Therapist return - attachment/connection is kind of gone?

[Quakegirl]

All of the above - missing the intensity of that needy transference, at the same time as dreading and hating it; not really recognizing ‘calm’ in relationships as a relationship at all (I think I need to be either abandoned or engulfed to feel it is real; and just for fun, let’s add Object Permanence. As in, I don’t have any.
It’s becoming quite the pattern with me and T - him going away, even for one missed session, and in my mind, him and the whole process becoming just plain irrelevant to me.

 

[grit]

Hi all,
wow! this thread just keep of giving. I do not have abandonment feelings but I do have terror feelings. However, in my experience in therapy so many meta feelings pop up that it is hard to really distinguish which is which. I may have some abandonment feelings from my dad side since he did not protect me but I have not ventured out that far yet. Still dealing with the direct wound creator - the mother!

I want to share few feelings I have from reading skywatcher and surfergal. The hole point of going to therapy is to realize things and realize how much we (PTSD) of childhood issues suffer. Childhood trauma means you are still fighting that battle even though you have grown and got the education, family, job and even children. Your energy is still fighting that battle. So how do you know you won the battle or even you are in a battle for real?

Well things like this happen. The therapist goes away and comes back and you are feeling DIFFERENT. Now in order to heal that battle, we cannot really go back to the person who did it to us for obvious reasons, so we need a person who is safe for us to sort of "poke" sore points but not really hurt us again. As a child, it does make sense, if the mother was crazy or ill or negligent, the child suffered and got confused about her absence and then back with menace and then back with softness and so on. The child should be confused. The child needs to keep that connection to the mother no matter what. The only time a human needs a continues connection is when they are a child or a mother and a child. The only time. The child cannot survive without a person but an adult can survive fine without a person. The most loved ones die and we as adult do not all drop dead. We get sad and grieve and process and move on. partner goes to work, no one is dying or anxious (unless one of us) but healthly speaking, there is no continues connection to another person unless you need their milk for livelihood. Even a child grows up at one point and chooses friends over the mother and eventually leaves home. I am writing like this to make a blunt point. Connection to the therapist feels like a baby and mother (it has to in order for us to realize at one point oooh why am I acting like an infant...boom that is the point of insight not change) the adult side of you must take it from there and apply and hope for god's sake this seeps in to your subconsciousness and becomes automatic like a healthy person who is not anxious every time a person they care goes away.

The adult side must acknowledge the therapist going away is OK. The child side will cry about it but that is OK. if this two points are recognized, it is up the adult side to soothe the child and that is when the child heals and goes way for good or at least gives that power of crying to the adult side who can handle it.

One of you said, you feel like you are "switching off" rather than secure attachment. That is a belief. If you are feeling good about the therapist coming back and you are not mess, and when you said she/he felt like stranger and they were happy to hear...THAT IS ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL. I do not have children but there is a famous experiment about the stranger in the room about child development and of course it would make sense if you were injured during that time and how lucky you are to actually experience that as an adult, albeit, you need to feel that. Not me for you. It is powerful experiment and it shows about attachment and it may be worth to watch the video or read about it now that you are in this point in therapy. There is also another area very applicable to this discussion called object constancy - I am not sure the exact meaning and I have no children to relate to but basically it is the peek a boo baby game.

In therapy, it shows up if you do not see the therapy, and you are anxious and losing it because just they are not in your peripheral, then one may be in panic. It is hard to know these things unless one is injured in this area.

At the end, even children grow up and learn mommy will be there after school. When we do not learn that is the problem and you are touching that and it feels weird and awkward and you are not trusting yourself this is it...but try to make a story about it for you and your inner child and try to lessen the focus on the therapist - they are the messenger not the message. This is a battle between you, the adult, and your child and you must start to soothe this child so this part can relax and you can get to the next part to tackle.

Thank goodness, you guys have such great therapists that gave you the basic trust, safety, to actually come this far and you can even articulate which means a lot.

