Posted by finelinebob on May 7, 2004, at 5:43:29
In reply to Should I send this email to my T?, posted by crushedout on May 4, 2004, at 21:29:57
Prolly too late for this ... how about printing out the message and bringing it with you to your next session?
It's circles within circles...
I'm just jumping in and don't know any of the history, but Ms. Honey's got a point, and its the outermost circle. If the mojo between you and your T just isn't working, there will come a time when you will need to get out ... and you will probably know that sooner than your T will.Second circle: that you wrote that email and seriously thought about sending it is worthy of discussion with your T. You could be touching on some "undercurrent" that neither of you have been able to make overt and conscious. The relationship you develop with your T is as important as your personal history you bring into your sessions ... or her personal history, for that matter. Anyway, your letter might be touching on something between the two of you, or it might be touching on something inside you that you haven't quite figured out how to voice yet. Either way, that note might be a catalyst to get you beyond where you're at right now.
Third circle: now, I'm not one to buy into the psychodynamic party line, but you can't argue with success (or so I've been told). Case in point: my Teflon personality. I'd tell my T about how I really didn't care what others thought of me, good or bad. It just didn't stick. This was about 3 years into our work together. She probably set me up on this one, but she asked me about if I felt the same way about her. Yeah, of course I did. And she was deeply offended by that -- how could we have built up so much trust for her to just slide off me? (She's good, my T is!) Truth of the matter was her opinion meant more to me than just about anyone, but admitting so made me incredibly angry with myself. Getting past my anger, realizing I wasn't made of Teflon, and recognizing that what she had to say about me was both desirable and valuable was the work of another year or so.
After that, I began to realize I was doing the same thing to others ... holding people at arms length and considering it a virtue.
I don't know if your T is so good as to handle projection like that, but you can't argue with success ... or human nature. We throw our emotions at our Ts, we put them into roles ... and either they are trained to recognize this and respond accordingly or they behave like human beings and respond accordingly.
The point in this circle is that the distress here is worth exploring. It's happening for a reason, and that reason may be deeper than you think. You may not be able to reach that deep and bring it to the surface ... yet ... but don't label it at its "face value" and leave it unexamined.
You know better than anyone ... there may be other circles, or any of these may just be me blowing sunshine.
flb
poster:finelinebob
thread:343415
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040503/msgs/344299.html