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U'm still all crying.  I called a crisis line and talked.  Thanks for what evryone is saying here.  God, I wish my life could just get better.  How awesome it would be if I had a wifew and kids and all that. 

It's weird.  When someone says something negative about T I want to defend her and I feel bad for her.  I want to say:  She's actually really nice and caring and just messed up with me!  It's like it's my fault that someone would think negatively about her and that makes me bad, because I'm just a piece of s*t male and she's great.  How dumb.  I don't understand how this is working in my brain.  Everything confuses me right now.  I actually feel like I've gone kind of crazy.  I know she didn't treat me very respectfully, but it's my fault basically I guess, so she can't be blamed.  She was actually trying to help someone as hideous and broken as me.  She was so good for putting up with me as long as she did...IT'S ALL MY FAULT!  Then I also think: she screwed up and didn't have the professionalism to handle it.  She should have treated me better.  I'm just confused and the complexity of what's happening to me right now is really causing a lot of panic and incoherence in my brain.  I feel tons of guilt when someone says she sucks though.  I don't get it.

I really think I need to be in a hospital now, but they don't really help.  You mostly just get warehoused.  The only thing they really offer is meds, and that's not what I need.  I'm definitely having a bad night.  Also a bad half century, but who's counting!

That'sit!  I putting my foot down.  Some ofg the little boys in me really need their sleep!

Meursault

Sorry everyone for all the postings...

I'm bawling like crazy right now.  Life is SO hard.  So t emails back saying she will be too rushed and will leave my pictures under a stack of magazines and void the underbilling.

I went into that SO HOPEFUL.  She seemed like such a caring and nice person.  I really tried hard the whole time.  Now I'm more broken than ever!

In one of my last emails I said: "I look at the positive quotes [from clients] on your website and am left wondering: why didn't I deserve to be treated like that?"

I just don't understand why it's always fine for people to treat me like I don't matter, and then I'm just defective and damaged when I have a problem with it!

In her goodbye email, she gave a list of clinical forensic psychologists, knowing I really have only had success with therapists (MMFT).  She knows that I get nowhere with a model that looks at me like this is pathological, rather than what it is, adaptive and natural.  It just sends the implicit message that I'm too effed up and need some industrial strength psychologist, none of whom deal with attachment issues well, and are almost entirely skills based in their approach.  What helps me is someone I can connect to and feel cares.  I don't even know if she intended it, but I feel like she just told me: YOu are too broken for a normal person to help.

And the forensic psychologist angle....  I wasn't going to mention it here, but I killed my Dad in a car accident a few years ago.  I was pinned under his corpse for about an hour underwater, straining to take breaths before they got me out.  I have a criminal charge over it, and I have the trial this winter.  I'm so nonviolent and full of anxiety and have social phobia and have such a horrible self-image to begin with, I'm just going to be victimized if I go to jail.  And I'm going to have to relive all that night in court.  And all the developmental trauma, and all the trauma from that, and so many other things in my life, and being so alone and unlovable to women etc.  And growing up, even my Dad took it out on me, and told me my Mom took it out on him, so he took it out on me, and that'swhat I was there for.  But stil, he was he only one relaly n my side growing up.  At least there was someone in thenuthouse I grew up in who tought my Mom and sisters were dmented  so I wasn't completely alone and there was someone who could make me feel tha IT'S NOT ALL MEthat makes all this stuff happen.  And now he's gone because of me, when I was just trying to get him home safe that night.

Everything is just so overwhelming.  I really waanted T to help and to care and MATTER t someone.  I'm totally going to miss her, even though this stuff happened.  I was so hopeful and optimistic that maybe SOMEONE would care about me finally.  *, it just felt good to be able to go in and have a nice, attractive woman listen to me and not attack me.  But then I suppose it became an attack in a way anways...

Anyhow, I'm bawling like a madman.  I've jst been trying so hard for so long and Im so alone!

Meursault

It's just a private room rented in an old building with a chair in the hall.  I think I should be all right.  I only plan to be there for five minutes.  It will be hard, but I think avoidance causes me more anxiety in the long run, so I'm better off taking the hit, even if she is hurtful.  I may record it on my phone to check later for more detail, since I might be somewhat dissociative.

Thanks everyone for listening and commenting.  This stuff is really hard, as many of us know, especially when we are so desperate and hoping it helps, and have been so vulnerable and undefended with the therapist.  They have a lot of ammunition to hurt us with!  Damned.  I spent MONTHS really hoping with her.  It's really a lot like a break up...

