How can I stop thinking this way? Help!

After that. Probably June. It took a long time to stop questioning it but it Is true. My texts would even prove that. He never really did change boundaries. Just the amount of time we texted was less. I chose to end email and everything else he said would change never did. I felt closer and more trusting of him after all that

Doubtful. He admitted to not really feeling like this is the right career for him. This was his third t company in 5 yrs and said he never felt like it was right. Also he was very secretive about things. He deleted all our texts and my emails before people came to take his phone.
He used to secretly text me from places like the dr office or restaurant etc, even his car. Rarely did we text when he was actually working.


I forgot to include the 2 yr part. I don't want a romantic relationship with him or anyone. No desire for that. All I want in 2 yrs is to possibly meet and catch up. If we decide to be friends great or just catch up now and then great. If we part ways for good, at that time it will probably feel easier to do. Only time will tell. I doubt he will get married by then anyway though. He's a huge believer in friends for yrs first and he's got alot of issues to work on. Also yes I'm aware things can change in 2 yrs. I know its hopeless and that's what I hate. I want a bit of hope to keep me going.

I'm not sure what to say that will give you hope.

It is possible that in 2 yrs, you'll contact him and he will be grateful that you did. It is possible he is struggling. The rule of no contact for 2 yrs goes both ways. He is bound by it as well.

eta - and as someone else pointed out, any deliberate contact during that 2 yrs restarts the clock. He knows that too, so it might help give him the resolve to maintain radio silence regardless of what he is feeling; especially if he is hoping for a relationship after the 2 yrs.

DP, I’m sorry. What you’re going through sounds really painful.

This is a thought/question that came up for me as I read your thread:
Is it possible being upset with him helps your grieving hurt less?

I hope you find the comfort you need.

It kind of sounds like the relationship with your best friend reinforces your negative beliefs about the world and probably, about yourself. Since I know you're not someone to just cut someone out of your life who you also have good times with, it might be good to try to get some emotional distance from her. Kind of similar to how you stopped emailing your therapist because he wasn't responding, and that was creating problems and making you feel bad. It sucks that you can't text your bff that you had a crap day and expect her to be dependable, but maybe you can protect yourself a bit from feeling abandoned. I know you weren't asking for opinions on that relationship, so I'm sorry if I'm overstepping. I just wonder if it's worth sharing vulnerable things with a person in hopes of support when there's a significant possibility that they will make things worse by ignoring, ridiculing, etc. as they have done in the past.

As for the therapist thing, I'm somewhat at a loss. CBT doesn't appeal to me, but maybe you could find some thought worksheets online and tackle some of these negative thoughts and beliefs that way. I can help you find some if you're interested. Might also help to familiarize yourself with the wide world of logical fallacies and apply them to your thinking. I love logic. Even people who think they are highly logical and value logic over emotions, myself included, can fall into all sorts of fallacies.

Another idea, and this is really just to distract yourself, is to listen to audiobooks. These days, libraries have them available as digital downloads from apps. Just go to your local library's website to see which app they use. I like audiobooks because you can listen to them pretty much constantly and become immersed in a different world and someone else's life. They are a really great distraction, and it seems like you could use a distraction.

Ss

I am not emotionally invested in her. We both hate emotions and keep it out of our friendship. I will sometimes be anxious in front of her and she talks me down but i don't open up or share etv

I know way more about my t than her. We do have quite a distance. Ya her ignoring sucks but she was honest about that part of her from day 1

Thanks for the other suggestions

First, DP_2017, I hear you. Having lost my T in Sept., was losing a significant relationship for me, and sometimes I feel like all her care was in my head and "not real". So in some ways, I can relate to what you are feeling. Not exactly, but similarly.

As for dealing with the feeling of everything being fake and meaningless, that's a hard one. I think it's good you are reaching out on PC because others have probably been through similar situations and may have suggestions. For me, I've been sleeping a lot, that's how I'm coping. It's not a great coping method, but it's not as bad as my normal coping methods. I do think time and distance gives a different perspective and yours may swing more towards the middle with time. But maybe not. Can you write down the things that you enjoyed with your T to help you look back on them, or does that cause you more pain? I haven't really figured out how to deal with my own feelings on this issue so I'm not sure I have much good to offer you. But I am listening. I do hear you. And I know it's a hard situation. HUGS if you want them. Kit.

