Question:
Hi jane, thank you for your reply. I am really glad that you are still alive. I have carefully read through your post and I really want to comment on that but I discovered that I have sooo much to tell you that I would finally get no sleep today because of that (here it’s already early in the morning). So I ask you for a little bit of patience before you kill yourself or leave the group or something. As soon as my job allows me to do so I will answer your post (during the next two days or so). Let me say two things in short about your post: 1) I understand your reactions, it’s neither your fault nor the fault of your therapist. 2) I think you should NOT quit therapy right now, but I think you should take maybe a week off, since I think that some things between you and your therapist have to be cleared first before you proceed or your therapy will make you feel worse. I’ll explain that later, need some time to do that. If you do so, be careful to tell your therapist that you don’t want to quit or there will be further misunderstandings. Hang in there, you are a good person! Take care, nv
Response:
Jane, It sounds like what you’re doing to/with your therapist is emotional hostage taking. If she won’t share her personal life with you, you will kill yourself, AND you blame her for enforcing healthy boundaries that protect you and her. You are in control of your therapy. If the abreactions and alter searching are making you suicidal, then stop. Tell her that’s not the area you want to focus your energy. What are your goals for therapy? (Other than getting to know her better.) Why did you seek therapy in the first place, and where are you in relation to those goals? The bottom line is that I think your therapist is fighting an uphill battle with you. Unless you’re ready to focus on your own issues, there’s not a chance she will be able to help you. Work toward rebuilding the therapeutic alliance you had before this incident and focus on what you can do to fix yourself. Knowing her as a friend isn’t appropriate or ethical on her part. She’s doing the right thing by withholding her personal life from your therapy sessions. You’re causing your own pain on this issue. If you’re as suicidal as you report, you would be better served to call a crisis line or seek inpatient treatment until you can live safely at home. I hope you do something positive for yourself. Risa
Response:
Jane, If you are seeking healing via non-traditional shamanic teachings, why are you focusing your energy with a Western schooled, ethically bound CSW? The more you describe what you’re looking for and your experiences with the system, the more it sounds like you’re trying to change your therapist to your way of thinking. If she has nothing to offer you in the way of healing, IN A WAY THAT IS COMFORTABLE for her, why do you continue to see her? I can tell you that you will not change her or the skills she offers to you. You could possibly get a flat spot on your forehead from banging your head against a wall, but not much else, unless you are intent on learning what futile means. Again I have to ask you, what do you expect her to do to/for you when you call professing your suicidal feelings? Is she supposed to come over to soothe you? Take you into her home and life until you’re fixed? Petition you to a hospital and create an insurmountable breach of trust? You’re creating quite a bind that neither of you will solve. Risa A day without paronomasia is like a day without punshine.
Response:
Good morning Jane and Risa. Risa brings up a very important and valuable perspective about seeking different, less traditional therapeutic practices. Like everone else here von this ng, I do not wish to minimize your trauma or to suggest that you are not in crisis. You very clearly are in crisis. I do not believe it’s too late to benefit immediately from the simplest and least complicated things.. Maybe this will help: I use ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs" as my guide. I absolutely cannot do this alone. In my case, Sleep comes first. Then — Water, Mindful Nutrition, and Feeling Safe. At this basic level Therapeutic touch therapy through massage, fresh air, peaceful surroundings, affection from animals and humans, lots of light and healthy exercise come next for me. Please Do not kill yourself, Jane. We all care about you as we continue to care about each other. Take care and be of good courage, Anne on the prairie
Response:
Jane, >Is "I would never forget you no matter what" a boundary violation? She >said this loud and clear.
That’s not my question to answer, it’s up to the two of you to decide. I can say that you seem to be violating her boundaries (both professionally and personally) all over the place. It sounds like she’s been clear with her limits and you trample them down in your quest to have a more intimate relationship with someone who doesn’t want that. I would not be surprised to hear that she terminated therapy with you in the near future. Did your legal consultant tell you that you cannot force someone to be the executor of your estate? It is typical to ask the person you intend to appoint, before actually appointing them. Since you didn’t, I hope you are aware that she can decline the job after your death. I’m starting to wonder, by the tone of your posts, whether you know which one of the two of you is the therapist, and which one the client. I hope you find what you’re looking for, without destroying your therapist’s life in the process. Risa
Response:
Hi again, here comes the first part of my answer to your post. 
