Up to Pg 214

I can not seem to put this book down. 

Annie seems to be re-enacting her trauma, along with Ben as they play.  In a previous post I was admonishing Annie for not seeking supervision, guidance, or counseling for everything that was coming up for her.  Now I understand that Annie has been struggling with disassociation since she was a child, and that disassociation helped her to reconcile her abuse at such a young age.  Furthermore, she felt like her therapist Melanie wasn't listening to her. I think this is what Prof Williamson was getting at when she said this book talks about the importance of boundaries.  It seems like Annie's therapist had poor boundaries to begin with and harmed their relationship irreparably through attempting to enforce seemingly arbitrary rules on the relationship after being so forthcoming with her 'love' from the start. Through the therapists interactions she seems to have re traumatized Annie, thus leading to her hospitalization.

I am not sure if these interactions would have been different had she been seeing a social worker or a therapist who had an aptitude for assessing a person in environment, rather than Melanie who degraded Annie for not attaching and moving away.  Melanie seemed to be so caught up on these themes that she completely missed the struggles Annie was facing in her work with Ben and  her doctoral program. Not to mention the many attachments Annie had to friends and family.  It  seems as if Melanie was so caught up in one story-line for Annie, that even when Annie so desperately wanted to rewrite her narrative Melanie could not create a space for that.

It is only after Annie starts to see Dr. Blumenfield that her shattered pieces start to come together to create a coherent narrative. It will be interesting to see how boundaries will come into play, as Annie continues her work with Ben.