Posted by fallsfall on August 24, 2004, at 7:46:54
In reply to Re: Transference Insight » fallsfall, posted by tabitha on August 24, 2004, at 1:52:18
Hi Tabitha,
Yes, I think that you and I are in the same kind of boat in our therapies (or at least in boats on the same ocean?).
My dad has high expectations for everyone in the world, and a low tolerance for other people's "failures". But he doesn't expect me to "serve" him the way he expects my mom to. So I have fewer opportunities to "fail" him.
I see them mostly at their cottage on the lake. She is expected to have everything there that he might possibly want, and to make his schedule run properly (lunch at 12, quiet during his nap, spray the grill with Pam (the part of the grill that he will put the steak on - not the whole grill for just one piece of steak) and have the sink filled with water for when it is done and not be standing in the kitchen when he tries to bring the grill in to put it in the sink - though she has to have the rest of the meal hot and on the table when the steak is ready..., decide what the weather is so he will have the right coat with him). I am only required to show up at meals on time, not block his view of the TV, not make so much noise that he can't hear the TV (he would say to the room "Geeze, you guys are making so much noise that I can't hear 60 minutes" - so he doesn't attack me the way he attacks her, but I know that if I was around more that he would). He likes to see me and my children in small doses, so he tries to be accomodating - but for him "accomodating" means that his corrections of us are more general and less cutting - not that he doesn't correct us.
What I have found so far in working through transferences with my therapist is that he will start to point tendencies out to me - "You are very sensitive to criticism", "I didn't mean that to be critical", etc. I guess the next stage is when I start to confront him with his "meanness"/defend my actions - "I was trying to do the right thing, but I am always wrong", "What I did should have been OK with you because...". At this point he tells me how he saw the same interchange between us, and I start to get a sense that we really do experience these things differently. I absolutely believe that he always tells me the truth (he wouldn't say that he wasn't being critical if he felt critical). The next stage is when I can leave a session and think back over what he has said, decide that my interpretation really doesn't match who he is (caring and skilled), come up with a different scenario about how he was feeling, and ask him about it in the next session. Or sometimes just say that I was upset about his comments, and then he explains what he meant.
This process has been going on for 6 months or more on this "criticism" issue - and I see him 3 times a week.
With a previous issue (I felt he was angry at me), I was eventually able to *know* strongly enough that he simply wouldn't *be* angry in the way I was seeing. So I was able to "feel" that he wouldn't be angry (right then, in the session), and gradually I stopped perceiving the anger - but it probably morphed in to this criticism phase...
poster:fallsfall
thread:381354
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040821/msgs/381640.html