Right now I want to limit the discussion to the posssible underlying reasons for your suicidal thoughts. I will not discuss the shamanism component here, this belongs to the question how you want to proceed in therapy. Discussion of your ideas about therapy methods and how to proceed further in your therapy can be done later, one topic at a time please or I’ll get lost. I cearfully read through your first post in this thread and the overall impression I got is that, at the moment, something is going terribly wrong in the relationship between you and your therapist. You do not understand her reactions anymore, and probably she does not understand yours anymore. That is nobody’s fault. Misunderstandings happen in each and every relationship at some point in time, especially if the relationship lasts longer. It’s a human thing. It does not mean that a relationship has to be ended because of this. Misunderstandings can be solved if both parties are willing to work on solving the conflict. My experience is that the first step in solving misunderstandings is to change perspective and to see the other person through her/his own eyes. The second step is to critically review one’s own perception of the situation. However, every step must be done by _both_ parties otherwise it will result in one party feeling guilty or blaming the other. Since both of you seem to be stuck in each of your own convictions I will try to point out what I percieve if I change perspective and see you and your therapist. Since my knowledge is only based on your story and no further background information I am aware that some of my perceptions may be incorrect or will not fit. But that is irrelevant, because all I want to show you here is how to change perspective, it is an exercise example, I do not claim to be correct in every interpretation of you or your therapist. First, let me explain how I understand YOUR situation from your post: In the past your therapist was quite freely giving you information about herself. She even met you in her own living room. Well, if someone is giving me personal details about herself I start feeling some intimacy and percieve the other person as something similar to a friend. Being invited into another one’s living room would deepen this perception further. I associate the word ‘living room’ with something like ‘family life’. Being invited into it would probably cause me to feel integrated in some sort of "family". I would naturally become more interested in the other one’s life. Let me compare this to a child who gets curious about the daily activities and thoughts of its mom/dad/sister/brother….well, every one of us has something like an inner child inside herself/himself, don’t you think? So from that point your wish to know more about your therapist is completely normal and understandable. Now, your perception of your therapist as a personal friend came into the way of having a business relation with her. I figure that this caused quite a lot of ambiguous feelings inside of you: Friendship can’t be paid with money. Friendship and its compassion can’t be turned on and off by the hour. So which is what? Is my therapist my friend or not? Can I trust her? Does she really want to help me or is she only after my money? A person without a traumatic history would probably get only very confused by these ambiguous feelings but not suicidal. Therefore it is difficult for an outsider to understand the link. I don’t want to go into a thorough analysis and interpretation right now, but I assume that your suicidal feelings and this ambiguity that you feel have something to do with your past. Maybe you have felt some similar ambiguity before? A lot of abusive situations are close to the question: Does he/she use me or love me? Friend or Foe? Father/mother/relative OR abuser? Maybe you were facing death or threatened with it during these former situations? Maybe NOW the link between an ambiguous situation and death has been unconsciously reactivated? From that point of view I could understand your suicidal ideations and your ongoing internal occupation with boundary violations. Maybe you are doing this link unconsciously and are not aware of this component in your current crisis. Possibly, the behaviour of your therapist partially resembles the behaviour of your former perpetrator. Could that be the reason why you wound up in your therapy session only moarning from pain of perp and unable to speak after you have met her in the living room? Could it be that her lack of compassion, that you feel when you call her, has something in common with the lack of compassion that you experienced within your abusers? Could it be that your wish to have her for a friend and feel her compassion and your willingness to even sacrifice therapy for this goal (that you express in your recent posts) has something to do with the wish of being _really_ loved by someone without having the feeling of being used at the same time? I consider it dangerous to proceed further in therapy forcing abreactions and discoveries of new alters of your personality with this possible and maybe unconscious ambiguosity. That is one reason why I think that ONLY emotionally reexperiencing former abusive situations and abreaction doesn’t cure. In my view there has to be reflexion and analysis of this feelings not only abreaction. I think that it is very important for you AND your therapist to understand these reactions and the possible link between PAST and PRESENT. Now let me go on how I understand your therapist’s situation: I assume that at the time she was meeting you in her living room she was not aware of what upheaval this would cause to you. Meeting a patient in the therapist’s privat room is unusual and regarded as unprofessional by other therapists, so she was probably feeling guilty for your following outbreak. Therefore she went back to treating you after the textbook. No private details about the therapist, treatment is done only during therapy hours,… and so forth. I think she still likes you, but after your outbreak she is afraid to do something wrong. There is lots of fear involved in doing something apart from the textbook. Especially if the patient becomes suicidal. It is her right to refuse telling you about her private life as it is your right to refuse telling her about yours. Even friendship does respect this right! I think she feels that you invade her privat sphere by insisting to get to know more about her. Your behaviour makes her somewhat angry, I think. Maybe she feels that you want to heal yourself by healing her first (there were some indications in your recent posts that this may be actually the case). Well, unlike your therapist and many others I do NOT think that therapy is one sided, there is always an effect on the therapist. In other words: Not only the patient gets treated but also the therapist. It’s a funny thing that many therapists choose the area of their own deficits and disorders as their field of work. I don’t know if you have ever read ‘Mount Misery’ by Samuel Shem, but his ideas point in the same direction. Maybe this is due to the fact that some therapists are also hoping to get cured by treating patients with the same disorder. The therapist also learns from his patients. But this does not mean that she has to do her healing by your standards. She plays the role of a therapist you are the patient. It’s role playing and it’s called psychotherapy. If you suddenly change roles it is another game with other rules. Maybe she doesn’t want to play that way. Accepting her choice means to respect her. Healing can also be done by watching others, learning from them and applying their methods afterwards into your own. This is the basis of group therapy. You don’t have to try every method on your own, you can also watch others and see whether their methods are effective. If it is in your interest to heal your therapist you can also just let her watch and set her a good example of your own healing without involving her into your methods. As I already said above, I am aware that some of my interpretation work may not be correct. I merely wanted to show you here a way of changing perspective. I would be very interested in getting some feedback from you. I truly hope that you and your therapist will find a way to understand each other again so that you don’t have the feeling as ’speaking to a brick wall’ anymore. Take care, nv
Response:
Hi Risa, > Again I have to ask you, what do you expect her to do to/for you when you call > professing your suicidal feelings? Is she supposed to come over to soothe you? > Take you into her home and life until you’re fixed? Petition you to a hospital > and create an insurmountable breach of trust?