I'm sorry this has been so hard for you. I think you're struggling so much because your T ending things has activated some of your intensely painful core beliefs about yourself and about other people. So it's like dealing with a huge loss of somebody you care about while simultaneously splitting open a bunch of horrendously painful thoughts and feelings that you carry with you because of your past, your family relationships, etc. I have had the same thing happen on a smaller scale when my T goes on vacation and it triggers a shitstorm of negativity for me. It's like my coping skills fly out the window exactly when I need them the most.

I don't know how to deal with core beliefs except through therapy, but maybe there are other ways to access and work on them. I don't want to suggest therapy because you have decided that it's not for you. But you have also admitted that the time you spent with your T was not really therapy since things were more friend-like, so maybe you haven't actually really given therapy a try? Just a thought. However you decide to move forward, I hope you can find some peace and closure for yourself.

Your experience sounds similar to me and my first therapist. I REALLY REALLY suggest this book

Trauma and the Avoidant Client: Attachment-Based Strategies for Healing

Author has some youtube videos. And a newer book I haven't read yet.

It's specifically written about clients who have an avoidant attachment style, and I think you'll find some similarities between yourself and some of the client stories in the book. This book has helped me understand myself more than any other of the like 75 therapy books I have read trying to understand why i'm so...me.

I read that book, and I liked it. It talked about the difficulty to the therapist of not being utilized by the client, and how hard that can be for them.

What you are experiencing has a lot of similarities to what I went through with my T. However, she actually did lose her license (not related to her relationship with me) and she entered into a friendship with me immediately (no 2 year wait). What is similar, however, is the way I felt when I realized that the relationship we had in therapy did not hold up in the real world. I was also forced to confront the fact that what we had been doing for 5.5 years was not really therapy— we were just chit chatting and connecting. While it felt fun and helpful at the time, without seeing her every week in therapy the stability of having an emotional support disappeared. As an actual friend, she totally sucked. She flaked on me all the time, she was selfish, and she demonstrated that I was pretty low on her priority list. I was her “favorite client” but in her real life, other people came first. That would be totally understandable if she were actually my T— she hadn’t been that either. I had been in therapy for 5.5 years, but I hadn’t actually been getting therapy during that time. So it was like she just came in, filled a void, and then left— and that void was still there. For me, it started to hurt more that she was in my life, but in a superficial way. We would have coffee and she would ramble about dumb, meaninglessness things. It was nothing like the deep, connected stuff we talked about in therapy. It sent me on a mind spiral of “Does she really care about me? Did she ever really care about me? Does she really want me in her life? What is her MO?” It was incredibly confusing and she was totally inconsistent. One minute she would be saying “I love you” and “you’re going to be in my life forever!” and the next minute she would disappear for two months with no contact. The more I focused on my relationship with her, the more pain I was in. What helps me is detaching from that. After a long period of anger I am once again able to remember the good stuff, but if I focus on it too much and either live in the past or think about creating more good times in the future— then I get sucked into the roller coaster again. For me, focusing on other parts of my life is the best way to get through it. She is incapable of providing closure or fully recognizing the kind of damage she did— even if it felt good at the time. I just need to take hold of my own life and move on. I don’t think she’s evil or anything— I just think she has bigger problems than I do and I need to find happiness outside of her.

For sure have avoidant attachment... my T and I discussed that, he also didn't diagnose but said I likely have avoidant personality disorder and when I joined a FB group for that, I felt understood. This is why therapy isn't for me. I don't like emotions or talking about things that i think are private or painful. I avoidant constantly in therapy.

Not here on PC though. You talk about emotions and pain here on the forum a lot. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting there is anything wrong with it. I think many people who have avoidant tendencies like to talk about feelings anonymously on the internet better than in most 3D life places. Sometimes I do, too.

Yep, I can easily talk to people I'm not looking at. Always been like that. If it's in person there has to be trust/comfort otherwise it's not gonna happen

I'm very similar. It's partly why I like this book, because a lot of it discusses the mistakes that the author and the other therapists make with avoidant clients. It's a very human book. It's really written for therapists, but i think a lot of clients ended up reading it and finding it helpful. I needed to know why therapy was so painful.

Just in case you don't read posts on the couch, I wanted to share this here also.... it's really not helping things, it only fueled my worthless feelings

I'm not one who often remembers dreams or reads much into them. Weirdly it seems I only remember dreams involving t. I had a weird one last night and wondered your thoughts on it

So first I'll say....I have a near lifelong issue of jealousy of women. It was something t knew about but we never worked on. After he left ...I became almost rageful in my mind with my thoughts of women in his life.

