Posted by LostGirl on December 3, 2003, at 10:49:26
In reply to 2 Years Later, Still Not Over Therapist, posted by LostGirl on November 30, 2003, at 21:41:01
Thanks for answering.
Yes, we talk about it sometimes.
The problems with him were that he would sometimes give me a compliment, and then quickly rephrase it in a way that took it back, out of his own discomfort. One example is he once said "you are appreciated here" and when I asked what he meant, he changed it to "you feel appreciated here" which is very different because now he was making it my feeling (which it wasn't) instead of explaining what he meant about his feeling. Things fell apart when two things happened. He went away for a week in July that year and when he returned made a big deal about asking over and over different ways if I missed him - he couldn't seem to accept that one week was no big deal. Then he forgot to tell me about his 4 weeks away in August. He had said months ago he would probably take the last two weeks in August. But after the big deal about him trying to get me to say what I didn't feel about the one July week, he never told me that the actual August weeks were now 4 - the week before and the week after the 2 he had told me about. So when I was there thinking I'm coming back in 4 days (we met twice a week) he says he'll see in September (4 and a half weeks away). I was really upset all summer and tried to work it out when he returned. We had had such an incredible connection and now because I was the only one he didn't tell the full dates of his vacation to, I felt like the bottom of the barrel, tossed aside. I tried to work it out with him that September, telling him all the double messages were hard, and didn't seem right, yet the connection meant a lot to me. I said I wanted to know that he would examine his own behavior and not repeat these sorts of things. He said he didn't know if he could do things differently. He had tears in his eyes.
I have talked with the current therapist and she says he had a lot of trouble with his own countertransference. She says that what was good, however, which was a lot, will always stay with me. She said that there was also a strong transference and the goal of having a strong transference is to anyalyze it and he and I never did that. When I came to her, I wasn't over the loss of him, but now my father was sick and dying and I was in charge of all that including "pull the plug?" decisions. My father died, then my Alzheimer's mother became my responisbility and drove me nuts, and my teenage kid's acting out behavior got way out of hand. Then my mother died, then I had to clean out her house. So mainly the current therapy was dealing with those current events as they unfolded. I never fully dealt with all the lingering stuff about the former therapist. And it still haunts me.
poster:LostGirl
thread:285353
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20031202/msgs/286198.html