I am having some major anxiety today. After yesterday’s season– which I will post about eventually– I took a long walk and did some processing and sorting. Then I emailed Bea. It’s been 24 hours, and she still hasn’t responded. I’ve kept busy– grocery shopping. Swimming, 2 yoga classes, cleaning. Playing with Kat. But I’m almost topped out for anxiety and vulnerability and I’m so close to closing off and saying screw it, I don’t need her. Why oh why hasn’t she responded?
Falling down the rabbit hole
Trauma therapy, life after sexual abuse & PTSD
Search
Falling down the rabbit hole 
I’m going to suggest that you email and just verify that she got the email and will respond to it. I have been in your situation and it feels horrible. Every time, there has been some reason or other, even if it’s just that she put it aside to do a considered response and forgot because she was so tired. At this point, MB knows that a lack of response will drive me crazy, so she would rather have me poke her than suffer in silence. I’m betting that Bea would rather that you give her a nudge, too. I wish that you didn’t have to, but I’m betting that you will feel better with a response, even if you have to ask for the response.
LikeLike
I’m afraid. Maybe–based on the email– she thinks I’m crazy. Or maybe she just doesn’t care anymore; maybe she is done with me. I don’t know. I’m just so scared to ask for anything more….ugh. And maybe I email and ask for a response and she doesn’t respond to that either? Or says she just doesn’t have time for me? Or who knows what else. I don’t know. I’m sorry…I know I’m being silly, a drama queen, a baby. I’m just scared. It’s too much right now. 😞
LikeLike
Though your feelings are real, and your fears, they are unfounded. Nope, she wouldn’t be done with you until you decide that. I tend to think the worst even with piles of evidence to the contrary. Hasn’t she suggested that you can even call her?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe. Maybe she isn’t done. I don’t know. She has said I can call, but I can’t, won’t do that. It seems silly. I just…I don’t know. Can’t. Like I’m not worth the time a phone call takes maybe. Or maybe that a non response to a phone call is a bigger rejection than not answering an email. I don’t know. It’s messy. My head is messy. Rationally, I’m aware that sending an email, or a text, or placing a phone call could solve all this anxiety. But this fear and panic just make me frozen. 😞
LikeLike
Alice, you aren’t being any of those things! You are simply being someone who was hurt very badly and taught to expect for others to not be reliable and be there for you emotionally when you need them. You were taught that it is safer to expect to be betrayed and anticipate it, than to expect for anyone to be there for you when things get messy. It’s the way that you have always protected yourself, yes? There isn’t anyone who can really be relied upon. After all, if your parents emotionally abandoned you when you were little and utterly dependent upon them, why would there be anyone else in the world who might be trustworthy?
I get this. I get it in a very personal way, because I struggle with the same sorts of issues. I feel like I have to protect my husband from the most damaged parts of me because I am so afraid that he will abandon me emotionally if I show him all of who I am. I struggle with trusting MB to still care about me and want to help me, even when I share the things that I can’t say out loud. The things that I so much do not want to have happened that just saying that they lurk in my mind makes me sure that I will be seen as crazy and disgusting as I feel when I “tell” her about them. There is a part of me that holds the young story of what happened and that part is desperate to be heard, accepted and comforted. But that part also over interprets things from MB as being rejections, messages to shut up and go away. After all, what this part holds was unspeakable for so long and, frankly, I wish that this part didn’t need to exist, so I am having trouble accepting it, myself.
The thing is that I am reacting out of old lessons and from old protective habits. Survival mechanisms, really. It sounds to me like you are as well. They helped me get through some impossible times when I was growing up, but now they get in the way of my being able to get all of the support that I could otherwise. I have to keep on reminding myself to reality rest for the here and now. Am I really reacting to MB or am I reacting to old fears? Looking at how MB has always treated me, do my fears make sense or does it make more sense for me to keep on reminding myself of how MB has always acted in real life and trust her to keep on remaining the same person that consistently has been? Trusting her to be there, to treat me with respect and kindness helps me to feel more stable.
That’s something that can’t be done until it can be done. But at the same time (at least for me) it didn’t just happen. I had to choose to push past those fears and trust her to keep on being her, no matter what I shared with her. I remember the session in which she pointed that out to me, taking a very deep breath, and clenching her hand while I talked about something that terrified me to say out loud. It’s a decision that I make over and over and over. It gets easier to make it most of the time, but the expectation that I will do something to evoke abandonment doesn’t actually go away. Maybe it is too deeply ingrained from too early and maybe it will be something that I will have to manage for the rest of my life.
I really think that the more you are able to keep track of who Bea really is, the safer you will feel. Being able to keep ahold of the fact that there is at least one person whom you can rely on to be there makes such a difference! At least for me, that means knowing that we might disagree, we might have a session that feels terrible for one reason or another, I might be angry with her and let her know in no uncertain terms, but she won’t quit on me. She won’t judge me as a person.
