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THERAPIST's VACATION THREAD


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It is getting bumpier:) I am able to be stronger, safer, and more capable than I though because I am able to work on me instead of worrying about if my T will be responsive if I feel like I need him to be. I have been tolerating a lot more distress, and it is actually getting worse. My usual pattern is that I get more and more anxious the closer it is to T getting back. Unfortunately, my anxiety is spewing all over the place into other relationships. Right now, I am doing what I have to do in order to not negatively impact anyone else. Which sometimes means stepping back, and sometimes means being honest and talking to the person about what is happening.

I had something a bit intense come up with my child, and it was so difficult to not completely break down. I handled it well, though, even under duress. So, for that, I have impressed myself. It has been hard to contain all of my emotions, and I am successful sometime, and not so much other times. I haven't emailed T at all yet, although I have drafted a few emails.

My favorite one is where I have a dark star-lit background and I start with, A long time ago, now in a galaxy far, far away. . . I didn't send it, so the force must be with me. vader.gif

May it also be with you . . .

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It is getting bumpier and harder to hang on. mechbullsmiley.gif I have started to feel painfully empty, like I am really close to feelings that threaten self-annihilation. I am not freaking out at this point, I am just noticing how I feel. I think that before, when I was less aware, and I felt this painful emptiness (no clue as to how to describe it), that I reacted to it with terror and fear probably even at this point.groooansmileyf.gif

This is a difficult feeling -- on a scale of 1-10, I'd rate it a 6. If it was just the feeling, it would be rated a point lower, but it is the feeling of painful emptiness (this makes no sense but there are no words to describe)that, like when you hear thunder/see lightning, you know something wicked this way comes, this feeling brings up an alert status. It tells me I am close to the vat of pain that lies underneath. I call this part of me, leftover emotions, the ringbearer because it has carried all of this pain that no one else can bear. Others see this part as Sauron, the evildodensmiley.gif, because the pain is so intense that no one can even look at it. Yes, I use symbolism to help distance myself from the pain.

If this is the grief that I need to grieve, I have been unable to reach in without being traumatized. And when I am traumatized, it just adds more pain to the well. I felt like I might be grieving last night (I was feeling some pain), but I don't have any memories associated with this, I don't have any memories of abandonment although I have this intense fear of it, so it is just like I am feeling pain, and that's it. blue.gif It doesn't go away, I don't grieve and think about what I lost, because I don't know what I lost?

Just being me is the biggest problem of confusion I have ever dealt with. I can feel something in one state, and remember I was in the state but have no emotional memory of it. If I feel rage, and the next day I don't feel it, it brings up shame.

I don't know if any of this makes any sense, I am just blabbing on and on about what I am thinking/feeling at this moment. hotairsmiley.gifI don't feel like I need anything, I just wanted to post these confusing, frustrating set of events. gaah.gif All I can do is keep travelling forward. camelsmile.gif

I appreciate all of you!

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Tsunami!!!!! I know that feeling :( :( :(

I mean, your feelings are your feelings, but I relate to what you are saying. I totally relate to feeling that it is a place of pain that no one can bear to look at and that it brings up fears of being abandoned for having these feelings (you put it so well).

The challenge is, if you are able, can you resist judging this place? As soon as the judgment comes, it drives such a wedge between you and you and the fears grow. I don't know how a person just turns around and starts being able to accept these feelings, but maybe by seeing how it makes things worse to judge them harshly?

You have made it so far, congratulations. We are here for you, Tsunami.

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Tsunami, it makes a lot of sense. I definitely can relate to your experience with this. The fears, the grieving, the pain... What I've been trying to work on with myself is self-care and that can be so challenging for me when I'm in distress. It's difficult to find enough balance to even know where to begin.

I'm sorry this is hard. :( I think it's good to sit with and be aware of your feelings. This helps you to be in touch with yourself, and hopefully to know what your needs are in this.

I hope expressing yourself here helps.

I enjoy your animations. :-)

Take care, Tsunami.

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"finding my way: I totally relate to feeling that it is a place of pain that no one can bear to look at and that it brings up fears of being abandoned for having these feelings ..."

And all the more reason to share the feelings with anyone you care about, because that way they get to surprise you by not abandoning you. :-)

Although perhaps it's really you who's abandoning you (you mentioned that parts of you see the suffering part as Sauron!) The world needs more Gandalfs ... though a sufficient supply of hobbits will probably have to suffice. {Now you need smileys with hair feet. I know you can find some, if anyone can.}

I too think you're doing amazingly well (admit it: much better than you expected) through all this. You can do it. :-)

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I feel that other people, and myself, see the suffering part as Sauron. I am absolutely abandoning myself, this is true. I feel such self-hatred right now, but that will change as the wind blows.

