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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 6 of 6. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Annabelle Smith on January 30, 2011, at 11:24:40
Sometimes my chest just aches, right in the center. It is like an unnameable chaos, loneliness, depression, and confusion all become heaped upon this center, and it feels crushing.
When I try to go to places and events to help myself, I often leave feeling more ache and loneliness and chaos. This is how I feel when I go sit for an hour at a mindful awareness/meditation class once a week (when I can stand it). This is also how I feel right now, after I have just returned from a church service. The priest administering today is a psychotherapist and also the leader of the mindfulness class that meets weekly. His sermon talked about therapeutic themes in relation to death/resurrection and new life/awakened consciousness and in particular was about what happens when the survival mechanisms that used to work for us no longer work and now even hurt us. I could intimately relate to all that he was saying to my sitution. But being able to do so, made me feel chaos-- there was nowhere to release all of this.
That is what is wrong with me. My survival mechanisms no longer work-- they never did that well, but they at least got me to this point. Being like a mirror, faking it all the time, never being able to be honest with anybody, acting different ways for different people, and I think, unconsciously becoming helpless to get somebody to help and to be close to.
It makes me sick and despairing to think of all of this, but I think it is all true. I left the service feeling a deep ache-- a physical ache-- in the center of my chest, not quite nausea, but verging that way.
I will say this right here:
It happens off the charts in my sessions, but also happens with other authority (particularly male, but sometimes female-- priests/religious leaders, professors, doctors) figures in my life. I want to feel close to them and to get their help. These problems were all there before I entered therapy last year, but upon entering therapy last Feb, everything became so much more intense-- I regressed. I now think that the deep depression and intense suicidal thoughts and other forms of self harm were and are related to the ebb and flow of the therapeutic relationship-- arriving, leaving, closeness, distance. My life became centered upon my session each week-- it became an obsession. Entering the room was safety and salvation, leaving was death. It still is. In sessions, I often become helpless-- not on purpose; it just happens, but I am aware of it happening, and feel powerless to control it. It is a part of me; but also not a part of me.
But here is what I think from research and introspection. I think it makes me bad to admit this; but I will offer a counter voice that says, no, this has just been my survival method and I am doing the best I can. I think my unconscious helpless role is induced in order to become close to my therapist. When I feel depressed, despairing, anxious, and suicidal, then I feel the most connected to my therapist-- it is an at-one-ment. Maybe this makes me afraid of getting better, because this connection will be lost. I need it-- this connection-- to survive. It is the only real connection I have.
And so the pattern repeats itself. And as I fear that my therapist is gone or backing away, these feelings increase.
Posted by hansonfan on January 30, 2011, at 18:31:08
In reply to ache-- being helpless, posted by Annabelle Smith on January 30, 2011, at 11:24:40
I feel like I wrote this.....
I really 100% identify with you on this. It's really funny because I creep around this board frequently haha, but I hardly ever respond. I was reading a bunch of your posts lately and got really close to responding, but chickened out. You sound like my twin in all of your posts. How do we fix us??? My therapist of a really long time left last month and I spent some time in the hospital (NO FUN! by the way) and now i'm starting with a new therapist. but it's SO HARD. as if the termination wasn't enough, ever since I was about 2 or 3 years old, I've put older female authority figures in place of my mom. Mostly teachers, and I remember doing it with my preschool teacher through my last therapist. Now I have no one to put in that place because my new therapist doesn't really fit the "mold" i'm looking for. I FEEL SO LOST. it's crazy. I have no idea what to do with myself, I have nothing to cling to or obsess over. Even though I don't put this new therapist in place of my mom, ever time i meet with her, after I feel SO ALONE. how do we fix us? I hate this loneliness after leaving therapy sessions and I don't know how to fix it... so i feel your pain there.
Posted by emmanuel98 on January 30, 2011, at 19:23:26
In reply to ache-- being helpless, posted by Annabelle Smith on January 30, 2011, at 11:24:40
It's funny. When I feel depressed and despairing, that is when I feel least connected to my therapist. I am not really present in therapy and can't make use of it. It seems like that is really true for you also. You feel dependent on him when you are depressed, but you don't have productive sessions, then you beat yourself up and feel worse. This is really something you need to talk to him about. Being helpless is not the best way to get help, since people don't know what you want. DBT teaches assertivness -- learning to ask for what you want without being rude or demanding.
Posted by sigismund on January 30, 2011, at 22:13:39
In reply to Re: ache-- being helpless, posted by hansonfan on January 30, 2011, at 18:31:08
My guess is that desire is the means through which the mind tries to heal itself of past damage. Finding ways of loving which help you incorporate the damage and transcend it. If you can.
