Things have been…..well, not great. I’ve been functioning thanks to the perfect part of me. I had therapy today, after a week and a half break. It wasn’t good. I’m thinking of quitting. It was awful. I shouldn’t have gone. I never ever should have shown up.
I talked about nothing, surface stuff, a monologue designed to keep Bea from talking about serious stuff.
She eventually brought up the last week and when I emailed and felt like her email back was shrinky and gone. She said how we’ve just always had contact and that maybe it would be more fair to me to have no contact unless it’s an emergency, so I wouldn’t have to do this contact her, feel like she’s gone, be hurt, and shut down thing. She said maybe she should set a no outside contact boundary. That she can imagine it is painful to feel like she’s gone or not responding in the was I need, that clearly I had a need she wasn’t meeting that last week, but that she thought about it and maybe it was an opportunity for growth for me. So now she doesn’t even want to email with me. Which is where most of my talking comes out– in writing. I just shut down. I wanted to cry, walk out, hurt myself. Instead I went far away to that quiet fuzzy floaty place in my head. I like it there.
TRIGGER WARNING!!!
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She asked how I moved from needing something from her to being okay, what was that like for me, what was my process? She said it was okay if I was mad at her. Nothing, I said. I’m fine, I’m not mad at you, everything is okay. She says it’s okay if it’s not fine, but it sounds hollow. I don’t believe her this time. And my process? I cut when the feelings get out of control, when I’m too far away, when I’m not numb enough. I stuff food on top of the feelings, the memories, the pain. If I put enough food on top of it, I can bury it awhile. Then I feel gross, dirty for shoving food in my mouth and I go throw it up. That helps too. It fixes everything for a while. So there. That’s my process.
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I can’t do this. I really can’t. I can’t tell her how much she is hurting me. I can’t talk to her. And it’s only getting worse, going today made it worse. And now I don’t see her for a whole week. I waht to disappear. I want to not exist right now. It’s all too much. I’m not sure I can fake my way through this. I’m going to try. But going to see Bea today was a horrible stupid awful thing. Kat has an appointment on Wednesday in the afternoon (I go in the morning usually but Bea has an appointment) and I don’t think I can take Kat. I’m not sure I can face Bea right now. I don’t know what I feel towards her, but it’s a lot of painful hurt feelings, frustration that she wouldn’t just let me have my happy surface monologue, anger over this past month of December, this painful feeling of needing her and not being able to talk to her, and more things mixed up. I don’t even know what to do now.
I ended up writing and email, and I sent it. Of course, I haven’t heard back and I’m unsure if I will……….
Bea,
I’m not even sure it’s okay to email right now. So I’m sorry. I’m definitely not going to talk about this right now. Sooooo, writing is all I have……….
I wrote this last night, to give you today. Obviously I didn’t give it to you….
So. I’m here. And I’m probably not talking, or I’ve spoken an entire monologue about nothing. I don’t want to be here today. I do NOT want to talk about things. I don’t even know what to write to you here. I have a journal, letter, something….writing…that I’ve been writing since the beginning of December— December 5, I think, I started it after that really bad last week of November– and I feel like I can’t give it to you to read. I’m stuck and lost and this is silly. I’m wasting your time and I am sorry. I don’t know what to do now.
That was something I had written to give you today. And I couldn’t even do that. I don’t know what to say. Today made things feel worse, so much worse. I wish you would have just let me keep the happy-everything-is-fine-on the surface monologue. I really really needed to stay on the surface. I’m kicking myself for not just cancelling. Because I knew it wouldn’t be good. I just can’t handle this.
Honestly, right now, my instinct is to quit therapy. To hide out in this nice bubble and to have everything be okay, and just fine; to stop everything, thinking and feeling and talking and being more than a facade of perfect, because I can’t do this. My instinct is to quit, and to have Kat take a break for a few weeks. I feel like my entire life is spinning out of control, with the bottom dropped out from under me, and I have no one to talk to. Absolutely no one. I don’t want to talk about this relationship. I’m not mad at you. I’m something but it’s all these things twisted together and I can not, will not, make myself so vulnerable to talk about this, to talk to you about you mattering to me, about you hurting my feels myself. No. I won’t. I can’t.
So now want? Because I’m lost, and afraid and alone and the only thing my map is telling me to do is to run away.
