The “Real” Her.

So.… it’s now 24 hours since my session with T.  I am feeling sick (literally) and crying again.  I am still feeling totally confused and disconnected and weirded out.

I also stupidly emailed T to tell her I was feeling shit about 5 hours ago and haven’t had a reply yet which has only added to the shit.

I think that last night I really realised or perhaps the word is accepted – that I am seeing T because I am in therapy.  That she is my therapist.  That she isn’t my mother or my family or my friend or anything else other than my therapist.  I don’t mean that in a “she doesn’t give a shit about me” way like I imagine she will assume I mean.  And I don’t mean that I suddenly don’t care about her either.  What I mean is, she genuinely and literally is my therapist.  Not my mother.

And this means I need to get on and do “the work” (fucking, fucking, fuck, fuckkk!!).

I need to stop “being good” and likeable and loveable and all the rest of the people-pleasing shit I clearly do to get T to adopt me.  I need to accept fully that I am there to do the job – get the therapy shit done.

Easier said than done.  My heart hurts even writing this.

She said I need to use her to get all the shitty feelings out.  Use her to rupture and repair with. Use her to get angry at and all of a sudden……..she changed.

All of a sudden she went from being fantasy T, to … a therapist.  A therapist who cares for me yes, but a therapist who I am paying to help me to heal.

It literally feels like she’s died.

Suddenly she is not “mine” anymore.

Suddenly this fantasy figure has vanished and in front of me last night was a real woman – THE real woman.  A woman who I care for, deeply, but not the fantasy anymore and shit, the pain is literally tearing my heart in two.

Is this meant to happen?

She spoke to me about splitting last night and how I had split her after our last session.  She spoke about the good mother and the bad mother and how, in my head, she was either completely and utterly attuned to me, or, not at all.  She said that I swing from one extreme to the other and couldn’t hold on to any middle ground.  I actually disagreed (in my head) because I had managed to stay okay all week despite this and I had managed to get myself there without crying or falling apart.  I had been okay I felt and I had been able to hang onto the fact that she’s helped me before and would help me again.  I didn’t feel I had “turned her bad” at all.

I don’t feel this is me splitting either.  I can very clearly see she is a kind, caring lady. I can clearly see that she is not all good or all bad.  I can hold the fact that she does care about me as a person.  I’m just saying that the illusion of her has fallen away and now I can see the real person.  Is that splitting? I don’t think it is, but hey, what do I know?

Who knows, perhaps it will speed my therapy up now.  Perhaps accepting that she isn’t going to adopt me and turn into my mother will help me to do the work quicker.  Perhaps that was holding me back.

Perhaps now I can see her for the real her, the therapist, I will be able to get angry at her.  Perhaps the fear of her leaving me won’t be quite so awful.  I mean… she’s dead anyway right? LOL.

Is this normal? Is this meant to happen? If no, then what the fuck is going on?

Am I angry at her for not being who I need and want her to be? No. Why should she be.  I just feel like a total fucking idiot really.

I think when this hit me last night I just checked out. I think I dissociated and then nothing made sense and nothing felt real.  I could see and hear her last night, but not how I normally do.  I literally had nothing to say and felt numb.  It all felt dead.  I think that happened when this reality hit me.  Maybe it was a bit like shock?

I question if this is transference somehow but I don’t really see how it could be.  I didn’t see who my mum *really* was until fairly recently so it can’t be a replay of being a child and realising my mother wasn’t who I needed her to be.

God I hope this doesn’t make me sound like a complete psychopath.

No wonder nothing she said helped last night.  What could she possibly say? No wonder her using words and phrases like “you need to be the client” and “therapist” and “therapy” hit me so goddamn hard! It is like finding out someone is dead and then having someone else shouting out DEAD! DIE! DEATH! as you are trying to take in the news.

She even LOOKED different.  She may as well have been sitting there with a clipboard or something.

I was frozen and devastated. I cried non-stop and yet I had no words.