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I just need a place to cry right now. not really sure what i need and what happened really but my T talked to me today and he said that he's not going to work with me forever. I guess sometiems I say that I am going to always see him no matter what. but i told him today that comes out of a place of fear. he wants me to face my fears etc.

anyway, i had paid copays and come to find out, i got Medicaid and it went back to august. so my t had to pay back the money I paid him. well the other day he said it would be when the state pays him. i said ok. then today i took my food journal in for him. its a weekly thing. he was so upset with it that he said he would pay me the copay money today BUT I had to promise to use it for food or he was done with me.

after a while, he apologized and said he never should have hung that over my head and he was sorry. i accepted but I am scared of losing him for my T. but he told me that he was seeing me through the gastric bypass surgery thing like he promised. but my fear is that they don't let me have it and then I am out a great therapist. I have a call into him now because I am sick literally over this. its not fair to go into a weekend like that.

so what did i do with the money? went to the food store anyway and stocked up for 2 weeks til we get paid again. I understand he is scared and doesn't want to see me not eating but he says I do really well for 2 weeks and then I put the walls up and stop all therapies. I don't mean to stop everything but I get scared and its not on purpose.

so I am ready to throw up now and am holding down the tears. thanks for even listening. Ihave no idea what I need or want..........

Roo

I don't understand. Why would your T stop seeing you if you do not have the bypass surgery?

he just called me. i am a wreck. he said that he would see me at least a year. but that i sabotage my treatment. he believes that i have all the tools i need to be a better person and that its not about me being bad.

they said that i would need to continue therapy after surgery if i have it. so now my fear is that they wont clear me for surgeyr and my T will drop me. but then if i can't have the surgery, i need help to do the weight loss on my own. i need my T. then we want to have a family and the doctors i saw said that because of my mental health, i would need therapy for sure during and after a pregnancy.

So let me get this straight. Did your T say he would drop you because you sabatoge yourself, or because you may not have the surgery? I'm confused. Why would he drop you if you don't have the surgery? Is seeing him contingent on you having the surgery? And if you dont' have the surgery you can't see him anymore? Is he a specific weight-loss therapist?

(((Roo))),

I'm not sure how to help, but I am sorry you're feeling so awful right now.

It doesn't sound to me like your T has told you that if you don't have the surgery he will stop seeing you. He said he will see you for a year. Doesn't that mean regardless of whether you have the surgery or not? Things may change after a year, and he'll reconsider.

My T told me a few years ago that she thought I should quit back then, that I wasn't trying to change, that I just wanted to stay her baby. Deep down I DID want to change, and I worked harder, and she did not make me quit. So, it's probably not black and white with your T either.

Do you know exactly how he thinks you sabotage your treatment? My T also told me that, sort of. She said I work against myself in therapy. I'm not sure I exactly understood, but my point is that almost nothing regarding our lives is written in stone.

Maybe you just need distraction right now, and self-soothing. Some hugs. Whatever you can do to relax for awhile. It will work out the way it's supposed to.

My T said that I do Mindfulness, emdr etc for 2 weeks and then he can predict just when i am going to 'throw it out the window'.

as for the surgery? He already made the commitment to me to work with me til the next evaluation which is in april. but in november he and i are going for an 'update appointment' with the therapist at the bariatric surgery center. so I asked my T tonight what happens if I don't get cleared for the surgery. he said that we will cross that when it happens. he said that he is not frustrated with our relationship but with how I sabotage the treatment.

I just dont' want it to end but I never thought I'd be in therapy for 20 years either. BUt parts of me can't tolerate the thought of not seeing him anymore. yes, that's true. but i feel I still have lots more to work on and the surgery and becoming a mother when that day comes and stuff like that. how does he not see that I am going to need him?

and I had made a promise to him to read a book and 'teach' it to him and then i threw it out the window. almost literally LOL. its on mindfulness. i told him it wasn't working for me and he disagreed.

he said that he just wishes that I loved myself like i love him (not in a romantic love relationship of course). I just don't trust myself or love myself or anything. i don't believe in myself. I wish he would just leave me alone and let me do what i Have been doing. if i flip flop then fine.......let me flip flop! I am not self harming although I would love to right now. if I do though, it puts me out for surgery. they will not let me have the surgery if i self harm or OD or anything like that......even if i purge they will not clear me for surgery until i go 1 whole year without behaviors! my T says that my life needs this surgery and i should not do anything to risk those chances. the T that evaluated me for the gastric bypass left the surgery center this week so when we go in november, I am not sure what that person will think. he/she may feel differently and let me have the surgery. he/she may not think i am a candidate. I just don't want to lose my T.

he gets awful frustrated with me though. things like this stress on me makes me want to self harm really bad! but if i do, i will never be able to get the surgery and risk losing my T even more i guess.