Posted by Annabelle Smith on February 1, 2011, at 16:52:25
In reply to Re: ache-- being helpless, posted by hansonfan on January 30, 2011, at 18:31:08
hansonfan,
I am glad that you responded to this. I have many times had the experience of reading something online-- someone else's post on a forum or just examples of life stories/testimonies-- particularly as I have come across people's experiences with Borderline Personality Disorder, and either wonder 1) am I coming across something that I wrote a long time ago and just don't remember? or 2) this is too strange-- this person is reading my life back to me. So, yes, I totally get that feeling.
I'm sorry that you have gone through such a hard time. It is so hard. I'm feeling it today too. I don't know how it is for you, but I am guessing it is similar-- it is always the hardest the minute, hour, and day right after a session ends. We met on Monday of this week and meet again next Wed-- that is over 1 week away...it seems so far. But what is worse is knowing that I am trapped in this cycle. I don't know how to "fix" this, as you say. My only guess is time. First I am don't think I'm going to have the time I need to work through this and second, maybe time doesn't heal.
The power is located in the therapeutic relationship: I feel dependent upon him for safety, security, care, protection, basically, life. I feel a deep primal love for my therapist. I become obsessed and don't know what to do with all of this.
He has briefly spoken about patterns of relationship to my mom that re-emerge in our sessions-- wanting to share and not wanting to share. What is SO distressing is that there are so many things that I need to share with him, but am afraid to-- I can't say why I am afraid, but I just feel so scared. But he is the person who can help. About binge eating and weight and food; about patterns of thinking, worrying and ritual action, and about suicide.
I feel on the edge of something. I can't bear the future. Yesterday in our session, there was a moment(s) where I felt a sense of OK-ness, and even an opening of myself, a letting go and an acceptance. But this has quickly gone. It ebbs and flows like the tide, and that is what these feelings of suicide do too. I get this feeling-- like a dread in the center of my chest, a king of deep knowing or sense-- that suicide might not happen in the next year or two, but that is how it is going to end. I can see (actually, I can't even imagine myself saying good-bye to my therapist...which will be forever) myself leaving my therapist and then maybe 5 or even 8 years later, it will happen. It feels like a death sentence, I just don't know when it will strike. I think when I reach the point of greater strength and appropriate method, the point of breaking desperation, and ability to accept the pain that it will cause to those around me-- like after my parents are no longer around.
But it is always there. The urge always comes and goes and I never know which way it will be. But it is always there.
This is hell. These feelings of being dependent and trapped and obsessed and longing yet never able to be fulfilled by that object. I really want to know what the f*ck this is-- are my crazy feelings towards my therapist transference or what? It is an unnameable chaos that seems to always be lurking underneath the surface.
I used to not believe in hell-- I prided myself in overcoming that "superstition." But now, I have no choice to believe in hell-- it often is the only reality-- not the kind of hell that's a place where God eternally punishes people for eternity-- but a chaos that is unnameable. It feels like a demon inside of me, trying kill me sometimes-- like maybe I am a demon. It is like being trapped in a riddle and living in between two different dimensions, two different worlds. It is being within an infinite maze-- it feels like I must go faster and harder in order to get out; but this only gets me lost deeper. And so I want to exit stage left. But that is not really what I want. It just feels unbearable and worst of all, impossible to share with another, certainly through words-- maybe it is possible to share in other ways, like through actions, pictures, creations, or just presence and being-with.
And sometimes the only consolation that I find within the hell is that this is where God is too. in the lonliness and chaos.
Posted by Annabelle Smith on February 1, 2011, at 18:12:36
In reply to Re: ache-- being helpless » hansonfan, posted by Annabelle Smith on February 1, 2011, at 16:52:25
I'm sorry-- immediately after I hit the re-confirm submit button, I wished that I hadn't. I said and shared too much.
I just feel overwhelmed right now-- the time has finally arrived (Feb) that I have been dreading for so long-- I won't go into all of the details why. It gets worse as Feb proceeds and March comes and then April. At this point, Dear God. I want time to stop, and this makes me feel more suicidal. But what I shared that was too much-- those thoughts are always there and have been so almost every day for months. It is about to explode.
And eating. It's all that I think about. Restrict, bad headaches, fogginess, binge, binge, binge. Repeat. It never ends. Jan is gone and no weight lost-- in fact, I would guess I have gained. The more despair, the more food is the only way to help. I am supposed to meet with a nutritionist tomorrow, and am nervous-- how to share all of this with her...things that I have trouble even telling my therapist?
I feel so lost. I see my therapist again on Feb 9-- next Wed. I am already longing for that day. This is not going to keep working. Feb 9 is almost mid Feb. Time is going quickly. How to get out.
And now, it is that lonely feeling, with the night and the rain and being overwhelmed. It feels like an emptiness in the center of my being and makes me want to just sleep on forever. How I long for the morning. a new morning.
This is the end of the thread.
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