Alice
Falling down the rabbit hole 
Oh no, this sounds awful. My heart skipped a beat at “She said maybe she should set a no outside contact boundary” because that is a huge huge huge deal and it doesn’t sound like she understands how big of a deal outside contact is to you. I’m so sorry you’re in this situation with her and that you are so overwhelmed. I would completely and utterly panic if T said that to me. I really hope Bea understands you more soon. Sending you warm thoughts.
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Thank you. I did end up emailing her and asking her what she meant, and it appears she wanted to discuss the idea of setting a no contact unless emergency boundary during breaks/vacations. She said she wanted it to be a discussion and a collaborative decision. I don’t know. But thank you for getting this. Xx
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That still hurts and brings up a lot of painful emotions. I hope you are able to work it out with her. You’re doing amazing for communicating how you feel.
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Two things. One, I think it is so harmful when therapists take away outside contact. I would much rather they start without it – it is painful, but much less painful than if they take away something we become reliant on and feel like we need to be strong – I am so so sorry that Bea ‘suggested’ that and also didn’t leave it as a concrete thing.
Two, I want to note that although you want to run away right now, you haven’t followed your first impulse. This is worth celebrating. You have, instead, noted your thoughts and gotten them to Bea. I think this is a huge step. You aren’t running as your first choice. You are discussing as your first choice. And that’s something to acknowledge here.
My heart and thoughts are with you, Alice. Xx
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Also ignore the ‘ around suggested, silly phone.
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Thank you PD. I didn’t notice, but it’s true. I’m not running. I discussed as much as I’m capable of discussing.
And I guess she isn’t taking away outside contact. It was meant to be a collaborative discussion and decision. I still don’t want to deal with it. Thank you for your support. Xx
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It’s natural to want to withdraw, I don’t blame you for feeling that way. And suggesting a new boundary in that way is awful – something they all seem to go through! I don’t think Bea is opposed to the outside contact, she isn’t taking it away from you, it sounds more like she’s thinking out loud about whether a no contact boundary would be less hurtful to you? I hate when they think out loud! The email contact has always worked for you guys so I don’t see why that shouldn’t continue. Sometimes if feels like they are so in a rush to make things better, to problem solve, to not hurt us, to protect us… that they start fucking about with boundaries, not realising that change is most definitely not what we need in the moment. Maybe Bea needs to learn to sit in the discomfort of you being dissapointed with her or perhaps her guilt for not being able to be there for you over the break?
I hope you can advocate for your inner child in the same fierce way you do for Kat. She deserves that. This can be fixed Alice, you just need to keep communicating. 🙂
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Hey Sirena. I know you get this on a deep level. I guess the boundary was meant to be a discussion around having no contact during vacations, and she wanted it to be a collaborative thing. I still hate it, and I don’t want to talk to her about it. I don’t want to talk about boundaries and all this crap that is so painful and triggering.
Thanks for saying I advocate for Kat in such a fierce way. I can’t fight for myself that way, but I at least know I can fight for my daughter.
You’ve been through so much with Sienna, it helps to hear that this can be fixed. Communicating hurts so much, doesn’t it? Xx
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ah okay, sorry I picked it up wrong. If it’s a discussion around breaks at leasts that is a contained amount of time and not taking breaks away totally. Why don’t you want to talk to her about it? What are the messages you are hearing about this? What is this triggering?
Communicating difficult things does hurt, but what’s most hard (for me at least) is changing our old patterns. It’s easy to do the retreat thing, the not talking about it, avoiding, pretending you don’t care of that it is fine. But opening up, finding the words and doing something different… that’s the hard bit, that’s the therapy.
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You read what I wrote correctly. I didn’t understand what she meant….I just shut down when she brought it up. So I don’t know. But I did ask her to clarify what she meant after she responded to my initial email and she said it was around breaks and meant to be collaborative.
I just….it hurts. I guess I don’t want to talk about it because I’m hearing that same “you are too much, you are too needy, you are such a drama queen (that’s from the EXCEPT in an emergency part)….” I know it’s leftover messages from childhood, from teenage years, from my whole life, but….it’s also that I haven’t talked to her at all, about the whole of December and how her talking about more support, telling the secret, right after that bad week of contact everyday, I just took that to mean I broke her. I was too needy and I broke my therapist.
Bea now wants to talk about feeling stuck–“explore” was her word. And she wants to discuss why anytime she brings up collaboration, the idea falls flat with me and I turn it into “Bea didn’t take away email” or whatever.