I think i need to go call the crisis hotline right now.......sorry all. this is making me sick. the stress is too much and my heart is beating too fast. I just want to have a good weekend and my T didn't help me this time. I am scared of him terminating me. he told me before he hung up the phone that he wants me to stay out of the past including today because today is the past. but i need to process it! get it out! know what i mean?

obviously i still have major relationship issues! I can't even do therapy right!

I'll check in with you all tomorrow. I just have to go take care of myself right now..........

thanks for the comments. sorry BG if it still doesn't make sense. I can't explain it right I guess......

Roo

things didn't get much better last night. I called the crisis hotline and the guy was less than helpful. so then out of desperation and trying to follow my rules of therapy, i paged my T around 10 pm. well about 40 minutes later my T called me and was really ugly. guess i broke MY rules. everyone else has a different set of rules still. so then he goes on and tells me that he is not helping me tonight because I created this mess myself. he said that the talk about terminating was hypothetical. huh? no way! I don't know what planets we were on but we were not on the same one. the way he sounded, sounded like it was a real thing that was going to happen. anyway, he is super frustrated with me. he said that he changed the rules months ago for me and that i am not allowed to page him. the rules i had written down on a poster in my room said that i go through this whole list of stuff and if i still felt like self harming etc. after all that, i may page him. I will remind him of that on monday. so then he said he hopes i stay safe but go to the ER if i can't. well i didn't go to the ER. I didn't cut but I punched myself in the head a few dozen times. by that time i had such a headache and was crying that i fell asleep. probably not the most effective way to deal with myself but i am crushed and overwhelmed. i needed a release.

does anyone else know what that feels like? and I am so angry because i have worked on my stuff so hard and then to hear that I still dont have the same rules as the other clients! that hurt me. yet he says that i have skills and tools and dont' need him? whatever. when he's like this he is worse than a woman with PMS!!!!!! LOL.......very inconsistent with me. whatever. nothing i can do about it.

so on monday i am going in and being very quiet. I need to behave and get back on good terms with my T. if not, i will really get the boot. I am such a F----ed up individual with more pain than i can explain.

i made a mistake and I AM a mistake this week..............

roo

ah. ((Roo)) bless ya heart.

i am only hearing your side, so this is biased. your T is way out of line. way./ WAY.

he should be objective and calm. period.

now my old T was tough. a drill sgt. she would tell me how the cow ate the cabbage straight up. but in a calm, cool way that i could handle and understand. i trusted her to keep me in line and not lie to me. but she would never have spoken to me that way. i knew no matter what i did, she would not freak on me.

i would suggest next time he (?) says something, STOP right there and clarify it with him. instantly. "what do you mean when you say?"......and mirror it back to him. go no further until its a dual understanding.

geee, hang in there. i wish i was more helpful. hitting yourself in the head isnt gonna hurt you...not seriously. it isnt positive tho. can you not sit and see how you feel and all?

he simply should not be showing frustration at all. what is he thinking? are you sure he is really doing that? if so, how can you handle it? how does it feel? what would be some ideas to handle it better? to tell him how you feel?

"""""I need to behave and get back on good terms with my T. if not, i will really get the boot. I am such a F----ed up individual with more pain than i can explain.

i made a mistake and I AM a mistake this week..............""""" ROO. i wont let you say this without mentioning it. i will let you FEEL it, and work it out, but not say it like that without stepping in as a reminder self hate is not what we want. that hate is why you hurt. that is why you felt the need to punish yourself. i been there, roo.

making mistakes doesnt make us one. EVER. it means we fucked up. hell,, i fuck up here in public all the time! thats why i borrowed your sig line so i can read it all the time. impress it into my brain and soul.

i think you need to tell your T that sentence of "i need to behave and be quiet , if not i will get the boot." i am angry with him, altho i only can hear your side, so i should not be angry as i am. thats why im watching what i say....i dont know his version.

anyways, im not saying what i mean and i cant think of how to do it yet. i am so sorry you have so much pain, ((Roo)).

