Posted by Tamar on April 28, 2005, at 16:20:40
Many many weeks ago, when I was still seeing my T, a thing happened and I’ve been tormenting myself about it ever since. I still can’t figure it out.
I’d been having a lot of nightmares and I’d talked about them the previous week. Then in the following session, right at the end (after 50 minutes of talking about totally unrelated stuff) he asked me if I was still having nightmares. I hadn’t, but I’d had a couple of dreams about him (for the first time ever), so I told him I’d been dreaming about him, and I laughed nervously, because I felt as if I was revealing something very personal.
And then a very strange thing happened. I felt the atmosphere in the room change completely and I thought he was steeling himself to hear something uncomfortable. I thought, “Oh &%*@! He thinks these were sexual dreams.” So I started stammering, because I knew the time was just about up, but I wanted to make it very clear I wasn’t talking about sex dreams, even though I hadn’t worried about it until that moment. I blurted out something about the content – just enough to try to make him understand it wasn’t about sex – and I started rambling and made myself shut up.
He didn’t respond except to say that we could talk about it the next time if I wanted to. Guess what? I didn’t want to! Surprise, surprise… I would have been able to talk about it if *he’d* raised it, but he didn’t and so I didn’t either.
Now, if I were still seeing him I’d be able to ask him about it (probably!). But I’m not, so I’m tormenting myself instead. Was I just imagining that change in atmosphere? Was I just imagining that he was preparing to hear about a sexual dream? I’m still wondering about it because from that moment I never felt able to talk to him about any feelings I had about him. I was just too afraid of his reaction.
Has anyone else experienced a paralysing change of atmosphere? I’d be grateful for any thoughts and comments!
Tamar
poster:Tamar
thread:491040
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050428/msgs/491040.html