It’s all just triggering this painful needy place, this hurt place of not wanting anyone to matter or have so much importance they can hurt me. It’s….maybe triggering feelings of not being seen because I haven’t emailed her during breaks/vacations since that time she was up north and responded in this very not here way and it felt so cold and distant. I’m terrified of that happening again and I know myself well enough to know that if I emailed and she didn’t respond in a present and there kind of way, that would hurt worse than not reaching out at all. It’s the “only in emergency” part that’s maybe really triggering, because I emailed this time, reaching out, testing the water in way, because I am in a messy sort of crisis-y type place and I really needed her to know what was going on before I went to my mother’s. But she responded back to shrink like, I never told her what was going on. And I continued with the “I’m okay” act. So really, what she is suggesting is something I was already doing on my own. So her still not seeing it was crisis time and that I wasn’t okay….and why does she need to set– or, excuse me, why do we need to ‘collaborate’ on if we should have this boundary when I’ve already been doing it? Why does she need it all spelled out? It feels like she is bringing it up to punish me because I was upset with her response, or to guarantee she won’t have to deal with me. Idk.
This got long. And confusing. Did it make any sort of sense?
Maybe therapy is getting to this even deeper level and I can’t handle it. Idk
Anyway. Thanks Sirena. Xx
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I am finding it a tiny bit hard to follow cos it seems like a lot has happened that you maybe haven’t written about? So I’m not up to speed on everything that’s happened.
But I can really sense your frustration. It sounds like a lot of miscommunication. I am sensing quite a lot of dissociation from you? Like, reading it, I can feel the level of dissociation and confusion.
What I’m picking up is this sort of cat and mouse game, that anytime Bea gets close to challenging you on something; ie to work collaboratively, to ask you to speak your feelings, to direct her in what you need, to try something else/new, you close that shit right down?
That isn’t a judgement, more of an observation, what’s your thoughts on that?
If that’s true, that might be leading to this stuck place, you are implicitely and sometime explicitely asking Bea for her help, yet as soon as she moves to do that you close her out, tell her everything is fine, when it’s obvious it isn’t. She knows it isn’t. You are keeping yourself in a stuck place by putting on the “it’s okay act” that no one beleives anyway, and you’re keeping her sort of bound up and unable to help you, because you won’t let her… all while continuing to ask her to (implicitely.)
My therapist who is a Transactiona Analysist, always talks in terms on “games”, and tell me to take the content out of things; the details, and look at what the overall game is, the overall themes and messages we are sending each other. That can help to take a step out of the messy stuff and see what’s going on. Maybe you could think about that?
It might be that you are both misaligned in terms of what it is you need. Maybe she feels the pull to do something, to offer movement, solutions and maybe you need to just sit in her office and be quiet. Maybe you’re not ready for movement and solutions right now?
It seems like maybe the triggering thing about ” only in emergencies” is that she didn’t realise from your email that for you it was an emergency, that you were in crisis? The mis-attunement is what is hurtful? You also ask if you really need to spell it out to her? Are you maybe looking for her to anticipate your needs? I wonder if that’s a very baby need? Maybe this is a young need where mother anticipates what the baby needs almost before the baby even knows it. There’s comfort and safety in that isn’t there?
But she can’t always know and the truth is, yes, you do need to spell it out to her. On this occassion, to move forward, you will need to spell it out.
You a Bea have a great relationship, she cares hugely for you, so maybe this is your time to make that step forward and trust her enough to tell her all of this?
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Sounds like she has her own agenda about the no contact outside the session. It certainly wasn’t for you. Your feelings are very justified and valid. She could have asked you what would have been helpful to you….but she didn’t. I am so sorry she did this to you. You are worthy of more respect.
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Thank you for saying my feelings are valid. I guess she wasn’t talking about taking away contact– she wanted to talk about the idea of setting a boundary of no contact during breaks because I always end up hurt she isn’t there as much as usual during breaks, and she wanted to talk about it and make it a collaborative thing. I didn’t know that’s what she meant. I still hate it and don’t want to talk about it with her and that doesn’t begin to deal with so much of the issues this last month. But at least contact isn’t being taken away. Thank you for saying I matter. Xx
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I’m not a therapist but you can email me if you want. It helps me to know that someone is listening when I feel similarly. suckityourbusted@gmail.com
My therapist wouldn’t allow me to have her email at all and I think maybe that’s a good thing for me. I work through what I can on my own and deal with what I can’t work through at my appointments. Stay strong!
