Posted by gardenergirl on July 27, 2007, at 12:46:27
In reply to Re: What to do when T forgets you're terminating??, posted by Honore on July 26, 2007, at 11:03:10
> I can't believe that he pushed it out of his mind. Termination is too important-- for someone (someone with all his faculties) to push it so far out of his mind that he doesn't know it was discussed, when it was discussed so concretely.
Yeah, that's what's got me feeling like everything has turned upside down or something. It's really really confusing because it just doesn't make sense.
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> You had the initial discussion and all these other discussions where it was the subject, either implicit or explicit. It's not possible for him to have sort of suppressed it to that degree. Maybe he lost it temporarily with all the pressure he was under in his life, or you and he just were never on the same page about whether you were doing it-- or were only discussing it, and not actually deciding that it was happening.I suppose it could be an anesthesia-related thing. Or if he was taking pain meds prior to the surgery. But still, it was many conversations, so chances that he was not 100% enough to "get it" each time seem slim. But maybe he wondered a bit about my termination talk and didn't follow up with explicit questions. I just know that back in May or early June I told him that mid to late August was the right time, both clinically and logistically. He agreed. It felt right then; I felt really confident. But then I tend to regress and get depressed and such. It happened last time we set a date. That first time, that got changed when I changed pdocs, was the last termination date discussion he remembers. So it's as if everything that followed somehow didn't mean, at least to him, what it meant to me. I guess. It just feels so weird and confusing and I don't quite know the word. Like realizing you've been standing on a balance beam all along instead of a nice solid floor, maybe. Or that you're really "crazy" after all if how you experienced all that time is so different from his experience, and of course "he must be right, being the authority". (I don't really rationally believe all of this. They are just streams of worries and thoughts in trying to understand all of this.
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> One thing I'm guessing is that, part of you wants to terminate-- I'm not sure why, maybe just so as not to feel weak and needy-- but a deeper you never ready felt ready to-- and maybe you leaped to certain conclusions to protect yourself. Maybe you felt constrained to do it-- to be ready, because the term was up, and you might not be a student and the answer to whether you could continue might be "no"-- which might destroy your good feelings about his caring, and therefore was too dangerous to ask about.I think that's worth considering. It never occurred to me to ask about continuing even if I were not a student. I guess that's partly why I decided that was a good time to terminate. Planning for it would allow me to be ready if it "needed" to happen for practical reasons.
But I did feel really good and rather confident at the time I made the decision. It's still scary, and sometimes I'd feel more scared than confident, but it felt right in my gut. And at the time, there was plenty of time to do it "right". Though I feel like I don't know how to do it, but he always said, "You ARE doing it." So much of what I talked about seemed to have termination and separation at the heart of it, even if I didn't realize at first. That's partly what I meant when I said some time ago that it didn't feel real and I was probably suppressing all the emotions about it. The primary knowledge of termination and the accompanying grief was in the background, not the foreground most of the time.
But then I started feeling much less secure when he told me about being off for 4 weeks for his surgery and then another 2 for vacation. (Dear God, why vacation right now? I can't even talk to him about this more until he comes back in August. Bah!) That felt like the rug was being pulled out from under me, sort of like I feel right now. I'm just still sitting back on my rear and propped on my elbows wondering what just happened and what to do next. I hope I don't stay like that for the next two weeks, sigh.
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> I think he doesn't think you're ready to terminate either--or put another way, he's not ready to, for sure-- whether for your needs or his, or both.I should ask him this, the ready to terminate thing. He thought so in May when I brought it up. And we did talk about his view versus mine to some length because the last time I'd suggested a date (regarding the first, "almost" termination), he added two or three months to it, which felt kind of crappy. We talked about that explicitly before I brought up another date, and he explicitly agreed. Now that doesn't mean his view hasn't shifted, but he's not said anything about it.
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> But I can't believe he just pushed it out of his mind in some everyday sort of way. But that idea is scary-- because it would tend to make me seriously question whether he was losing it-- which would be terrible.Yes. I've worked with an older psychologist who I believe WAS losing it, unfortunately, and it tends to give the same kind of "What the heck just happened here, and what do I do about it?" feeling. This feels different from that, but it does remind me of how difficult that whole time was. It can be sort of crazy-making. And I can see that it might be very upsetting for him, and he's likely questioning his own memory and understanding of sessions over the last couple of months. That can make you crazy. The two of us just need to talk more about it, though I'll feel tentative about that, because he clearly was directly me away from the misunderstanding, which makes me wonder.
> It is lonely to possess that kind of knowledge--or idea--one that he can never really dispel, or explain away, except by admitting something that is also frightening (that he may not have been himself for a time)-- when you depend on him to be sane and knowing about you and about himself and about life. It's a great burden to be left with that-- to be the alone with that experience of him.
>Thank you. You put that very well, and it helped me clarify what some of this heightened emotion is.
> But at least you don't have to terminate-- which I think is really greatly to the good. After all, you said it didn't seem real-- you hadn't felt as though you were. Maybe that feeling was more real and on point than you knew.
It's hard for me to get a handle on exploring that now. Everything feels all jumbled up and unclear. But perhaps if I make a point to ask myself more often how I'm feeling about it...?
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> It might be something you just have to push to the periphery-- if he seems okay-- but maybe, too, it's important to go into it more-- to get further to the bottom of what happened, really--if only to be less alone with the knowledge.I think I'd feel more comfortable with the latter. That's sort of what I did say when I told him I was still struggling with what was happening in the room but I was trying to put it in perspective. I was trying to use the realization that this did happen, and what's next, how do we go forward against all my strong urges to say, "But what about when you said this, and I said that? And that time we talked about X? And Y?" His response was to laugh and say, "Go with the perspective." Which I took to mean, I'd rather you didn't challenge me on this. But that could also mean, not hashing over every last thing and just moving forward and problem-solving might be "healthier"?
Sorry to be so long. I think this is the most confused I've ever been in therapy.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. It's helped me think through this some instead of just spinning in a circle.
gg
poster:gardenergirl
thread:771943
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070726/msgs/772336.html