I am
really stuck in psychotherapy. I’ve been in psychotherapy about 3 years,
have done some good work, made some significant progress, like and respect
my psychotherapist. Now suddenly I feel like I’m going
backwards.
I think
it is partly that we’re down to all the really hard stuff. Lately we
have been working with some memories from my childhood that are painful and
shaming to remember, I seem to be reliving my adolescence, and I am being
honest about my transferential and fleeting
erotic feelings for my
psychotherapist. But the more honest I am, the more I feel paralyzed with
shame.
Now
I feel enraged at my psychotherapist because everything is painful, there’s
nothing he can do about that, and for numerous other unfair and irrational
reasons. And at the same time, I cling to him, and am fearful of pushing
him away. . . . I know all this and yet I am unable either
to change my behavior or accept my feelings. I am getting more and more depressed
and both more enraged and more dependent on my psychotherapist and
psychotherapy. . . . I seem to do less and less in my life,
spend my time waiting for the next session, all I want to do is sleep, and
I feel like a big jerk for being so limp and unable to get myself moving.
I am having continuous migraines also, which does not make my thinking any
more incisive.
Here’s
my question: Should I just take a break from psychotherapy and see if I can
pull myself together? I am tempted to do this. I am terrified of this dependence
and believe that I am not making much progress. As I said, I respect and
like my psychotherapist. He is perfectly willing to listen to my feelings
of anger towards him and my transference feelings. He is never rejecting,
belittling, or unprofessional. I love him, and I hate him, and I am enraged
at him. I want him to fix everything and I want him to butt out and leave
me alone. Obviously, he does neither of those things.
On the
other hand, I believe that I should somehow let go of trying to control my
psychotherapist, trust the process, and dive in. But I am afraid I can’t
handle it, that I’ll fall apart even more. Plus . . .
I feel like that would be giving in to him somehow, knuckling under. O, I
am so frustrated with myself! I am having trouble choosing this
path.
Let’s begin with your perception that you are going
backwards. You are not really “going backwards” in the sense
of losing any progress you have made in your psychotherapy; you are actually
in the process of feeling the emotions that you stifled and stuffed away
in childhood. In this latter sense, though, you are going backwards, but
it’s not a bad thing—that is, you are “going backwards” into
the past emotionally so as to recover the
truth you once pushed
away.
From what you
say—and even from what you don’t say—I can tell that you suffered
much emotional hurt from your parents. Most likely your father was
absent either physically (due to divorce or work, etc.) or emotionally (due
to his own lack of emotional sensitivity) or both (e.g., alcoholism). There
could have been sexual abuse as well. Your mother could have been angry, either
outwardly or in a veiled fashion. But however it played out for you, you most
noticeably felt angry at your parents for the way they hurt you. Maybe you
acted out as a
teenager, or maybe you turned inward into isolation and sadness.
In addition to
that (and here is a critical point) you also
unconsciously knew
what was missing in your life: genuine appreciation for your own being; that
is, things such as affection, comfort, encouragement, guidance, and so on.
Thus, on the one hand you were angry that you
didn’t receive appreciation from your parents, especially your father,
and, on the other hand you craved appreciation. Not realizing that you craved
the emotional comfort of a father, however, this desire for appreciation
was perceived in your mind and heart as fantasized images of desire for other
persons. And so you would have felt these desires as shameful.
Moreover, in
addition to all this, one odd dynamic entered the mix. The conflict between
anger and desire would have manifested unconsciously as a “pushing
away” behavior. That is, you want appreciation, but, because it’s
never the real
love of your father, it’s never good enough—so you feel deprived,
and, in your rage, you push others away. Thus you can end up feeling alone
and abandoned, complaining that others have abandoned you, when really you
have been pushing them away in your anger—all because your father and
mother really did abandon you emotionally as a child. Thus everything has
to go back to the pain of your childhood.
So, here you
are. You’re in psychotherapy to heal that pain, but, in the course of
the psychotherapy itself you have to “go backwards” to re-experience
that pain in order to speak about it and understand it. The surest way
to re-experience that pain now is to experience it through your
psychotherapist.
Remember, though,
that your psychotherapist is not your father and he never can be. His job
is to help you experience the truth of your life and to put it into
words—to contain the raw emotions and, ultimately, like wild animals,
tame them.
Thus you will
feel through your psychotherapist the very things you craved from your father,
and you will have the urge to manipulate things to get what you desire. You
will also realize that your psychotherapist is just a man, and will feel
ashamed of your desire. Moreover, you will experience the times “it’s not good
enough,” and you will get angry and try to push him away.
And now we come
to your request. You need some encouragement to follow the path of
psychotherapeutic healing. It may not seem rational to ask for what you already
know. But the unconscious is not rational—it’s beyond reason because
it is truth itself. You will fall apart not because of the truth but because
of its lack. Because of its lack you fall into manipulation. Thus I can encourage
you to seek for what you already know: seek what is missing. Seek the affirmation
of your life by desiring to speak the truth about all your inner experiences
that would push truth away. To do this, it’s important to understand that
you are not pleasing your psychotherapist but that you are saving yourself from
falling apart.
So, to begin
the depth of your treatment, speak to your psychotherapist of what until
now has been missing from the treatment. Your migraines know very well what
I mean here. Let them speak. Let them speak, for your sake. Let them speak
as you, the child, couldn’t speak. For your own sake, don’t push
them, the child, or your psychotherapist away.
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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