There is a concept in counseling called “unconditional positive regard”. It doesn’t mean that the therapist approves of everything that the client does or says, but it does mean that the client doesn’t need to do anything particular in order to earn the therapist’s respect for their personhood. In reality, some clients and therapists just don’t click and the therapist can’t establish that, but it’s easy to tell pretty quickly and an ethical with refer the client to someone else more likely to be able to work successfully with them.
I hope that something in all of this will at least help you to feel a little less alone.
LikeLike
Yeah….I think there is a choice to push past the fear or be stuck. It’s hard. I’m just…I don’t know….it seems like she has been here for more than a year, maybe she is burnt out from me? Annoyed….tired of me…I don’t know.
I do know you get this…I do the same exact thing with my hubby. It’s like Bea is really the only person I’m real with, and even then, I hide a lot from her. It’s scary.
I am feeling less alone, thank you. I finally decided to post about my anxiety around Bea abandoning me, rejecting me, and I am glad I did. Thank you. Xx
LikeLike
So I’ve never been in that place of utter despair and being done and angry and hurt…okay, so in there a lot. And my T actually hasn’t responded at times. So I’ve written again after days of anxiety and self hatred. Here is what my T wrote to me when I almost desperately pleaded for a response: Kudos for not trusting your thoughts as reality (meaning that she didn’t hate me and wasn’t abandoning me, etc). The trick now is to let them pass through without attaching or judging and shifting your focus as best you can, whenever you can, to the breath (which you are getting ever so much better at accessing) and towards thoughts of moments of grace –grooming the horses, hiking and your children, and most importantly to acknowledge and extend some kindness to the scared, lonely little girl desperate for attention and reassurance. She needs that from you, not from me.
Tough stuff for certain.
LikeLike
I just want to send you so many hugs right now…because even if your therapist is right, that the little girl needs reassurance from you and not her, I’m hurt for you. I don’t know. I think reassurance from your therapist is how you learn to reassure yourself. Maybe? Anyway…Just sending so many hugs. Xx
LikeLiked by 1 person
My little girl will always take the hugs. But Alice, here is the crazy part. My first reaction to the response was that she totally gets it and understands and cares about me. She maybe cares so much that she wants to set me free. Not today or tomorrow or next week or even next year but at some point I need to parent my little girl with love and kindness because if I don’t, well I might become mean to her again. Her response somehow helped me to stop starving and spiraling down and the point is that she did respond when I asked. So while I later thought like you (that my little girl does need her T and why would she be so hurtful) it ironically didn’t feel hurtful. And I’m not sure about anything anymore. The only thing I’m sure about is that I’m eating and I’m healthy and I went out with my horses and I went running and for walks and played games with my kids and listened to music and got my violin out and played and I even let myself sulk. I thought about what my little girl needed and it’s so difficult to do because she still feels so overwhelmed and sad but I needed to reassure her too and start finding my own self compassion because I surely wasn’t taking care of her and I guess I have custody of her for now and my T only gets visitation. And really it was just in my mind that my T hates me and is abandoning me and pushing me away…she wasn’t and isn’t thinking any of that. Or at least that’s what she said and actually I know that to be true.
LikeLike
Wow. I just don’t even know what else to say. You are so strong, and I really love the way you view what she said, about freeing you. It is amazing, and not how I think at all. Xx
LikeLike
I hope you have heard something by now, Alice. Sending you major hugs, I hate that you’re having to deal with that extra anxiety ❤
LikeLike
Thank you, E. Xx
LikeLiked by 1 person
Bea is very much on your side; I’ve seen that in so many of your posts. She doesn’t think you are “crazy” or unworthy or overly dramatic or a baby. She just doesn’t. If you read over your descriptions of previous sessions again, you’ll see that right away. (It might be a way to reassure yourself.) I am sure there is some reason she hasn’t responded–she is sick or her computer isn’t working or she got distracted before she finished a reply that she was satisfied with or her best friend is going through a crisis. Who knows? But I’m sure it’s not a rejection of you.
That said, I know how painful it can be to be in limbo like that. Sending you hugs and hoping she responds soon… Love, Q.
LikeLike
I know…I rationally know this…it’s just…I don’t know. A freak out, I guess. It’s crazy how one thing can tip the scale in the negative direction, even when there are many hundreds of things in the positive direction. I guess that is why I’m in therapy. Thank you for the idea to fond reassurance. Xx
LikeLiked by 1 person
I know! It’s a legacy of the past that we are always looking for signals that something isn’t right… because in fat, things weren’t right. I have felt all the same self-doubt and anxiety too. It’s the pits.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It is a really sucky legacy. But we are changing it. Thank you for understanding. Xx
LikeLike
I know how agonizing this can be. Hoping she responds soon xx
LikeLike
Thanks Andi. I know you get this.
LikeLiked by 1 person