, do you get to the other side? How do you get to the other side? Are you able to do so with yourself intact or does it look like an interstate wreck? Do you handle the situation with a 4 yr old mind or with an adult mind? If you handle it with a 4 yr old mind, did your therapist ever work with you on mindfulness?

I know that must feel like the Spanish Inquisition and I don't mean for it to be but in so many ways I can relate to dealing with things as a 4 yr old and not a 40 yr old. I struggle deeply with being my best adult self at times so I get that feeling. I have to really direct my thoughts towards being mindful of the situation while still hearing my 4 yr old self talk. Sounds stupid, eh?

 

[Pencil]

NO, it doesn't sound stupid at all.

When someone leaves me - and they all do :( - I am a TOTAL wreck. But this is the weird part: take my ex, the one with the water :roflmao: : The thing is, my mind rejoiced, and was relieved, and knew it had gone on for way too long, and the breakup was the BEST thing that could have happened to me, and that I did not and would not go back, not for 10 million dollars. AND YET I reacted emotionally like an abandoned 4 yo. There is a total split there - and they both have a truth, a reality, and they are completely incompatible. I wanted to die and I wanted to get on with my life - all in the same moment. And this went on for two years!!!!

I've spoken about my eyes on my diary - I don't have binocular vision, and most of the time my brain simply doesn't register what I see with my left eye. I can, however, 'force' my left eye to focus on something, and focus on the same object with my right eye. What happens is that I can't integrate the two images into one, the way it happens for you. I therefore see two images kind of superimposed on one another - but not quite so I see two objects close (not next to) one another. Emotionally it is the same - I feel two distinct emotions at the same time.

 

[Tinyflame]

Odd you should say it Pencil, my vision is the same.

For what it's worth, I think virtually everyone feels, at some level, broken, lacking or unwanted if someone leaves or abandons them (using the quoted words).

Hugs if that's ok. Sounds like the feelings you felt at 4, more than a 4 year-old mind.

 

[Pencil]

he feelings you felt at 4, more than a 4 year-old mind

Yes, the feelings I felt at 4. But that is where I know a total split in me happened - and it's not something I 'think' - it is something I've been aware of all my life.

And I hear you, everybody feels crap when left, but it is the same difference between feeling sick after having too much sugar, and being diabetic and eating sugar.

Thanks for the hug :)