LOL on needing smileys with hairy feet! I was searching for some kind of LOTR smileys but didn't find any. How did you know, lol?

I appreciate you all saying that I am doing well, I appreciate your kind words. I do think I have exceeded my own expectations. Today, at work, was horrible. The anniversary of someone close to me dying is close at hand, and I am thinking a lot about that. Loss is my theme of the month, I guess, if not the theme of my life. Or, moreso, the seeming inability to cope with loss and the pain it brings. I have until a week from Wednesday, so yes, in the single digits. I am faltering at the moment, just feeling overwhelmed, and feeling overwhelming pain. It could be better, but I've been worse. I wonder what life is like for people who don't struggle with issues like this? I feel like I will never get to Mordor to throw the ring into the molten rock in the volcano. Where is Gandalf the White?

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I, too, struggle a great deal with loss. I don't know what might help for you, Tsunami, but it helps me to focus on my loving self. Are you able to connect with your caring parts and the light your friend or loved one brought out in you? It is a place where connection always remains, within your own heart. Connect with your joy, your gifts, the love you felt and feel for this person...it's with you, always. I find these thoughts comforting and healing. What comforts you?

I hope today is serene for you. Take care.

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I'm thinking of you, too, Tsu...

I admire your self-control (as not sending him an e-mail - I wish I were so brave ;)! ) and the way you can often manage your behaviour even if feeling so low!

I'm sorry it's so overwhelming again :(...

Edited by LaLa3
edited due to my English...
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I do want to talk, but it is too specific. I am having emotions come up about being terminated and I get so angry and enraged and hurt. He offered me no real closure and I am devastated that someone I trusted would get so angry at my emotions and just kick me out when he said he wouldnt. I trusted him and he wont allow me.to have closure. I feel so insignificant in the world. I am just in a bad place right now.

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TRIGGER WARNING BELOW ABOUT ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION:(

Termination is just being triggered by hearing how others termination went well and mine didn't (well, many others didn't go well). If I could have only been "in control" of myself and not been so angry/enraged, and not shown him how I felt. If I had only been able to contain my own emotions. If I could only have been who he wanted me to be. But I wasn't. My termination ended with no closure. It ended horrifically, well, for me. I so badly just want not to care at all.

And at work, I am horrible in relating to people. I feel when all the people are stressed, and I have to sit with this among all of my other unsavory emotions. I am working with someone from my past who saw my emotional breakdown. He was not supportive and actually was combative. He worked with me before but moved out of state until now. He is back now and it is all I can do to tolerate it, but it brings up traumatic memories.

I am so sick to death of all of this! I am so fucking sick to death of having to swim uphill. I have to keep swimming, swimming, swimming. For what purpose? So I can face another day that brings up my past and greatly reduces my ability to tolerate what is going on in the here and now? I have a few good days, some okay days, and many days where I am actively focused on my emotions, and how I need to keep them underwraps. Why do I bother? This isn't life, it is like a living death.

I went to my xT for help due to my emotional dysregulation. Why can't he just schedule a meeting with me once or twice so I can have at least a little resolution, unlike my past issues? I am so fucking angry at him right now. But I have to keep swimming, swimming, swimming. I want to sink, because there is no shore in sight. I am so fucking sick to death of having to deal with this and that and the other. I am sick to death of it! It's all just an exercise in futility.

I feel so trapped, and I want out! I need a job that doesn't include other people, and maybe a life that doesn't include other people save a few. I am sitting with this pain, but I am so enraged. I want to stop swimming and just sink.

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I hope it helps to express all of these difficult feelings, Tsu. I hear you that you are feeling frustrated, angry, hurt, and tired of struggling.

If I could have only been "in control" of myself and not been so angry/enraged, and not shown him how I felt. If I had only been able to contain my own emotions. If I could only have been who he wanted me to be. But I wasn't.

It's okay to feel angry. It's okay to be you. It must have been very difficult for you when you expressed yourself and then felt that your needs were not being supported. I'm sorry therapy ended that way. Will you be able to talk and process this with your current therapist when he returns? I hope so.

I am so sick to death of all of this! I am so fucking sick to death of having to swim uphill. I have to keep swimming, swimming, swimming. For what purpose? So I can face another day that brings up my past and greatly reduces my ability to tolerate what is going on in the here and now? I have a few good days, some okay days, and many days where I am actively focused on my emotions, and how I need to keep them underwraps. Why do I bother?

I can hear how you've been trying so very hard. It must be exhausting. Are you able to step back and take a break from effort? Maybe it's okay to give yourself some time to recharge. Sometimes it's hard for me to hear what my needs are when my emotions are very strong. I'm still working on how to center and balance them as well. You are doing very hard work. Does it help at all to journal about your feelings?