Thanks Jody.
I know that i should not have hit myself. I tried many many things and the emotions were super huge.

I did leave my T a message on his work phone last night. I can't even remember what I said but I think I said something about being scared to go tomorrow. I am thinking of writing out what I am feeling and stuff. I just don't want it to backfire.

I know that people are only hearing my version of it and many times everything I think is distorted. I don't want people to be angry at him. my best friend is angry at him for this. she says that my T hangs a lot of shit over my head. He does. he did it on friday and then apologized for it.

Part of me says that he is just being human and making mistakes like I do. but its kind of not fair to me. I am the one who has the emotional problems and has a hard time sorting through things.

I think I am in a better space today. Went to work again today. Now i Have a lot of homework that I want to get done. I am already still on pace but i want to get ahead a bit. I go to school tomorrow through thursday so I know I am going to get a lot done. It at least keeps me distracted.

you do sound a bit better. in no way do i mean to invalidate your feelings or words. its just without 2 sides, it can be hard to know what he said vs what you heard. that is whole 'nother skill to practice! many times we dont hear what someone actually said.

if indeed you feel this way, you should tell him. i can not imagine he would "hold you hostage" because what is the point of counseling if you cant be honest? it would be pointless. and sometimes we just dont mesh with some Ts. he needs to regroup if he is doing this shit, he may be human but he is a therapist. they learn in school to not do this. he needs his separation of stuff. besides, if they get emotional , their objectivity is gone and they cant be helpful at all as their shit gets twisted into our shit.

they get paid for this. they trained for this. its their job. if they cant do it effectively, they need to step away and see why.

you and him dont have good boundaries at all. since you are the patient, (client) its his job to set them and enforce them calmly and respectfully.

why do you not want us to be angry? where is that coming from? btw, im not angry. certainly not. at you or him. i am being honest tho and he should not be like this.

i do feel pretty protective of you...lol...and i dont like seeing you hurt.

""""Part of me says that he is just being human and making mistakes like I do. but its kind of not fair to me. I am the one who has the emotional problems and has a hard time sorting through things. """" your correct. he is a professional and as such, should act like it. we here make no pretense of being one, and online no one could be as eye contact is too important.

why do you feel so subserviant to him, Roo? why the child stuff?

these can be for you only to work on if you wish. i hear it all over your posts. this is not good in a therapy relationship. is he the only one in town you can see?

why the fear, Roo? ((Roo))

Roo, I'm sorry you are having this difficulty. It seems to me that you and your T are just having a hard time communicating lately.

I'm going to tell you 2 stories. I am not taking sides - your T's or yours - just sharing stories of what happened to me.

About 27 years ago I was seeing my first T. I was truly attached to her. I had had an argument with my H one night. I must have been exhibiting BPD behavior, but I didn't know it yet. Anyway, I called my T's home. I was frantic to speak to her. Her H answered the phone. I could hear people in the background - they must have been having a party. He said she could not come to the phone. I was so embarrassed! I never called her at home again. I don't remember if we spoke about it, it was so long ago. But as I said, I never called her at home again.

Now, with my current T, I used to e-mail him a lot. He was okay with it, but one day he told me that I had to stop e-mailing him, that the site was not secure. But I didn't listen. I kept on e-mailing him. So one day he told me flat out that this was unacceptable. I had to stop. So I haven't e-mailed him since.

I don't know your T, but I can imagine that there are times when our T's don't want to deal with us. They have personal lives and are busy. We have to accept that and respect that. You said that you have different rules than your T's other patients. Do you know that for a fact? Are his other patients allowed to call him whenever they want to, but now you can't? Are you sure this is true?