The fact that she isn’t hiding her thoughts from her therapist doesn’t mean that she intends blackmailing her. I percieve it as an unconscious call for help and help doesn’t have to appear in any ‘action’. Maybe jane doesn’t await any ‘action’ from her therapist, in the form of the examples you named above. Maybe she just wants to feel the therapist’s compassion, because this would help her solve the knot of projecting her former abusers into her therapist? Maybe this is the ultimative method for her and I think she is doing that unconsciously without intending any harm. I do not say that I appreciate her way, but just to interpret it in negative terms and call it ‘emotional hostage taking’ is too simple. It’s like the opinion an outsider would have without any insight into the intentions of desperate people in need of help. Furthermore, I do not say that her therapist should give in to that behaviour. But I think there is something going terribly wrong in her therapy and I see openly expressed suicidality as a way of the unconscious mind to say: "HELP ME!" Just _my_ thoughts. Take care, nv
Response:
Hi Jane, I got your private email. I also read it carefully, but I beg your pardon that I will not answer emails in this newsgroup that have been sent to me privately. I can understand that you are searching for a person you can talk to, but I never continue discussions about suicide that have been started in a newsgroup by private email. This has nothing to do with you, but there have been other people with suicidal ideas around here to whom I answered in the newsgroup and if I would continue those discussions with only one person in private there would soon be plenty of them. I am afraid that I don’t have the resources for that. Jane, I understand your situation but I am not sure that the ideas you have to ’solve’ the problem with your therapist will really help you. I accept that it is your conviction and I don’t want to interfere with your way, but did you know that if your therapist would really follow your ideas she would most certainly lose her license, would be unemployed and not able to continue therapy with you? I am not sure whether you have ever thought about this perspective since you are always repeating that you don’t want to hurt her. If you want a private relationship with her, without her losing her license, you need at least 2 years with absolutely no contact to her, neither therapy nor privat contact. After that time it is (in most US states) legally possible for her to have a relationship with you if she wants that. Do you want to wait that long? I am glad that you found some of my previous post useful for you. I don’t know much more to say at this point but maybe you can take a look into the google archives of this group. There was another person who named herself ‘abandoned’ who was suicidal as well and to whom I answered. Maybe that can help you also a bit. Google doesn’t store the posts with x-no-archive yes, so unfortunately you will probably only be able to read my replies and not the initial posts from ‘abandoned’. If I can help you any further let me know. I still hope that you don’t commit suicide and that your pain may be reduced real soon. Maybe you have read that I plan to leave this ng. I beg you here not to answer the emails I wrote today to other people, since I don’t want to start a flamewar, but just explain why this ng isn’t helpful for me anymore. That has NOTHING to do with you, OK? So please don’t feel something like guilty or angry about it. There were recently a lot of other things that are the basis of my decision for leaving or at least some absence from this newsgroup. Below, I quoted my earlier reply to one of your post. Maybe you can pick something out of it that helps you. Don’t forget that there are also other people who care about you and respect your personality the way you are. Good luck and take care of yourself, nv – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -noctuvigila wrote: > Hi again, > here comes the first part of my answer to your post. > Right now I want to limit the discussion to the posssible underlying > reasons for your suicidal thoughts. I will not discuss the shamanism > component here, this belongs to the question how you want to proceed in > therapy. Discussion of your ideas about therapy methods and how to > proceed further in your therapy can be done later, one topic at a time > please or I’ll get lost. > I cearfully read through your first post in this thread and the overall > impression I got is that, at the moment, something is going terribly > wrong in the relationship between you and your therapist. You do not > understand her reactions anymore, and probably she does not understand > yours anymore. That is nobody’s fault. Misunderstandings happen in each > and every relationship at some point in time, especially if the > relationship lasts longer. It’s a human thing. It does not mean that a > relationship has to be ended because of this. Misunderstandings can be > solved if both parties are willing to work on solving the conflict. > My experience is that the first step in solving misunderstandings is to > change perspective and to see the other person through her/his own eyes. > The second step is to critically review one’s own perception of the > situation. However, every step must be done by _both_ parties otherwise > it will result in one party feeling guilty or blaming the other. Since > both of you seem to be stuck in each of your own convictions I will try > to