Meursault

Hmm.  a couple of months ago, I remember her saying something like:  "I used to feel bad when clients would stop, wondering what I could have done differently.  I now know some people just aren't ready for therapy."  I remember thinking at the time: "Then you have made yourself immune from wrongdoing or criticism, and can't improve your own response."

I don't know how she'll view all this.  I think I was pretty clear throughout.  Sometimes I took a while to feel brave enough to mention something, but still...  I'm completely scrambled and fractured mentally by all the mixed messages and confusion and reality-denying of this.  I let her see so much of me, and she thinks it's all right to treat me like I'm nothing.

I don't think she's a bad person at all, and doesn't have any malice.  But the quote from Gurdjieff in my sig sums things up, I think.

I emailed this morning (10:30) saying I'll come in tomorrow at 1130 to get my pictures and pay for the underbilling.  At 230, she emailed back saying she now has that slot filled (which wasn't filled as of last night since she offered it), and I can come at my regular time, Friday.  I said I am coming at 1230 between her sessions tomorrow then.  Even what she's doing here feels like an abuse of power to let me know I have no say or control with this stuff, she does.  But, since she offered 1130-1230 last night, and now has that filled, and since she mentioned she has a client at 100 tomorrow, she should have no reason for me to not be able to come and take the five minutes dealing with this.  She hasn't emailed back, but I'm half expecting her to try to stomp on me and tell me that won't work.

This whole thing just feels so ugly.  She has just gotten worse and worse once I challenged her.  It's like she's being vindictive for me pointing out how she messed up.  Maybe it was always this way, and I'm just noticing it now that I've worked up the strength to challenge her.

All this is at the worst time.  I don't want to get into it, but I have to go through * on earth this winter.  It's been hanging over my head for six years, and I've always planned on dying before it happened.  Now I'm three months away from something I've had dozens of people, some really tough ones, say they would just kill themselves if they had to face.  Something I tell people and they just get a stunned shocked look on their faces.

Anyhow, about tomorrow.  I have to go back!  She has my boys, and I need to rescue them!!!

Meursault

Thank you, too!

Well, I think I can say that she did more damage than anything by seeing her.  I'm worse now than when I started.  I wish I could understand this better, but I think I'm just going to have to keep seeing it as something is so wrong with me, I invite this treatment.  Looking back, I was actually communicating my needs with all this stuff throughout, but wasn't being heard.  Then the dismissiveness.  And the unpredictability and having to worry about her perspective, when I shouldn't have had that concern at all.  Then all the conflicting messages.  The things that were hurtfully done, while the words were saying the opposite.  I still don't understand this.  Then: "do what I say or I'll call the cops" sort of thing.  A few years ago, I stood up for myself with a woman and told her to get out of my life.  She tried to force her way into my apartment to talk about it, but I shouldered the door shut.  She called the cops and told them I had guns in my place and was suicidal.  They sent a whole tactical unit and arrested me (later released).  They didn't find any guns, but I got evicted over it.

I spent the whole time seeing the t deciding I might be wrong and I wasn't just garbage, so I kept trusting and talking to her, figuring my fears and distrust were just my trauma talking.  Now I don't think I can trust a therapist again.  What a waste of my time/money and all that emotional work, just to have her reinforce how worthless I am.  I clearly don't have the ability to read whether someone is safe.  I showed her who I am and she thought it was all right to treat that person like crap.

In short:  dismissed, invalidated, unheard, arbitrary boundaries, conflicting messages, vulnerable, misunderstood, hurt, constantly having to defend and assert my need to be heard.  Some echoes of childhood in all this.  Just more devaluation from a woman.  I'm really going to need a therapist to deal with this, I hope that good one takes me back!  I feel like I'm going to have to start all over with her to see if I can trust her again as well!

Life:
Meursault

I think I should shut up on this subject after this... sorry for the length of this, but I suppose I'll share the "exciting conclusion" of my therapy...

So.  During the last session, my therapist mentioned several times about how I presented differently in my email than in person.  I wasn't sure what she meant.  I kind of wanted to understand that "presented" stuff before seeing her a final time.  She has mentioned since the email thing arose that she intended it for short messages, rescheduling etc.  so I assumed a quick question asking for clarification was reasonable, so I sent this:
"It's been bugging me since I left, since I didn't really understand.  You said I present quite differently in my emails compared to in person.  I don't need the whole thing explained, but I was wondering if you could quickly let me know how it's different?  I'm not really sure, since I think I feel like I'm the same."

