Posted by Dinah on November 17, 2003, at 12:51:51
Biofeedback guy came to talk to me again with just my current week diary and the printout, and without my chart. I guess that's his general practice.
As he started to go over my week, I attempted to convey what I had decided to say in my post above. I had written it down on the homework sheet, but erased it. I didn't want to seem too pushy, more conversational. Perhaps that was a mistake. Maybe I expressed myself poorly and writing it would have been better.
He told me he likes to teach things in the same sequence, even with patients who have had prior relaxation and CBT training. And he seemed disconcerted by my interrupting his routine. Distracted and uncomfortable. In an attempt to be conciliatory, I said that I didn't mean to be difficult. He interrupted me and said that I did indeed mean to be difficult, that I tried to gain power by being difficult.
Well I was surprised at this pronouncement from one who had met me three times and never seemed to remember me from one time to the next. I suppose I shouldn't have been since he pronounced my therapist a narcissist without ever having met him at the first session. So reeling, I rested heavily on my second favorite defense mechanism, intellectualization. I considered what he said, and answered that had I really wished to be difficult I wouldn't have thought long and hard about how to put my concerns in the most polite way. He asked how I would have put my concerns had I not thought about it, and I replied that I would have said that I felt like I was wasting my time being "taught" things I already have spent eight years learning and working on.
We then both stepped back emotionally and he asked some questions about how I thought of my problem. Still in intellectual mode, I answered with descriptions of amygdalas, easy arousal, slow return to baseline, etc. He said he thought I had spent to much time in psychobabble (not this site, the concept). Then he laid out a not unreasonable description of how the biofeedback process might work. Not unreasonable, but very long term. Certainly not eight to ten weeks. Since I'd like to get better I didn't reject the plan, but decided privately to consider it later.
The entire time however, he was still making comments that weren't altogether polite, although not overtly rude. He also seemed annoyed with me.
At the end, I told him that I was getting the sense that he felt some hostility towards me and did he think that he would feel comfortable working with me. He agreed that he felt hostility toward me, but said it was caused by my feelings of hostility towards him. He was having a countertransference reaction to my transference, and it was more a question of did I think I could work with him. He said he thought he was more direct than others have been with me. I replied that he was certainly nothing like my therapist.
TO MY EVERLASTING CREDIT, when he mentioned that his reaction to me was countertransference, I closed my mouth on the reaction that I had already opened it to say. I was opening my mouth to say cooly, and with slightly raised brow, that he really ought to seek supervision to deal with his countertransferential acting out.
Then I went to my car and cancelled the scheduled followup session and asked where to request my records.
So... another major medical center where I have "difficult" marked in my permanent file and I am probably no longer welcome.
Now that is my intellectual reaction. My emotional reaction is to curl up on the floor and cry, because I really am as unlikeable and obnoxious as I feared I was. Biofeedback guy said he was more direct with me than others have been. Maybe my therapist feels just the same way about me but isn't as direct at saying so. Maybe I've missed the less direct messages he's been sending me. If my therapist terminates me I'll never find anyone willing to take me on. If my therapist terminates me, I will never again risk such a reaction and will never ever ever ever ever seek psychological help again. NEVER.
I'm going to do a forgetting sleep now. This post is my way of recording things before they have been wiped clean or at least stripped of their emotional content.
poster:Dinah
thread:280540
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20031114/msgs/280540.html