I have
been receiving help within the mental health system for much of my life in
[location deleted for confidentiality]. I have been diagnosed as having
Borderline Personality Disorder. I have anxiety that grips me . . . despite
a lifetime of looking for spiritual or other answers to my mental an emotional
suffering. I had a psychotherapist for 15 years; he [recently] retired
. . . . He was very cruel in the last year, I don’t understand why;
he said things such as “You will probably take your serious condition
to the grave,” “You should have made more progress in 15 years,”
“There are patients worse than you.” Why he said these things I
am not clear even now....All this has left me unable to integrate or move
on. Feel very hurt, angry, stuck. . . . And my pain from therapist relationship
ending (though I may have contact in future after 6 month+ break, he has
said—though I have to admit I did badger him about contact....) and
being so hurtful/cruel....leaves me feeling I need closure, a talk with him
NOW, but I have to wait he says. . . .
I
didn’t realise how much I was actually “in love” with him
until most recently (last session was August 27th) and it seems he flirted
with me for most of 15 years with a cup of tea ready at the outset of each
session—no other patient had that....he said I was
“special”...and seems like he never really cared about me and it
seems I have fallen in love with him. Yet he seems to have just dumped me
at the end of the therapy. At least he ignored in the last year all the e-mails
I sent (we had e-mail contact between sessions) all the excruciating pain
of in the erotic transference. . . . I could not when I was in the therapy
room with him, express anger at him or get him to help me deal with all the
feelings, and suffered mostly the anger and pain between sessions in the
last year, and cannot now work it through because he no longer does
psychotherapy. . . .
I feel
so let down by the mental health system. . . . it feels it was sado-masochistic.
. . . and he often said he felt that sado-masochism would be an approach
I should look towards. I wonder now about his own intentions towards me as
it has felt like this is what he has been doing to me, and I have not enjoyed
it at all. . . . and I feel so damaged by him. How can this be? I paid so
much money, and I can barely survive on my benefits? And even struggle to
survive? . . . he kept talking about Nietzsche and how everything moves towards
disintegration and therefore self-destruction is not a bad thing, but when
I said I felt suicidal because of the way he was speaking to me he said that
would make him angry. . . . He talked a fair bit about his atheism, and this
itself has disturbed me, and been unhelpful. He has criticised my spiritual
. . . inclinations….but more to the point, any spiritual understanding
of life—which has always been very important to me.
He said
lots of hurtful things to me like “You would have been better dealt
with by the criminal justice system.” When I said how hurt this phrase
(and others I mentioned earlier) made me feel and how destructive his approach
was being (in the last year), he just didn’t deal with it, or help me
deal with my feelings; my emails expressing hurt and pain and anger about
his attitude, he just ignored 90% of the time. And in sessions I was so besotted
with him and felt so happy to be there in his room, I found it hard to challenge
him or express anger. When I did on the phone for example, he was just angry
and nasty back.
Yet
I was clearly suffering so much and so distressed. I think, now, we had
“just a cup of a tea and a chat” and no “real therapy”
for 15 years—it seemed like more of a “real” relationship,
and yet when I asked for contact after termination he said it has all been
“just illusion”. I trusted he knew what he was doing. I believe
now he realised I was actually in love with him, but he seems clueless about
the impact he has had on me. . . . I really don’t know what to do—have
had suicidal thoughts for some time about this matter regarding my
psychotherapist.....and trying to find a way out of this mess. I don’t
believe people in the mental health system here . . . have much insight or
care for those they are paid to help. . . . I cannot decide what to do, just
know I am not coping well, and have been ill, mentally, emotionally and
physically because of this situation. He would blame me, angrily, and say
I am doing it to myself. (I see the point of this judgment to some extent,
but still, surely I have been in therapy to deal with this problem?) 15 years
is a long time to have wasted and that is how it feels. I don’t feel
he has helped me, and I feel so angry, and often feel like I cannot go on.
Can you suggest how I might get help with this and go forward in a life that
was already very, very difficult before I started seeing him 15 years ago,
and now feels intolerable?
As I say on the web page about
Borderline Personality
Disorder (BPD), the core of the BPD dynamic is unresolved
rage from the emotional
traumas of
childhood.
Accordingly, the psychotherapeutic treatment for BPD involves a psychological
resolution of rage. This resolution is accomplished by bringing to conscious
expression the
emotions underlying
the rage; in essence, this process discovers the
unconscious meaning
of the rage itself and thereby contains the raw experiences. It’s a
bit like taming a wild animal.
Now, in
the psychotherapeutic
process, it is
inevitable that the client’s anger will be brought out into the open
from time to time. The psychologist, therefore, has the task of tolerating
the client’s anger without reacting to it with the natural response
of revenge. The
psychologist must always seek the
meaning of the
client’s behavior—and bring that meaning out into the open so that
the client can recognize it and learn from it. There is no room in this for
retaliation.
In this regard,
the psychotherapeutic process can be obstructed by two
things.
1. |
The psychologist
could attempt to appease the client. This usually happens because
the psychologist has an unconscious
fear of the client
and wants to escape an emotionally difficult experience. In clinical practice
this appeasement manifests in the psychologist violating professional
boundaries
so as to make the client feel special. |
|
2. |
The psychologist
could react to the client’s anger with his or her own anger. This reaction
contains an unconscious—or, sadly, even a conscious—desire to
harm the client. Quite often this reaction takes the form of saying
something that demeans or belittles the client, and it’s all based in
an abuse of power that allows the psychologist to recover from a feeling
of helplessness when confronted with an angry client. |
|
With this
introduction, we can understand how your experience with your psychotherapist
went wrong. His making tea for you at the beginning of sessions was an
appeasement. The proof of this is in his own words: you were
“special.” And the cruel things he said to you throughout the
treatment, in addition to his ignoring your e-mails and “dumping”
you, illustrate his desire to harm you in retaliation for your
anger.
These
psychotherapeutic mistakes had clear consequences for you.
• |
First, they gave
you hope that, in being special, you might not lose his
approval. |
|
• |
Second, they
pushed you into thoughts that, through a
sado-masochistic relationship, you might win
his approval. |
|
In the
end, then, you didn’t really fall in love with him, you became enamored
of the hope that you might, through your own efforts, overcome his anger
at you. This isn’t being uplifted to the level of love, it’s being
reduced to the level of your own childhood trauma.
By that last
statement I mean that, because of his own unrecognized
counter-transference
issues, your psychotherapist did not provide psychotherapy to you; instead, he
merely recreated the original trauma of your childhood: a parent who both
abused you and appeased you but failed to understand your true emotional
needs.
Now, as you yourself
have remarked, the prospects of your finding help in the mental health system
are bleak. Nevertheless, even though you lack the funds to pay for competent
private care, you still have one option. You could use your desire for
spiritual healing to
lead you into a discovery of
true love. Through
personal study and meditation you could find that place where, rather than
constantly feeling frustrated by the failures of the world around you, and trying
impossibly to satisfy your need for approval from others, you can learn to
acknowledge openly your emotional hurt. Then, rather than react with rage and
retaliation, you might give to others your expression of profound emotional qualities
such as patience, forbearance, compassion, understanding, and
forgiveness. In this way,
you will find what you have been seeking all your life: real love.
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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If
this website has helped you, then