She sent a long (a page-ish) response describing what she meant, which also had conjectures about my motivation with regard to this stuff that was way off.  She went into a lot of detail about my personal stuff vis-a-vis women, my Mom etc.  She then "PS"ed it letting me know that this was exactly the kind of unacceptable emailing she was talking about, and we would discuss it further on Friday.  Completely discounting my request, while mentioning how she wants to validate my feelings in her message.  She also mentions respecting her boundaries.  She's the one that changed the boundaries again, AFAIC.

I sent:
"Ok.  I don't understand anything.  I thought it was just a quick question to clarify something.  This is just too unpredictable and causing me too much hurt and panic.  I have no idea where boundaries are with you or what the rules are.   I think I'm just going to stop seeing you.  Could I come in Wednesday around noon and pick up my photos and pay you for that half hour?"

(I had brought in some pictures of me as a boy (and a couple of me and my one good ex-girlfriend), which I mentioned I wouldn't have been back last time if she hadn't had them, and she joked that she's holding them hostage.  She also accidentally underbilled me.)  I was feeling kind of relieved by ending it.

She sent:
"I can see you at noon on Wednesday but I would like us to have some time to talk as I feel that the work we have done and can continue to do together is worth a conversation and I wouldn't want to throw away the opportunity.  I think we can make it through this difficult time and I think you deserve it.  Having said that, I want to honour your wishes as well.  I would like you to think about what each part of you wishes (maybe looking at the drawing you created that identified the versions of [Meursault] who have been hurt along the way) and perhaps we can talk about it on Wednesday. I just have a hard time understanding that this is truly what you want."

Again, completely discounting me.  She is incredulous that I mean it when I say I don't want to come back, and muddles and confuses me by questioning my wishes by suggesting parts of me want to come back.  Sort of: "yeahyeahyeah, you don't REALLY mean it."  *She's not hearing me, still!

At this point I'm flustered and agree to just come back on Friday.  I become more agitated and panicky, and I'm worrying and catastrophizing about other things.

She then sends:
"Okay that sounds good.  I will see you Friday at 12.  Please consider looking at the feelings and wishes of those parts in the drawing though.  I think its important that they feel heard and validated.  See you in a few days"

By this point, I am officially in a "tizzy".  Everything is incoherent and nothing makes sense.  I don't understand anything.  Isn't SHE the one doing therapy via email here?  The drawing she refers to was a comic style picture I drew with a bunch of Me's of different ages introducing themselves and telling her how they feel scared and want to be able to trust her etc. but don't know yet.  I am currently not being heard or validated, and she says "I think its important that they feel heard and validated"  This is crazy-making.  Gaslighting?  Double-think?

I send:
"I can't come back.  You are communicating so many conflicting things just in this email exchange alone, I can't handle this.  Goodbye."

Quite a while later, she tries calling and leaves a message to call her.  Then when I didn't respond, she emails me saying if she doesn't hear from me she will contact my emergency person (unfortunately I put my Mom, the monster herself), and the cops unless I get a hold of her and assure her I'm not suicidal.  She says she doesn't want me to feel trapped.  I respond I am trapped.  I tell her if I am suicidal, I can call the crisis line.  She says "It sounds like you are fine and have have a plan if it changes. Thanks for letting me know."  More crazy-making.  She thanks me after threatening to call the cops and my Mom if I don't!  Like this was some normal conversation where I had a choice!

I guess I was stupid for asking for clarification.  I thought it was a simple thing, and could only help me understand if there was some way out of this to fix things, or help me end things better.  I was expecting something like: "You appear more confident in your emails" or "You seem more vulnerable and open in them".  Turns out she thinks I come across as more self-deprecating, insecure, and younger.  She also said she saw a lot of anger in the email which I posted to start this thread.  There was some, for sure, but I wasn't particularly angry.  More earnest.

Either that, or she would let me know where the boundary was.  Not cross it herself, and then chastise me for it.  I kind of got blamed for her actions!

