Posted by fallsfall on October 6, 2003, at 13:51:07
Therapy was a disaster. I was trying to do what he wanted me to do. I came up with an ADL (Activities of Daily Living) plan that he doesn't have to monitor. So I will focus on taking care of myself, but I'll only give him a 1 sentance update each week.
I did some journalling yesterday when I was feeling needy and searching for him on the internet. I read it to him - except for the first line which said "I was searching for my new therapist. At least I wasn't searching for my old therapist". I paraphrased that to be "I was feeling very needy, but I was looking for you, not my old therapist. That's progress". When I finished reading he asked "What do you mean you were looking for me?". The whole point was that I wanted to talk about WHY I was feeling needy - not what I did because I was feeling needy. If I fix what makes me needy, then I won't have to worry about *doing* anything. I said "I'd rather talk about that on another day". Guess what he said? (answer: "Why"). "Because I told myself that I could tell you the rest of this if I didn't have to talk about that". "Why don't you want to talk about that?" and "You realize that talking about things like this is the reason we are here?" and "You really want to sit with this for three days until your next appointment?" (answer: "Yes, that would be easier than talking about it") and (when I tried to just talk about something else) "It's hard to talk about other things when you aren't talking about what needs to be talked about" and "What will you do next time?" (answer: I'll talk about something else and hope you don't bring it up") and "I'm not telling you that you have to talk about it. You can talk about whatever you want" (yeah, right) and on and on and on.
I never did tell him, but he knows. He knows I searched (this wasn't the first time, but this time I tried a different search engine in hopes of getting different results). I told him that I think he'll punish me. I told him that I didn't do anything wrong - I am afraid of being punished even though I didn't do anything wrong (and no, this isn't a theme in my life). He asked if there was more to this than the connection with my old therapist (answer: "No").
I'm afraid he'll throw me out because I'm needy. I'm afraid he'll throw me out because I can't keep my kitchen clean and do my laundry (the ADL stuff was to convince him that I can take care of that stuff, so that we'll be able to do "real" stuff in therapy). I'm afraid he'll throw me out because I searched for him. I'm afraid he'll throw me out because I read Psychology books before bed instead of novels.
Gee, does this seem like frantic efforts to avoid abandonment?
I know it isn't rational. I told him all about my searching for my old therapist the first time I met with him - if he didn't like patients who search he shouldn't have agreed to work with me. I bet he's loving it - all this tension in the relationship. Why couldn't he say "OK, we can talk about that some other time. So the reason you can't get your laundry done is...?" That sounds trivial, but it isn't - I couldn't do my laundry because I am afraid of getting better because the last time I was starting to feel better was the beginning of the end with my old therapist. Can't we work on why it is OK for me to get better? Because if I can feel OK about getting better, then I can take care of myself and he can do the "real" therapy work and then I could be permanently better.
I know this is ridiculous. What *am* I going to do until Thursday?
poster:fallsfall
thread:265991
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20030925/msgs/265991.html