Suddenly
I have this tense and anxious feeling and I just dont want to go to my
psychotherapist. I have mentioned it to her. I’ve been with her for
nearly three years (one year privately), and had a very good relationship
with her but of late I “tell myself” perhaps even convince myself
that she is just doing a “job,” does not really care about me,
and from my obessional feeling for therapy and therapist I’ve moved
to the other extreme and don’t know why.
I know
I’ve come a long way but still have a long way to go and can’t
imagine why I’m feeling anxious, stressed about our meetings. Knowing
myself and my self destructive moods I feel I am capable of kicking out at
the whole world both bad and good (therapy being the good). I only manage
to bring these feelings at the last 5 mins. of our session.
I’ve
never held back any information in the past but I find extremely difficult
to talk to my therapist that of late I feel very upset about her other patients
and just don’t want to become one of her list of other patients. A month
or so ago she added another chair in her consulting room and since then I
have this feeling of a third person sitting in the room and many time I feel
like addressing this third person and not her.
Because
of my split treatment with my psychotherapist and my
psychiatrist (I am on lithium because of bi-polar disorder) I mentioned
this to my psychiatrist which of course I know I should bring out
with my psychotherapist and could not help feeling like the child
running from one parent to the other.
I then
told her that I the client felt so horrible and ungrateful because my
psychotherapist has always been there for me, phone calls, meetings,
etc., all of a sudden I’ve built up this defense wall with all sorts
of negative feelings which are not even rational but are affecting me and
the therapy and I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY.
Your problem begins with the fact that you’re not
running between two parents, you’re running between two
mothers.
Now, this
may not sound politically correct, but “always being there for you,”
“phone calls,” and “meetings” are nurturing functions.
This is the role of a mother who takes care of your needs. In contrast, a
father
“comes between” the child and the mother—to separate the child
from total emotional absorbtion in the mother—and leads the child out
into the world so as to teach the child how the world functions culturally
and intellectually and how the child can function independently in the
world.
Good psychotherapy,
therefore, involves both mothering and fathering. We’ve already
seen what the mothering function is. So what is the fathering function of
psychotherapy? Well, it’s the ability to recognize the “third
person” in the consulting room. It’s the ability to recognize that
all personal
identity is the
product of external, arbitrary, social constructs. It’s the ability
to work therapeutically with the
unconscious.
And you encounter
the unconscious in psychotherapy when you are forced to admit, “I
don’t understand.” Call it the moment of truth.
So what is the
truth you are being called to encounter now? Well, after three years of “a
very good relationship” with your psychotherapist, you now have to encounter
the ugly, dark side of all relationships. You have to recognize that intense
negative feelings, such as hurt and
anger and resentment,
exist in you right beside the good feelings. These negative feelings aren’t
just unique to you, but they are in everyone; in fact, they’re a large
part of human psychology. So it is necessary to take responsibility for managing
these feelings consciously, rather than letting them smoulder in the depths
of the unconscious.
Of course you
don’t like feeling horrible and ungrateful—after all, who
does?—but that is exactly where the next phase of your treatment is
going, if it is to go anywhere productive. In short, you have to experience
the flip-side
of “love.” You have to realize how much you “hate” your
psychotherapist, even though it doesn’t seem rational. You hate her
in just the same way you hated your mother yet couldn’t express
it.
The best thing
you can do, then, is to start speaking about all this in your psychotherapy,
in the presence of that dreaded “third person.” Through the guidance
of your psychotherapist, tell her what your difficulties are and begin learning
to express all that hurt and anger about
unfulfilled needs from the past, when you were just another needy child on
your mother’s list. Otherwise, you will spend the rest of your life
running from the truth, and going nowhere.
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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