I know when we feel we need to talk to our T's NOW, nothing will stop us. But I have learned (the hard way) that sometimes we just have to self-soothe. Take care of ourselves until they can speak to us. Maybe you can have a set of self-soothe tools on hand just for times like this. To use when you feel overwhelmed yet can't speak to your T. Perhaps you and he can devise a set of these tools for you to use if you need to.

I hope you can get this straightened out with him on Monday. Maybe even ask him to write down his rules so the next time something happens, you'll have it in writing and he can't go back on what he said.

HI Jody.

I didn't think you were angry or anyone else. sorry if i said that or came out that way. anyway, there are lots of T's around but I dont want to go through this shit yet again. I have lost 2 other T's just for the fact that my behaviors were too much for them. I am not like i used to be with self harming shit and trying to kill myself. This T helped me to get through that.

There is just so much I have done and shit. how could i start all over? I'd rather not be hurt again. i know i Have shit to work on. I am reading a book on mindfulness that i told my T i would start reading again on friday. I have read the chapter twice that I told him I would report to him with. its an agreement we made a month ago. one i can do, just didn't want to do it anymore. but am willing to do.

I just feel like the more time that goes by now, the more i see that i was wrong. I thought i only was following the rules we set up when i called him. he's not remembering those rules and i threw out my poster i made with all the rules on it. go figure. stupid me. my anxiety caused this mess........well no. my anxiety caused things to get twisted i think.

I am supposed to go to school tomorrow but if my T doesn't call me before i am supposed to go, I have decided not to go. I will catch up on tuesday. I just am having trouble sitting here with the intense anxiety over what he is going to say in the afternoon at my appointment. if he sounds fine and there is no 'danger' that i fear, then i will go to school. the 'danger' would be him terminating me after friday night he said he wasn't going to. but what if he thinks this over on this weekend and changed his mind? I wish i knew tonight. its really eating me away.

for anyone reading this.........you might be asking like Jody did about what the fear is. Well basically when i was like 2 and 3 years old my parents left me and my baby sister with a sitter who shut me in a cold dark 'bathrooom' while i cried for my parents. i would cry til i puked. then i would be punished for that. and isolated and abandoned. so this goes way back to before i knew how to even put a lot of sentences together. not sure if this makes sense but it is what it is. then by age 7 my father stopped showing or saying if he loved us. so i felt abandoned again. very lonely. when i hit 17, i found out that my father was involved in prostitution and stuff and i never wanted a thing to do with him. then when i was 26 he was caught spying on me in the shower after going to my bedroom and standing over my bed....so this all goes back to my father. i have trauma issues stemming way back because of him. either the lack of contact with him or the fact that he was a pervert. it all meshes together.

when you think about 2 other t's dumping me off onto others and shit like that, i have no questions but to think that this is all about unresolved abandonment. and the fact that i look up to my T and the little little child parts of me see him as a father figure? mixes it up even more. it becomes more of abandonment issues.

sorry i just poured everything out there. maybe no one is reading it but if they are, just know I am embarrassed right now for spilling my guts.

Hi Roo. I just wanted you to know that there are people reading and there is no reason to be embarrassed. We all have issues here, LOL! You are certainly not alone. I've been following this thread, I just didn't think I could help.

Hang in there!

Please don't be embarrassed. It takes a lot of courage to disclose such personal things about ourselves. You have a lot of courage.

Does your T know about your abandonment issues? I would assume he does - do you talk about them with him? I know I am very attached to my T, but I try not to go over the line because I don't want to lose him either. I almost got dumped by him a few months ago and it was so scary! But we worked things out. I think you and your T just need to draw up some sort of contract. You seem constantly scared that he'll dump you. Does he say things to indicate that he might? If he keeps doing this, that's not very professional. Especially if he knows about your abandonment issues. I think you just need to talk to him and ask him what is acceptable and what isn't. Then you won't spend so much time worrying about it. Also, some T's are more able to deal with patients "like us" than others. Do you think maybe he doesn't have the skills to deal with BPD patients? Not all therapists do, you know.

I guess this is all stuff for you to maybe think about. I hope you start to feel better.