Anyhow, it's probably all my own fault.  I should have predicted that would happen.  Did I self-sabotage there?  Was that something I should have seen coming, but just blindly ignored?  I know there are problems with emailing, but last session she said she had been thinking "something short, like if you have to reschedule."  Should I have taken that to mean ONLY if I have to reschedule?  I guess so.  Then I think how she has texted me names of books etc to read a few times seeing her.  Her boundaries are baffling, changeable, sporadically enforced, different for her than me, and I don't understand at all.  My mind is a maelstrom, and shattered into pieces right now.

Meursault

radical,

I hope you stay.  FWIW, I was kind of beating myself up, thinking: "Is that how I'm supposed to behave?" until your post.  We are all prone to being quite sensitive, I think, but as long as we are respectful, I think we can all learn here!

Meursault

Good to hear what you think, Sanmagic...

I think it's actually obvious what to do, but I am so used to believing I'm wrong about everything, I'm scared to.  I'm eventually going to be able to go back to the old awesome therapist as well, and I was really wanting to make her proud of how I was actively working on getting help and stuff!!!  Looking at it, I kept this to myself trying to find some understanding of it for a month and a half.  Then I told her, it has been a subject matter for every session since, and it was over a month before I sent her what I wrote originally to start this topic.  I notice that only when I indicate I am likely going to leave, does she finally confess to messing up.

A month ago, I even said:  "Imagine if you call someone, and they say hello, then set down the phone on the table as you go and tell them all sorts of personal and important stuff, and then you only discover that they did that by an offhand comment they make months later.  That's what you did."  She is saying she never understood until I sent the post that started this thread.  I don't see how that's possible.

I think you're right.  Leaving is more therapeutic to me than staying.    It really sucks, because when she is in session, she really seems enthusiastic and has quite a bit of insight.  Really, more than anything, I think it's mostly that I've been grateful she didn't fly into a rage at me or ridicule me when I told her about my Mom.

I suppose I just have no belief she wants to hear anything I say or feel anymore.  Just the fact that she is an attractive woman was providing some good experience and exposure.  Hey, an attractive woman was listening to my feelings and not attacking me, it was awesome.  I just think it will damage me going forward now.

It's kind of screwed up that I've basically spent the last month/month and a half paying her to try to get her to understand how she hurt me and treated me badly.  Probably $750.  And her solution going forward is to have the regular 1.5 hour session at $150, and schedule in a weekly hour at $100 just for reading anything I send.  $250 a week!  And I am undoubtedly going to be working through this for months!  So what would I be looking at?  All the fear and degradation and self-loathing, plus paying her four or five thousand dollars, because she didn't do me the courtesy of reading what I sent, when she indicated it wasn't a problem.  And now constantly on guard for more signs I'm not safe and can't trust her.

God, I feel dumb!  Lol...

Thinking about it, if I had that job, and clients were sending me stuff like I did... an occasional page or so about their thoughts and feelings, I think I would be interested and curious to find out more about them and how I could help.  She had given me a printout of attachment stuff that had thought bubbles with a cartoon baby reaching for its Mom.  One of the thoughts was "I need you to delight in me."  I have no illusions of my actual importance to her, but I think that's something we all need from therapy to some degree.

I am going in for one last session.  It will be good.  Now the father part has made a decision, the little boys in me don't have to worry!  This has had me messed up for quite a while.  I wish she was just a generally terrible therapist, as this would have been easy!

Thanks again Sanmagic!  And that's for all the support from everyone else.  It really helps to talk this stuff out!

Meursault

When you put it that way.....it doesn't make sense.

I am pretty confused.  My last therapist was awesome, and she told me that a lot of what actually helps healing in rherapy is working through "repair" with the therapist.  Of course, with her, I would tell her something, and then spend a week in terror and panic, expecting to come back and finding her full or rage and ridicule and dismissiveness.  I would come back, though, and she would still be caring and accepting.  It's possible I'm equating two things I shouldn't.  I often felt unsafe with her, but she never did anything to make me feel that way.  I often felt like she didn't care, but that was never indicated by any of her actions.  I was learning my expectations were wrong.

I guess with her, I was working through feeling unsafe, even though I was safe, but with the current therapist I'm wondering if I should work through it even though I actually think I am unsafe.  I want to stop, and that feels right, but I'm basically afraid that this is missing what the old tehrapist thinks is prime territory for healing.  I don't feel comfortable with her responses, though.  I maybe did the healing part:  asserting how it hurt me, defining boundaries, challenging mistreatment etc.  Maybe that's all the good I can get out of it, since her response wasn't adding much past that.  I've learned my expectations were not wrong.

