I’ve dipped in
and out for interest and occasional help with my own psychotherapy progress. I’m normally a
lurker - rather than a participant - but something monumental has come up which I
feel ill-equipped to deal with and so I have a question of my own: How can I best use
the time I have left in psychotherapy?
I was referred to
a psychotherapy programme 5 years ago. After an initial year in group therapy, I was then
transferred to a consultant for individual sessions which have been ongoing for 4 years.
Today, I found out that he is leaving and we only have 10 sessions left. I have issues with
endings and abandonment so I feel that most of our remaining time will be taken up with
discussing these.
I’ve only recently
been able to communicate throughout the 50 minute sessions - the first few years I was
monosyllabic. It has taken a lot of work to get to this point, and I was hoping to still
have the opportunity to discuss a number of things, many of them big ticket items such as
erotic and non-erotic transference, failure of relationships, body image, and intimacy.
Some of the things are specific to our relationship and I would regret not covering them
with my current therapist. I’m also really specifically worried that I’ll lapse back into
my old way of coping (withdrawal, mutism) for the final sessions, and won’t be able to
say goodbye properly to someone I respect, who is my primary attachment figure, who has helped
me immensely, and who I will likely never see again. This would partly be to protect myself,
and partly to try and make him understand the hurt I feel by visiting it back to him. Not
pretty - or helpful - but I can feel it brewing. I’m also angry at both of us for avoiding
some topics over the years, and for allowing too much room for him in the therapy room (it
was helpful at first, but became intrusive).
A side issue: he has
also indicated that he will not pass me to another psychotherapist within the programme. He
thinks I need to take a time out so that this is a proper ending and that I can experience
life away from psychotherapy for a bit. I agree with the first point, disagree with the second
and am concerned because a) I struggle week-to-week with thoughts (including suicide ideation),
emotions, self-esteem, relationships, and identity and b) the criteria for referral have changed
since I joined, and it may not be possible to be re-referred. I cannot afford psychotherapy
privately.
During our conversations
I rose-tinted a lot of things about my life because of immense shame, and because I wanted him
to like me, and I wonder whether he just doesn’t understand how much I rely on him/the service.
Generally, I believe I’m definitely improving but that I still have many issues to work on for
a productive life; over the period I’ve seen him I’ve lost - not gained - friends and struggle
with who I am and where I’m going in life. I lack the support of a network outside psychotherapy
and have been using therapy as a crutch, but maybe I’ve seen this too late to work on things that
could help me going forward alone.
Sorry for the essay. I
decided this evening - after a lot of crying - that I want to end the therapy as well as I can
and am trying to think of things that will help. I also just wanted to share this with someone
who might understand how wonderfully confusing and painful it all is. It feels worse than a
death; that he will exist somewhere, and I just can’t see him.
You don’t realize it yet, but you are at the cusp of an opportunity to be
starting, not ending. Whether you make use of that opportunity depends on how you understand
and apply what I tell you.
Although it’s difficult to
hear, what you did in psychotherapy is a metaphor for what you have been doing all your life:
sabotaging yourself. Had you been using psychotherapy gracefully, you would have learned that
sabotage is related to anger at your parents. Because you weren’t
attached to them in any healthy manner during your childhood, as an adult you have lacked
attachment to anything.
Consider here that in order to
learn confidence about life, children need to feel “special” in the eyes of their parents.
Children need the nurturing love of a mother and the protective, guiding love of a father.
Children who grow up in dysfunctional
families know the devastating emotional pain of wanting their parents’ love while finding it
always withheld from them. They will try over and over to make their parents see them as
special—and because of their parents’
fear of love, they will fail,
over and over, to draw any parental love into their aching hearts.
Consequently, having tried and
failed to make their parents look upon them as special, they make one last dramatic effort:
clinging to their resentments, they
throw themselves so deeply into dysfunction as to make themselves believe that they are special
in their dysfunction.
This explains why some persons’
lives are always in a confused state of panic, chaos, or melodrama.
As painful as the dysfunction may be on the surface, and as much as they consciously complain
about it, or even seek psychotherapy for it, they nevertheless cling to an unconscious enjoyment
of the chaos and confusion because it gives them a special identity.
That’s why self-punishment is such
a mistake: it puts up a profound impediment to all that you could achieve in life. It’s as if
you bury all of your talents. Although deep in your heart you blame your parents for ruining your
life, your life hasn’t really been ruined by what others have done to you (or failed to do for
you). Yet if you cling to your resentments and consequently sabotage yourself to prove to others
how much they have hurt you, then it will appear to you that others have ruined your life when
really you have been bringing ruin onto yourself. Moreover, it’s even more ironic that if you
presume to punish yourself for your previous mistakes of self-punishment (such as reverting to
near silence in the last 10 sessions of the psychotherapy), you will stay locked in self-punishment—and
you will never learn anything, and your talents will remain buried.
As a result of your
unconscious confusion, your attachment
to your psychotherapist is a defense to hide and avoid your lack of attachment to the psychotherapy
itself. That’s a shock, isn’t it? Your transference to your psychotherapist is not a matter of love,
it’s a matter of fear.
Therefore, in the last 10 sessions, be
honest, confess the motives behind your
behavior in psychotherapy, and then see what your psychotherapist does. Furthermore, once he sees
you clearly he may rethink his decision about not referring you to someone else to continue the
work.
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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