Posted by Rigby on February 19, 2004, at 9:43:17
In reply to Re: Seriously considering firing my T tomorrow » fallsfall, posted by crushedout on February 19, 2004, at 7:45:48
Crushed,
This whole thing with your therapist's mother stuff is *so* outta line. In a sense, maybe it's good she's messing up so blatantly--it's hard to retain respect for someone who is so clearly violating boundaries. If I had an attraction to someone who behaved like this I would be getting over it in pretty darn short order.
*And* sure, go ahead and talk to her about how she should leave herself out of it but you know what? She should *know* this--you should not have to spend your freaking money educating her on the obvious.
My therapist, similar attraction dynamic, only ever said that she related to me, that she and I were very much alike--did not say that she overidentified with me nor did she *ever* go on about herself--at all. She sought supervision and told me she'd need to keep better boundaries. Basically, she cleaned her stuff up and made sure the focus was back on me. This woman is *messed* up.
It sounds like you've got tough stuff that you are and want to continue to deal with. You will probably have attachment stuff with any compassionate therapist and that's why you want one who's really skilled at being there but also not being *too* there--you're beginning to get a taste of how her crappy boundaries could really hurt you.
Therapy *can* be hard but this is becoming about it being hard because of the person administering it--in addition to the issues you're touching upon.
Rigby> Thank you so much for sharing all of that, fallsfall. It was helpful for me.
>
> I really don't think it's the attraction that's gotten in the way. There are two things on her end that I think may be making her act inappropriately with me: (1) she over-identifies with me and (2) she feels the need to take care of me. And when I called her over the weekend after I had a horrible fight with my mother, she didn't call me back, which I thought was weird. She emailed me the next day saying she "couldn't" call me but that I could email her about it. This felt to me like a sort of arbitrary boundary she was setting up and didn't really make sense to me.
>
> On Tuesday, when I saw her, she blurted out a bunch of stuff about how my issues with my mother were so much like her issues with her mother. And then for some reason she told me that because of the way her mother treated her, she gets mad when people need her.
>
> Isn't that a weird thing for a therapist to tell a client?
>
> And that's only the beginning. So, I'm guessing that has something to do with why she's being so hard on me this week. I guess she's mad at me for needing her. But that seems like a real problem.
>
> Anyway, I'll let you know what happens as soon as I'm capable of talking about it. I'm anticipating possibly being a total mess.
>
> crushed
poster:Rigby
thread:315328
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040218/msgs/315585.html