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Thank you for offering me email. That is very kind of you. I may just take you up on that one day. I know there are pros and cons to email, I just….there’s a lot more pro to it for me. Idk. But I guess she wasn’t taking contact away anyway– she meant only no contact during vacation and that it was supposed to be a collaborative discussion. So there’s that. Xx
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My heart definitely did a life jump and then immediately was followed with a anger and frustration at the suggestion that outside contact should be taken away. I definitely understand the desire to run, but I hope that Bea was thinking out loud rather than imposing a new boundary.
My support is with you. Hang in there and keep writing.
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Thank you for support and for listening, for being upset on my behalf. I guess she wasn’t taking anything away, she wanted things to be collaborative, a discussion about if that would help. I don’t want to collaborate or talk about it, but at least she wasn’t just taking it away. Xx
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I know how important it is to you to have words, and sometimes the only way is through writing. I’m so sorry that it feels like Bea is taking it away. I believe that she has your best interests at heart but she got it wrong this time and it’s okay to be mad at her. I second PD – it is awesome and so impressive that you’re communicating instead of hiding. Keep sharing. We’re here for you.
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Yes, thank you Rea. Words are the most important thing to me. Thanks for saying I’m doing good by communicating. Bea said she wasn’t taking anything away, that it was something she wanted to talk about with me, this idea of no contact during vacations/breaks. She said she wanted it to be a collaborative decision. I don’t want to talk about it with her, but at least she isn’t taking contact away. Thanks for being here. Xx
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Sounds like Bea has slipped into trying to fix it all for you, by taking away outside contact, thereby taking away a trigger. I’d think she should help you handle the triggers instead….
So sorry Alice. I certainly relate to wanting to quit therapy. You’ll likely need to tell her that you need the outside contact even if it sometimes is triggering for you.
Hope it gets better soon. Holiday season can make everything worse – it does for me anyhow.
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Hey Ellen, even though I misunderstood and Bea was meaning she wanted to talk about setting a boundary of no outside contact during vacation / breaks because it tends to trigger me during those times and she wanted it to be this discussion and collaborative decision. I just….I don’t wanna talk about this with her. But at least she isn’t taking away contact.
I know you get this. I want to quit so bad right now. All this hurts. Thanks for being here. Xx
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Regardless of the exact circumstances, the pain of having something taken away (or even suggested that it will be taken away) is hard to bear and makes it hard to discuss as well. Thinking of you xx.
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Alice, I just wanted to send love. What would happen if you were able to not stuff all these thoughts and feelings? Really that’s what writing is all about and maybe it feels as if Bea has just told you to be quiet and she doesn’t want to listen unless…well I don’t even know what. One day I found myself telling my T that I was fine–hadn’t been abducted, branded, assaulted…I forget what she said but it was super validating that I wasn’t all that fine and didn’t have to have any of that happen to warrant being there or feeling sad or overwhelmed. It was okay to fell crappy. I can’t explain that any better, sorry.
We possibly come close to winning an award for long winding emails, writing and writing all the things we have been unable to share for years and years. I suspect there is a younger part of us that is just dying to go on and on and speak and cry and mourn and I don’t even know why I feel the need to share all the thoughts in my mind but I do. Lately I think about this a lot. Why do I feel this intense need to be heard? Again I don’t know. But as I read what you wrote I have immense compassion for you. You are so hard on yourself, so critical. So no judgment right? It allows for more compassion. Sounds like you need some additional help breaking the ED behaviors which are glaring right now. Unless you’ve had an ED you don’t know how godawful it can be to break the b/p cycle. It is like the deepest darkest it of disassociative hell. I am thankful every day that I am no longer there. If nothing else, I am not throwing up. I hate throwing up and food and fear. I just wanted you to know that I care…a lot and that I understand as best as I can.
Have you ever thought of a residential setting. I would have loved to do that! I even called and you can talk to someone free of charge. My favorite and seemingly most caring was Rosewood but ther is Timberline Knolls, Renfrew….trauma, attachment, ed’s, ptsd…you can check out a long list here https://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/treatment-centers. It could help give you your life back, Kat her mom back, and I don’t know but I so want you to feel safe and healthy and better ❤
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