point out what I percieve if I change perspective and see you and > your therapist. Since my knowledge is only based on your story and no > further background information I am aware that some of my perceptions > may be incorrect or will not fit. But that is irrelevant, because all I > want to show you here is how to change perspective, it is an exercise > example, I do not claim to be correct in every interpretation of you or > your therapist. > First, let me explain how I understand YOUR situation from your post: > In the past your therapist was quite freely giving you information about > herself. She even met you in her own living room. Well, if someone is > giving me personal details about herself I start feeling some intimacy > and percieve the other person as something similar to a friend. Being > invited into another one’s living room would deepen this perception > further. I associate the word ‘living room’ with something like ‘family > life’. Being invited into it would probably cause me to feel integrated > in some sort of "family". I would naturally become more interested in > the other one’s life. Let me compare this to a child who gets curious > about the daily activities and thoughts of its > mom/dad/sister/brother….well, every one of us has something like an > inner child inside herself/himself, don’t you think? So from that point > your wish to know more about your therapist is completely normal and > understandable. > Now, your perception of your therapist as a personal friend came into > the way of having a business relation with her. I figure that this > caused quite a lot of ambiguous feelings inside of you: Friendship can’t > be paid with money. Friendship and its compassion can’t be turned on and > off by the hour. So which is what? Is my therapist my friend or not? Can > I trust her? Does she really want to help me or is she only after my money? > A person without a traumatic history would probably get only very > confused by these ambiguous feelings but not suicidal. Therefore it is > difficult for an outsider to understand the link. I don’t want to go > into a thorough analysis and interpretation right now, but I assume that > your suicidal feelings and this ambiguity that you feel have something > to do with your past. Maybe you have felt some similar ambiguity before? > A lot of abusive situations are close to the question: Does he/she use > me or love me? Friend or Foe? Father/mother/relative OR abuser? Maybe > you were facing death or threatened with it during these former > situations? Maybe NOW the link between an ambiguous situation and death > has been unconsciously reactivated? > From that point of view I could understand your suicidal ideations and > your ongoing internal occupation with boundary violations. Maybe you are > doing this link unconsciously and are not aware of this component in > your current crisis. Possibly, the behaviour of your therapist partially > resembles the behaviour of your former perpetrator. Could that be the > reason why you wound up in your therapy session only moarning from pain > of perp and unable to speak after you have met her in the living room? > Could it be that her lack of compassion, that you feel when you call > her, has something in common with the lack of compassion that you > experienced within your abusers? Could it be that your wish to have her > for a friend and feel her compassion and your willingness to even > sacrifice therapy for this goal (that you express in your recent posts) > has something to do with the wish of being _really_ loved by someone > without having the feeling of being used at the same time? > I consider it dangerous to proceed further in therapy forcing > abreactions and discoveries of new alters of your personality with this > possible and maybe unconscious ambiguosity. That is one reason why I > think that ONLY emotionally reexperiencing former abusive situations and > abreaction doesn’t cure. In my view there has to be reflexion and > analysis of this feelings not only abreaction. I think that it is very > important for you AND your therapist to understand these reactions and > the possible link between PAST and PRESENT. > Now let me go on how I understand your therapist’s situation: > I assume that at the time she was meeting you in her living room she was > not aware of what upheaval this would cause to you. Meeting a patient in > the therapist’s privat room is unusual and regarded as unprofessional > by other therapists, so she was probably feeling guilty for your > following outbreak. Therefore she went back to treating you after the > textbook. No private details about the therapist, treatment is done only > during therapy hours,… and so forth. I think she still likes you, but > after your outbreak she is afraid to do something wrong. There is lots > of fear involved in doing something apart from the textbook. Especially > if the patient becomes suicidal. > It is her right to refuse telling you about her private life as it is > your right to refuse telling her about yours. Even friendship does > respect this right! I think she feels that you invade her privat sphere > by insisting to get to know more about her. Your behaviour makes her > somewhat angry, I think. > Maybe she feels that you want to heal yourself by healing her first > (there were some indications in your recent posts that this may be > actually the case). Well, unlike your therapist and many others I do NOT > think that therapy
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