Meursault

Thanks, Dutch Uncle.  I appreciate the comment!  I've been mulling this all day, and wrote a goodbye letter.  I'm still uncertain.  I just think I'm willing to work through this if this is exactly the kind of repair work that will help me get better.  Is resolving this, and then healing from it the sort of thing that my damaged attachment needs to do?  Damned.  I totally need another therapist to work this out!  I'd really appreciate your input, Sanmagic, if you have anything you'd like to mention!

Meursault

Thanks!  I was feeling kind of giddy after it was done.  I think I was maybe proud of myself for (somewhat) handling it, too.  I can't sleep tonight now, it's all stressing me out.  I think I need a heuristic to apply to my life:  If I need another therapist to talk about what's happening in therapy, it's time to move on.  I'm such a worrier and I'm not prone to rash decisions usually, so I'm still having a hard time committing to leaving.  I really want to talk it out with another therapist!  I suppose since it's hours later and I don't feel I should go back, I know what to do.  I'm just scared to commit to it in case it's a mistake and I'm just doing something self destructive.

Meursault

Well, I had therapy today.

I was in a bit of a state throughout, dissociating, shaking, crying.  I kind of feel like crying now even, when I'm thinking how I asked, very desperately and panicky: "What's so bad about me that people are allowed to hurt me and I'm wrong for having a problem with it?"  The father part of me was there sporadically.  I think I left "the boys" to fend for themselves a bit much, I'm afraid.

Anyhow, I am going to go back and try.  I told her I don't know if I can trust her again, but I'll try.  I have a hard time knowing what I feel or think yet, though.  I think the fact she wasn't putting me down or freaking out on me just seems like enough of a relief from a woman that I can't accurately appraise what I think yet, and I'll be dealing with this for a while before I really know.

She was pretty emphatic that she screwed up.  She said she didn't realize how important it was to me until this week and she thought more about it.  She said she screwed up and should have dealt with this after the first email, but was worried about hurting me because I'm so easy to hurt.  She said she realized what she did actually caused more hurt than anything else.  I think that's as close to an answer as I'll get, so I will have to sit with it and feel out what I feel.  She basically said she messed up and made a mistake because she's human, and there wasn't any excuse, since I was actually telling her what I needed, but she wasn't hearing it, when she should have since that's her role and she's supposed to be the one responsible for that aspect of therapy.

There was some of it that descended into argument, which I had no interest in and just shut down, but I think she was pretty forthright.  There was some defensiveness on her part.  She was at some conference last week, and she asserted a few times how she is very empathic and understanding and a good therapist, and how many of the other Ts at the conference were clueless.  That came up after I had mentioned that I went for a coffee with an old high school friend who is a therapist and was one of my Ts instructors for some course, and how my old friend recommended finding a new T based off of something she had said to me.  The comment was how she said I'm suicidal for attention and now I can't talk to her if I'm suicidal, so my old friend said she'd never say that to a client and I should find another T.  T said she didn't mean it that way, and I had one interpretation because of the trauma from my Mom (hence irrational?), she had another, and if anyone else listened, they would have yet another.  Isn't that sort of saying there is no truth in interpreting comments as abusive or invalidating?  Sort of "I'm not being abusive, that's just your perception!"

Anyhow, just writing this, I don't want to go back now.  I'm bouncing all over.  And she was saying she messed up because she's a "people pleaser".  That was fundamentally her reason for not dealing with this properly.  Isn't that essentially saying "I hurt you because I'm a nice person."?   Is that not a bad thing to say?  Isn't that: "I hurt you because I care"?  I'm feeling pretty confused there.  I know my hyper-vigilance and expectation of attack are ridiculously high now, so I think my interpretations are pretty unforgiving, which is probably a bit unfair (probably true with Danaus here as well).  Can I trust enough now to relax that trauma response?

Anyhow, I guess this is me beginning to think about what happened today...  I'm pretty muddled.

Meursault

Danaus:
No worries!  You're going through your own stuff and that's hard too.  But I really need compassion from people.  This is a place I come hoping to find that understanding.  Since you say you have a history with your comments being perceived as lacking compassion, can you just not comment on what I say in the future?  I found a lot of what you said implicitly very demeaning.  I don't mean I'm not reading what you write in various threads or anything, but I'd rather you not comment on my situations and difficulties.

Thanks,

Meursault

Yay!!!  That's great, Three Roses!