I am writing this for you because I just also came face to face with my terrorized inner child and my "dead" completely give up detached, disassociated inner child in therapy. guess how I expressed it to my therapist. you are right. I was in panic and afraid I will die. I came home and realized that was my inner child crying for help, for love, for touch, for attunement (which my therapy failed momentarily - even therapist are human and can go soo deep with another person) and I started to cry and deeply feel this pain and I felt alive FOR THE FIRST TIME. I have had this panic mood for a long time but it does not go with my "functional" every day...it was my secret. I panic alone and die alone every weekend for all my life. This is how I survived. but this day, I was in a safe space to lose it (not with my poor husband) and I SAW MYSELF and realized that is a cry for help and made the connection to my inner child. Because, obviously, I could not be crying for help, love, touch, food, etc to my therapist. I am paying for my therapist to give me the space, the effort, the energy to feel safe, trust and let all loose. My adult, functional side knows this and saw that terrifying and scared little girl...I have serious dissociation so for me this was a breakthrough to see myself outside of me like this and I am still integrating as I write here. There is more but you know the drill of therapy!

Sorry for spelling and bad English.

I will add one of the most frustrating thing for me in therapy in this sense is it is already challenging enough to process trauma but without a reminder what does health feel like? it is like just shooting out hoping it hits the right target. therapist do not share education and try to appeal to the adult side to empower and take a strong lead of all the split off parts. That to me is the most frustrating.

there are some therapist like that (old and dead) but rare. A good therapist would inform the adult about the process. A great therapist should know when he or she is speaking to the adult side or a split off part especially after they spent enough time. Support support in my humble opinion is not good all the time. A gentle reminder of the adult in the room would have gone a longer way at least for me but I do not assume I am special in this area.

 

[Surfergal]

Hi grit, Some great insight in your post thanks for sharing. Just wanted to follow up on one or two things...You mentioned that the whole point of going to therapy is to realize things and how much PTSD has affected us. Yes, for me therapy has been hugely helpful in this sense in many ways. It has helped me see that sooo many of the things I do in my life are as a result of my childhood. For some of these things, simple awareness and insight have helped me to make small changes that have then led to improvements in relationships etc. For example, when my husband and I argue and he walks into the other room the world is not ending and he is not leaving me forever (which is what is what it used to feel like) and now him simply saying 'I need space but I will be back when things have calmed down" has such a big effect on my inner child. There are lots of other issues however that simple awareness and insight does not seem to be enough and in actual fact, I just seem to be replaying and replaying the same hurt and pain again and again. No amount of logical and reasoning it seems will change that. I am not sure what will.

I don't generally go into a panic when my therapist leaves and don't think I ever have as 'I know' he will be back. He often asks me if I am okay before he leave and I expect he thinks I should be panicking and upset but to his disappoint I am not. Perhaps I am still not in touch with my inner child enough as I have never felt 'upset' at this. I mean I have never liked it but never been distraught about it.

It is difficult to explain what I mean by losing that feeling of connection if someone hasn't experienced it. To me when you have spent large amounts of time with someone building a relationship, divulged intimate details of your life and developed a connection then some of that should remain with you when you are apart. I'm not saying a connection of 'oh i NEED THEM to survive' intensity but just a feeling of they are still there somewhere we are all still good and they will be back...When you meet again they shouldn't feel almost like a complete stranger after only a week apart and that the endless amounts of hours you spent together never happened. I'm not sure that is just a 'belief' as for me it is how it feels! Right now I don't even miss my therapist. I think of him a lot yes but it's almost like I feel I would be happy or it would be easier for me not to even go back to therapy. Perhaps it relates more to object constancy I don't know.

For me, it is not also all about the therapist and I know that the relationship is a reflection of my past and also other relationships in my life thus why I place such emphasis on it. As I mentioned this happens in a lot of my current relationships that I have and impacts them negatively as has often led to arguments etc so It's something I'm trying to figure out. I do know I have a great therapist though and I am thankful for him all the time.

 

[Skywatcher]

I used to hold my feelings in when my therapist had to leave. I think she caught on to how hard it is for me when we were scheduling her absence (well in advanced) and I had a panic attack and scheduled an extra appointment that week. It was honestly, extremely embarrassing, as my adult self. Again, the inner child is the real one suffering. I remember it being hard when my husband used to leave for work trips. It was hard when he left and when he returned. I think the focus on my kids kept me an adult in those scenarios. With the therapy, it is so different because she opens up wounds, is there for me... and then sometimes leaves. I think the main reason I wrote this post is because she really prepared me for her absence this time and it worked. It was her return that really blindsided me. I think the conversation emails that we have had this week and being busy at work is helping some, but I am not there yet. The last two nights I have thought of her tucking me in. I see an image in my head where she is my mom and she is her. It is really weird. The weirdest part of that is that we spent half of my last appointment talking about me getting enough sleep. This transference is soooo weird.