Why Does Getting Better Feel so Bad?

Had my first therapy session this morning. I'm going to call her Liz. 

I saw Liz before just for neurofeedback. I didn't have insurance and she was taking a few patients for free so she could practice. It saved my life at that time which was immediately after a double-trauma, but we didn't have official talk time so I didn't tell her about the extent of what was going on. I knew opening the can of worms without the official support wasn't something that would help. 

So even though she's seen me before, we did a 90 minute intake session. I talked mostly about Roi and some about sustained emotional abuse in my childhood (from caregivers, not my parents). She softly validated my pain with words like "abuse", and "torture", and "parasitic". She also stated that Roi's actions were intentional to keep me off-balance.

I talked about things I hadn't ever talked about, and I cried and felt like I was going to throw up or pass out or maybe just die, right there in front of her, just die from all the pain. 

I meet with her again Thursday and she also wants me to see my general practitioner to have blood work done as she wants to make sure I'm not also battling any health problems or vitamin deficiencies. She firmly suggested this stating that I was going to have to take all this seriously and address all fronts. 

Immediately after I drove to our couple's therapist for a session with Roi. He's angry about how much he's financially supporting me, and that despite all that I blame him for everything. He just can't wrap his head around that I'm suffering trauma or that he has enough to do with that to be "blamed". His belief is that I'm just sick in my own right. 

This is both true and not true. He conned me in the beginning, presenting himself as someone who was capable of commitment, loyalty, and emotional support. There's a tape in my head that sometimes plays over and over of a conversation early in our relationship. We were talking about past relationships, and I was describing how some men I had dated bailed when they started to feel strong feelings. I can hear his voice on the other end of the phone, "I'm not like that. I'm a good guy." I can see myself standing in the living room. I can feel my exhaling breath. I can remember feeling that I had met a good guy, not just because of what he was saying but because of how he had been acting. How sweet he had been. How romantic. How caring. How he listened. How he was interested. 

By the time I started realizing the true depth of his manipulations, deceit, and sickness I was entrenched. I worked for him and my financial well-being was wrapped into the whole thing. I tried breaking it off a few times, and the nice guy would appear in full force again, and I couldn't avoid it because we maintained contact for work. He hoovered me. 

My past trauma, and the context started wrapping tighter and tighter and he continued to manipulate and deceive. And then came the big trauma, and I've not been the same since. He's had a hand in all of it.

So when he believes that I had a "latent predisposition to depression" and tries to escape his responsibility, it would be like me having a latent predisposition to diabetes and he's slipping sugar into my food without my knowing and when I end up with full blown diabetes and having to struggle under the disease, him saying, "well, you had a predisposition to diabetes". 

Our therapist is operating under the assumption that we are only going to have 6 sessions and so she's trying to drive toward immediate solutions. Today she suggested that we have three choices. Use our time with her to work on how to separate in the future, separate now short-term and reconvene to see how we feel a few months down the road, or separate now forever. 

I'm angry and annoyed. Though I want to leave, I don't want to discuss it with him. I don't want to give him reason and opportunity to abuse me more, and I've no doubt that he will. From cruel indifference, to dating without discretion, to pressuring me, to financial control. And who knows what else.

At all costs he doesn't want to see how sick he is, so he uses me as the scapegoat. I have no reason to believe this will end just because we officially say we're separating.

The therapist also suggested that we might find the space over time to be allies, to be friends. Which is a little like suggesting that I might become friends with someone who has held me captive and tortured me, and I don't know if she just doesn't see what is really happening here, or if she does but can't say so and this is her way of protecting me, but it doesn't feel like protection. Again though, if she believes we're only going for 6 sessions, what else can she do?