But I have to keep swimming, swimming, swimming. I want to sink, because there is no shore in sight. I am so fucking sick to death of having to deal with this and that and the other. I am sick to death of it! It's all just an exercise in futility.

I'm listening. Is there another part of you who hears and appreciates the efforts this part of you has been putting in trying to manage, cope, and heal? I understand and hear that you feel this is an exercise in futility. Possibly you can't see the gains right now? Gains may be difficult to see in the midst of a struggle, but they may still be there. I do hear your tiredness and frustration.

I hope you will keep reaching out for support if you need to. What do you think you need right now? Can you comfort yourself? I know this can be challenging.

Sending my care.

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I'd like to address at least one of the problems you mentioned:

"Finding my way" at least once quoted Lily Tomlin here: "Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past." I sometimes have to think of it quite deeply... Most of the times not because of needing to forgive somebody (fortunately I rarely have problems with this, just with myself it's a problem a bit more often...), but "in general": That when I'm too focused on something bad/unpleasant/... in my past, there's an absurd (although natural (=usual/common) as well!) component in it: I act as if I still had a hope that the past could be changed!

I consider important to be well aware of the absurdity of some causes of our strong unpleasant feelings. It might seem that I'm now contradicting those who say that "it's OK to feel that" and "you shouldn't judge yourself for your feelings", but I'm not. I'm not saying that "it's something bad and abnormal and one should be angry at him/her-self for having those feelings"! I'm just saying that for me (and I know that for many others, too, but it seems it may be not general), it's important to identify what precisely is absurd about the process in my head which causes me feel so bad even when there's nothing that could be changed about the situation (what happened) and - moreover - there's also, in my (!) case, nothing really serious about it - nothing that could threaten my life, for instance. "Feeling bad" is useful when it's a motivation for a change which will get rid of the cause of the feeling. But sometimes there's nothing else to do but changing one's perception of it, one's perspective. I'll try to give you a potential example for the case of your lack of termination:

You had a therapist who used to make you feel better and who you trusted and had high expectations on him. He helped you to some extent. This is still true (!), no matter of what happened later. (The "good (pleasant) part" of your relationship was much longer than "the bad-one".) The positive aspects of your relationship "are still in your head", but the access to them is temporarily "hindered" by negative feelings about what happened in the end and what you imagine should happen at least now (=he seeing you at least for few sessions...), behindhand, but you suppose (rightly, I guess) it won't happen, so you feel frustrated even because of that. I suppose it also brings "into the light" some similar feelings from your past, when some other people, supposed to be there for you, deceived you painfully. (There's at least one positive thing about this: When you manage to overcome this problem with your ex-T, it should help also with the past-one...)

The question is: What precisely makes you feel so angry? I imagine (also based on my, though different, experience): That your ex-T hasn't done what you expected and what you felt (and feel) was his duty? That's a straightforward explanation. But I think this would make you angry for some days, maybe few weeks, and then you would let it go, as it's just something very usual and common in this world: People sometimes disappoint you, because nobody (!!!) can act/live/behave so that (s)he wouldn't disappoint more or less people, often those (s)he cares a lot about and doesn't want to disappoint, but doesn't have a better choice in that situation or isn't able to avoid it for other reasons. I'm sure your ex-T had a serious reason and also had a reason for not telling you about it. It's hard to accept, mainly when you don't know the real cause, as our brain is naturally "obsessed" by "trying to find reasons for what happened", so that we could "take a lesson" from it to be better prepared for similar situations in future - to have (the feeling of having!) more control over them. So in this case, maybe you want to know the reason also to be able to avoid similar "abandonment" later. You said you'd like to be how he wanted you to be - you suppose that would make him not to do what he did. It's a proof of your yearn for control of the situation, even at the cost of "not being yourself"! But... the truth is that... even if you were "as he would like you to be", that wouldn't guarantee you the kind of termination you wanted.

So... back to the question of what precisely makes you so angry. I have two more probable answers in my mind: You fear that what he did (or better; did not) was your fault and you're angry that he didn't give you the proof that it's not true, so you're left with the horrible feeling that "you probably wasn't good enough to receive what you wanted". Or maybe, more generally; you're angry at the world (/life) that you cannot control everything that concerns you; you cannot control how people treat you, even if you try, but it feels somehow safer to suppose that you could always "get what you want", just if you "were different / behaved differently".