Hi Bordergirl. thanks for posting too. I wasn't ignoring you. :O)

I know about the rules for a fact. me and my T talk about it a lot. He told me that other clients do not have the same set of rules that i have. he reminded me friday night too. and last week. that if i leave him a voicemail on his cell phone, he will not call me. but he did. but we had worked out a plan months ago that I have to go through this whole big list of things BEFORE I even call him. that it has to be where i am about to self harm or OD and no one else has helped and none of my coping skills were working. I did exactly that on friday. so i had no clue i was breaking the rules.

my T told me last week that my chart was about 5 reams of paper thick.......usually that's a joke but not last week. i started crying and asked if that was a hint to get rid of me. he didn't come out and say 'yes', but he said that he's not doing his job if someone is in therapy for life etc and said that i have been working with him for 5 years and that's a long time. so that's how all this got started in the first place. my chart is so thick because he sees me twice a week every week for 5 years! duh! :O)

but then he was not clear and saying that he was going to stick with me for a few more years. not til friday night when he was so flustered with me. the crisis people had no clue what i was talking about and my T said that he wasn't surprised. that this was all a mess because i made it a mess and that's not what he said. he did not say anything about our conversation being 'hypothetical' at all! not til he called me friday night.

he hangs things over my head though and on friday he did that and then apologized to me. did I already tell this story? sorry if i have. but he owed me money because I over paid. well we were out of food and he was upset that food did not come first and i broke my agreement i guess around my budget and things. so he said 'you have to spend every single last cent of this if i give it to you, on food.........nothing else. nothing. and if you do, we are done!". so i was crying and said 'if i buy food and get my food journal back on track and i eat 3 meals and snacks a day for 2 weeks til we get more money, wil you stop saying we will be done?" and then he stopped and said that it was not fair of him to do. to spend the money however i wanted. he should not hold stuff over my head and he was sorry. he's done this before. and he brings up all of my mistakes too. but when he made a huge mistake in february and apologized, i try not to hold that over his head. he was in the wrong back then and told me that my new rule was that i was to never ever call him again........day or night. that i was allowed 2 hours a week to see him and not one minute more in any way. then he apologized for that and called me and talked on a weekend or a night time or something and he said that he never should have done that and we fixed things.

he is going to the gastric bypass eval with me in november to see that therapist again. but he held that over my head too last week. that he was going to miss 2 hours of pay, 2 clients would have to skip a session with him so that he can help me, etc. so i reminded him that when he has had to go to court or to a meeting for someone else and switches my appointment, i don't gripe about it. that he probably doesn't tell the other client that someone else is being inconvenienced by their situation! he's wicked nice but when he gets like this, he seems like a jerk! i think its just me that it happens to. I have no clue why. he's never told me why its just me. what it is about me that's so bad and that he reacts to like that. so i don't know......i gotta go. I'll post again to fill you in on if he calls or emails me in the morning. i hope he does so that i can have a better day. talk later.

Roo

(Roo) nothing about you is bad. this is HIS reaction, he is allowing it to color his job and its wrong.

i doubt its only you..if he has this much/many boundary issues, it wont be just you. i wish i had him for a hour...lmao....let him try it with me.

many people are in counseling for years and years. he is fulla shit on that one, also. and if he feels he is failing, thats his problem, not yours.

""""what it is about me that's so bad and that he reacts to like that."""". this is twisted thinking, dear Roo.

Seems to me that your T has poor boundaries with you. He should not be telling you things like he's losing money by going to an evaluation with you. That your file is 5 inches thick. IMO, that is totally unprofessional. I cannot tell you to find another T, but this guy is just not professional. It's not fair of him to tell you these things. He's transferring his frustrations onto you. He must know how you are and how you react. Why do such a thing to you? I don't think it's nice. It's up to you to keep seeing him or not, but I don't see how anything will be resolved if he keeps playing these mind games. I'm sorry you're in this situation with him.

^5 to BG, i agree.

thanks guys............ :O)

I left my T a message at the office and asked him to call me in the morning. I know how he is being is unprofessional to me. I agree. but I don't want to end the therapy relationship.

he specializes with trauma and borderline..........go figure! I might mention that to him. he knows trauma can take years. talk to you all in the morning.

