Posted by deborah anne lott on August 3, 2005, at 19:20:26
In reply to Re: Lott: a few questions, posted by Joslynn on August 3, 2005, at 8:42:05
Your story is an object lesson for all of us. What do you do when your therapist is telling you something you want to know but you don't really want to know and it would be better for you not to know and yet you want to feel special and like the one confided in and he or she is doing it in a very casual manner and you know that these "tidbits" of information are not at all a casual matter for you. Very tough. Particularly for those of us whose parents may have confided in us in ways that they shouldn't have when we were way too young to know what to do with the information or set a boundary ---
I agree that self-disclosure should be taken waaaaaaaay more seriously than many clinicians appear to take it. Thanks for sharing this story.
> Thanks for the "good for you." Because I was summarizing in one post, I compressed the time frame and the events, but in reality, I let it go on way too long. (In fact, I liked it and welcomed it in a way.) And it wasn't like he would just sit there and talk about disagreements with his wife or family problems the whole time, but things came out, a sentence here, a sentence there. Saying he did relate to some upsetting things my ex-boyfriend said because his wife has similar communication problems...then saying, he shouldn't be talking about that. (He knew, I think in his heart he knew he was crossing a line, yet he would still cross it.)
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> I let it go on almost a year, the little comments...which sometimes came up, often didn't, but came up enough for me to build up this big fantasy that I was the special confidante.
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> Finally things came to a crisis for me when he said some other things that deflated the fantasy and I realized that I had to speak up. I am glad that I did and he was very apologetic and humble about the whole thing. He didn't try to turn it around on me as my fault. I do want to remember all the good things he said and did too, he wasy very helfpul in many, many ways.
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> But I would say that the self-disclosure should be used very sparingly, especially when a T knows full well that a client has a history of becoming overly attached to unattainable male figures.
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> I think professionals stick up for each other regarding the self-disclosure thing, and unless it's something really blatantly outrageous, they downplay it.
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> It was a learning experience, that is for sure.
poster:deborah anne lott
thread:534691
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050801/msgs/537225.html