So, why did I call it absurd? Well, it's just a matter of point of view! It's absurd from the logical side, but it's also very comprehensible as ... "we all know it, it's very human". And how does it help to think of it from this perspective, to admit that it's absurd in this regard? Well, maybe I'm wrong; maybe the labeling isn't a good thing to do, at least not for you. Sorry for such a long and complicated way of getting to the point :o ... I just wanted to present you how I can sometimes look at it (although "my case" is different, the principles seem quite general!) and... "how it helps" can't be "described"; it just sometimes does. Perhaps I have the advantage that I already had accepted, to a considerable extent, the fact that I cannot control everything that has an impact on me, that "the world's not falling apart because of me" (-to quote Dar Williams's song ;)), that "there's no reason why everybody should like me", that "when somebody does something that hurts me it doesn't have to mean he wanted to hurt me", and that "I will never know the true reasons of most events". So when I realize that a particular problem is reducible to "being angry for having no control" or to "thinking that when somebody didn't do something that seemed very important to me, it means he wanted to hurt me and probably hates me or, at least, doesn't care at all", then it's a kind of relief.

BTW; I recommend you to read this article - it doesn't matter, in this context, that you don't have the experience of abuse, because there are some general principles which may be present in this kind of therapeutic relationship even when there's no abuse at all:

http://www.surviving...d-to-feel-whol/

I wish you good luck in your coping!!! I know it's been very hard so far :( ... but I do believe it will get better...

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IJ -- Thank you for your reply! Yes, I definitely will be able to talk to him about it, although we have talked about it. I see him next Wednesday, but I don't know what we will talk about then since it is the first session after awhile. It does help to write about what is going on, but it is like everything started falling down one thing after another, and it all became too overwhelming. A part of me despises my self for keeping going on, for trying to trust people, T said it is actually trying to protect me from being hurt, but this part is full of self-hatred. I truly appreciate your response, I am not sure that I need anything specific for now. I need the world to stop for a day so I can refuel. I need the pain to become less, not more. Yes, the tiredness and frustration, this is so true. Thank you for your empathy and support!

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Although it's probably not a good timing, I'd like to point out to a book I recently downloaded (for free) to my Kindle. Today, I've just read its preface and it reminded me some people who might perhaps be interested in it, too. I'll quote a part of the preface here and you could come later to see it and to decide if you'd like to read it, too:

the book is:

Lawrence E. Hedges (2012): Overcoming Our Relationship Fears. International Psychotherapy Institute Ebook Division.

and you can download it here (you need to register (I used a false name, BTW ;-) ), but it's all for free and all they do with the info is that they send you the link to the e-book to the e-mail address you give them)

http://www.freepsychotherapybooks.org/component/search/?searchword=Hedges&searchphrase=all&Itemid=211

Preface

By the time we are adults most of us have come to know the power of fear. On the positive side fear can prevent us from putting ourselves in harm’s way. On the negative side, fear can prevent us from putting our personal truths and needs out there. Fear often even stops us from pursuing the best in ourselves. And fear can make our relationships literally Hell on Earth. If only we could learn to master our fears instead of they mastering us.

Whether we like it or not, fear is ever present in our lives in one way or another. But I believe that we can come to a better understanding of how fear works for and against us. And that out of this understanding we can improve our power of choice, thus releasing the mysterious hold our fears have over us. That is what this book is about.

We begin by listening to our bodies. By the end of a long day or at the close of a hard week we all know exactly where in our bodies we feel the hidden effects of relationship fear—in our muscular tightness, aches, and pains. Some days different parts of our bodies carry the tension—our foreheads, our eyes, our chests, our legs, our feet or our joints. When we are having a particularly difficult week we may even wake up in the morning exhausted with our bodies aching all over. We know that we have been tense and restless throughout the night working over the trials and tribulations of the day. But in all of this we seldom stop to realize that our particular tensions are caused by habitual patterns of muscle constriction that started as fears in our early childhoods and have continued to expand unchecked throughout our growing up years into the present.

Most of us do not know what is at the bottom of our physical distresses or how to begin achieving relief on a daily basis. We may, however, be able to identify certain kinds of events that are likely to cause tensions. For example, Maria can count on lower back pain after work if she spends more than three hours a day on her computer. Josh can count on sore muscles in his neck and upper back on staff meeting days when he struggles to speak his piece while maintaining his composure. On days when Virginia has two–hour meetings scheduled with her boss she knows that her jaw will hurt and her throat will be tense by dinnertime. You may have already started noticing your daily tensions and begun relating them to what is going on in your life at the time. But what may well be new to you in this book is the potential importance of:

• Thinking systematically about what happens in your relationships throughout the day,

• Considering meaningfully how your body registers those relationship events, and

• Expanding creatively your awareness of your body-mind-relationship (BMR) connections.

As a therapist I have listened to people talk about themselves for forty years. In the process I have become convinced that our fears limit and cripple all of us in many ways. And that we are usually quite unaware of the profound effect our fears have on our entire beings. In this book I show how you can identify and break free from long-standing fear reflexes that persist and threaten your sense of wellbeing and indeed your health and longevity.

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