I feel super hopeless. I super like my psychologist (A), but I have zero confidence in her. I know she is trying her best...but the reality is she has admitted to me that she doesn't quite know how to help me and that she has not been engaging with me authentically because she feels intimidated by me. I don't mean to be intimidating - honest...and yet I know that many people experience me in that way.
Someone suggested to me the other day that I have a "critical lens" and I need to take that off in order for A to feel more comfortable with me. But you see, here's the thing, it isn't a "lens" that I can take on or off - it is a core part of my being. I recognise that I am a high achiever. I recognise that I have high expectations of both myself and others. I recognise that I hold the value of "go hard or go home." And I'm perfectly ok with that. I don't WANT to settle for mediocrity. If someone is getting paid $120 / hr, then I expect them to know what they are doing. I do not think this is unreasonable.
Yet now I am stuck. I lack confidence in A, and yet I know my only options are to stay with her, find someone else, or quit trying to get support altogether. I know that staying with her is the safest of those three options. And therein lies my despair. A is someone I feel comfortable with, and having a human being to talk to once a week is better than not having a human being to talk to once a week. But as to whether she can help me actually create a life worth living, I have very serious doubts.
We are on SUCH different wavelengths. I mean, I'm in a space where I have one more thing I need to finalize before I call it quits on this world, and A thought that meant we needed to work on a safety plan. Er...I am perfectly capable of keeping myself safe...it's just that after X happens, I will have no reason to stay alive. I have been pleading with A for three months to help me find a reason to live beyond X...so how the hell did she translate that into me needing a safety plan???
On Monday, when we spoke about how amazingly inauthentic she was being in the way she relates to me, she said she will be more authentic from now on. I so badly WANT to believe that this is a turning point in our therapeutic relationship...but I am super scared that it isn't. The reality is that we each have a totally different way of being in the world. She has turned out to be much more "fluffy" than I had anticipated when I first spoke with her. She TOLD me that she values evidence-based practice...and yet three months in, I've ended up doing the case formulation myself because she simply didn't know how to do it. That is absurd! And she told me that she thought it was the client's role to do the case formulation. Seriously??? Would a client who hadn't done a psych degree even know what a case formulation was??? To me, it's the client's role to provide their treatment goal and their history, and then it is the therapist's role to come up with a case formulation and treatment plan, which he or she then presents to the client and they collaborate on it to refine it further. I don't know what uni A went to, but that is how I was taught the process works during my psych. degree!!!
I know I can't go back to therapist shopping and I know it is better that A is there than not. However, right now, I still can't see how I can keep living beyond X happening. X is now three months closer to happening than when I started with A. I don't know when X will happen. It is now looking likely that it will be months rather than weeks...and it COULD even be a year or two. But the reality is that it is going to happen. And I know that if per chance it was to happen today, then after I had done what needed to be done in that regard, I would call it quits on this world.
I so badly WANT to find a reason to live. I WANT to find some hope. I WANT to find some purpose. I just need a bit of support to do that. I miss K (uni counsellor) SO MUCH. I know that if I could have just kept working with her, I would be in such a different space by now. I miss her so so so SO much. She was THERE. I FOUND her. I found someone who I could communicate effortlessly with, someone who had the same analytical brain as me, someone who could see the world as I see it and yet also see it the way most others see it too such that she could help me navigate situations. She never made me feel like my way of being in the world was "wrong"...it was just different.
A doesn't "get" me - by her own admission she doesn't get me. I believe her when she says she wants to help me...but wanting to and being able to aren't the same thing are they. Unless something shifts very soon, I know I will be calling it quits on this world after X happens. Not because I can't ride the wave, not because I can't keep myself safe, but simply because I will have no reason to do so.