Thanks for being here for me. this has been a very hard weekend for me...........

me too, sweety. longggggggg weekend eh.

no matter what he specializes in, or degrees he has, doesnt matter in the least. i have seen many pdrs who dont know their head from their ass..( the one who gave my daughter 800 mgs of seroquel comes to mind first and sends her home with no dr) i figure they are the ones in med school who everyone knew they wouldnt be taking their own family to.

many dont seem to "get" how hard this trauma work is and how long it takes. hell its taken me 4 years to get this far. im trying to do it right and honest and real all the way down to my core. it is hard work to overcome the brainwashing.

((Roo)) nites.

Good afternoon everyone.....

well my morning started out crappy. I woke up at 2 am and could not settle back into sleep. my T did call me at 7:40 am but said that i was supposed to be there at 8! its usually 30 minutes but sometimes i can make it in 20. well he had the wrong date.......i had needed to change october 20th not today! so I ran out the door and flew to his office. I was driving over 80 mph on the turnpike and am lucky nothing bad happened. but my heart was racing. i had no clue what to expect when i got there.

my T was fine. he is still going to see me. but we talked about how he is human too and late at night he just is not in 'therapist mode' and comes off in a negative way. so i told him that i can accept that and wont' call him after hours anymore. but that i didn't want to be singled out and he said he understood.

i did cry a lot and even told him how I know he is not the people who have traumatized me in the past, but that his actions, words etc, were triggers. i was not in a place on friday i guess to hear that he was trying to tell me that he knows i am capable of doing better than i am etc. but all i heard was the word termination and it was all over. he wants me better. i do too. but i can't live on a time frame of therapy.

he said what bothered him is that i say i can stay in therapy forever. that's not ok for him because people should not be in therapy all their lives just because they can't tolerate separating. so i explained what i meant when i said that phrase: that i can't imagine not having him part of my life.........that i can't imagine not having a safe place to go to twice a week where i can go and get out what needs to get out........stuff like that. he said he understood now and that he agrees with me that trauma stuff needs to be reprocessed. so i think i will be doing EMDR again for a while. and I did not know this but I guess i had dissociated a lot last week. well if he knew that then why would he almost provoke me to break down? don't know.

but I did also tell my T that it feels like he makes personal jabs at me because of things i can't help. in high school there was a coach/youth leader who I know hated my father (but i did not understand why at the time). well i know he would take things out on me because of my father. this of course is looking back at the situation. so i felt like my T was doing the same thing but in today's reasons. my T said that he was not that person............I know it. but the jabs and treating me differently and almost punishing me is the same. so i said i need to process this stuff. and also about my 1st T terminating me and the 2nd t terminating me because i had OD'd in front of her. these things happened in the month of October years ago. and my grandfather died on the day i last saw my first T and I saw the 2nd T the day we buried my grandfather. my grandfather (papa) was the light of my life and everything was traumatic to me. so i think my T understands now. I understand him too. but he did apologize several times and he was very open and very honest with me. and he said he was sorry about commenting on my chart........then made a joke about it which was fine with me.

so now i am dealing with the aftermath of a stress headache and could not sit at school very long. oh well. i got some stuff done anyway. thanks for the support, for listening/reading and for the encouragement. i think things will be ok again. i know they will be and I know I need to work on getting better again and not sabotage my therapy. Oh and my T laughed and said 'and you wondered if you still have BPD!? LOL" that was funny.

Roo

I'm glad things worked out okay. I still wonder why your T is so fixated on how long you will be in therapy. Doesn't he realize therapy is an on-going thing and you stop when you feel you are ready? Well, maybe that's just his way. I don't agree with it. But I'm glad you're happy and things have settled down! I hope you get a good night's sleep tonight.

thank you. I don't think my T realized how big of a surgery the gastric bypass is and the therapist who evaluated me said that people are at greater risk for suicidal feelings and stuff like that during the first 5 years after surgery, but with someone like me who has already had tendencies, it could be more intense. so i explained it to him today. he said we will just go as we go. I also told him that other crises may come up in life. he agreed. so I guess we are not setting a date as to when therapy ends for me. I think he feels like he failed if someone doesn't get better and can end therapy.

I have tried to nap today and can't. so I hope my meds work tonight and i get a good night's rest too.