In my dream, I saw him at a concert type place with lots of people around. I got so excited that he seemed to be coming to sit by me but he chose the bench behind me.

There were several women there. He started laughing with them and seemingly being flirty and just being his silly self for laughs. I got sad and turned away

Later I looked back and didn't see him, it's weird. I just saw women sitting there but still laughing. Well one of them got up and came over to me, introduced themselves as Rosie and sat down. Looking in the eyes I instantly knew it was him. I was so confused and wondered if he had been miserable in his body too or something

We didn't talk as I woke up but most of the dream he was himself but then was her. My jealousy is not about harm to women but rather feelings of not being good enough. They are better than me. I'm almost certain this is this issue coming out in my dream but I don't get why my mind changed him to a woman. Thoughts?

And then I added this part that I didn't want to share originally



I'm so confused what's going on in my mind now. Why do I only remember dreams about him? I'd like happy dreams

IIRC, you said earlier in this thread that you are not interested in a romantic relationship with him, even if that was something he might be thinking about. It seems like the sexualized atmosphere of some of your sessions or parts of them might have been your way of exploring these kinds of feelings in a safe atmosphere. Maybe your dream is about that, too, exploring your feelings for him inside the safety of your own head.

I think it's a dream rich with symbolism. For me, I often have "unusual" or weird dreams about something that's like real life at times where I'm going through something difficult or thinking about making some changes or I'm taking some risks in some way and I'm wondering how they are going to play out. Your seems to represent some kind of shift at least inside your own head, or a kind of wondering. To me that sort of dream is way cool, but I could understand if you find it distressing. Just like people say after a death, any kind of loss does not mean the end of your relationship with a person. Maybe your dream is about trying to work out what your relationship was and what it meant. I don't get the sense that you are stagnant, but moving somewhere else from where you've been.

Nope, never want a romantic relationship. The idea of being "tied down" with anyone scares me and makes me wanna flee and hide. I'd have sex with someone I trusted and felt comfortable enough to do it with but nothing serious, no. It's something I never wanted. Even as a young kid, I remember thinking it was bizarre all the girls in school dreamed of being a wife or a mom and I was like, umm that's crazy.

Could be I suppose as I'm always trying to figure what it meant, stupid anxiety... but I do think it's a huge alert to me to try to get this jealousy under control. Dreams are weird for sure. Thankfully I didn't read much into most my other T dreams, I'd go nuts

Iirc you have previously said your feelings crossed over into romantic and sexual as well as friendship for him. Might the dream not just be part of that? You're jealous of his new life (hence he's a woman) but there are some sexual feelings waiting to come out hence the trigger part?

Idk but the woman idea makes sense.... although it's not his new life as much as the people in it... because I got cut out.

I'm not sure why sexual feelings would be trying to come out when he isn't even in my life anymore and likely never will be? Like I think my mind understands that so idk.

As much as I don't feel therapy is for me being an avoidant, I'd consider it to work through the jealousy but I don't really believe anything will change. I don't think talking about something makes it change. I already know where the intense jealousy issue stems from... nothing to do with him. Happened ages ago. I don't need to explore that... I just wish there was a good way to work on it without therapy. I know I need to fix it. I've even had this issue with my best friend, I ignore her (she usually does to me with texts) if I hear about her traveling with a women friend etc. I wont talk to other women at work once they have talked to another woman in front of me. It's not just a T thing, I know that much

I agree that talking about something is v v v unlikely to effect change itself. For me, we talk, then I perhaps understand more or get a different perspective, then I force my self to act in a different way to reflect this new perspective. Or we talk about theory and I began to recognise emotional states and try and respond mindfully instead of just being swept along. So for me there is always action out of the talk. I agree with someone else that said you didn't really do therapy with your t so perhaps your antipathy to it is not reasonable? I mean has a rational basis - not an insult.

My initial reaction is that it would be difficult to do therapy just for one issue as issues are probably interrelated. But then you did that for grief and it worked (for the grief) so maybe it's a good way for you. We are all different.

I do hope you continue to find a way out - Am with Anne on the you are defo moving forward well and not in a closed off fashion. Much better than I would so I'm like wowww.