Posted by Tamar on October 27, 2005, at 19:55:55
In reply to Re: Thanks to everyone » Tamar, posted by cricket on October 27, 2005, at 14:47:23
Hi cricket,
> You are always so helpful and I feel like I haven't ever helped you with your issues. I might have to stick around Babble just to do that :-)
I know that you have helped me with my issues! For example, I remember when I discovered I didn’t have the message from my therapist I thought I’d saved. And you said really supportive and helpful things. I just went back and read your posts on that thread and I was thinking again about what you said, and reading it again was very helpful :)
> Exactly. It was non-stop talk from him. It felt like he barely took a breath. I didn't have much chance to say anything at all. If it hadn't been such a despairing couple of weeks I might have even thought it was cute.
That’s quite interesting because (if I remember correctly) you used to say that you liked it when he did all the talking. I’ve had the impression you’ve been doing a bit more talking in recent weeks/months and maybe he’s been so used to your silence and his talking that he hasn’t yet managed to get into the habit of letting you talk. I wonder what it would be like if he spent an entire session listening and perhaps asking clarification questions or questions about how you are feeling, without doing a lot of interpreting…
> No, you have it right. I guess I had this To Sir with Love fantasy that he would get her to trust him and then begin to expect more of her and she would grow and change.
Now that would be interesting to talk about in therapy. I wonder whether he would see that as a useful goal, or whether he wouldn’t get it, or whether he’d have a theoretical reason for approaching it differently. But I can certainly understand that fantasy; it makes a lot of sense.
> Yes, and I am afraid that we could both wind up more and more miserable every week. Sometimes I think maybe we could break through if I could be absolutely completely honest with him about both the good and the bad (I think of the way Dinah is with her therapist) and he in turn would be more authentic with me and I think that authenticity would lead to less blunders on his part.
Yes… and it’s hard to be completely honest. Also, I imagine you might want him to go first with the authenticity. And yet… I think the way therapy works tends to require that we go first (ouch). But also, haven’t there been moments when he’s been more authentic? I’m thinking of the time he said he cares about you and worries about you and likes you – which, as far as I can tell, came out of your decision to assume that he cares about you instead of assuming he doesn’t. Didn’t he tell you that he wants you to keep coming and not to go away? That seemed like a good session (one of the few good sessions you described in the last few months).
> His blunders seem to come from relying too much on theory and not enough on knowledge of me and what is happening with me at that moment. I give him too little to go on so he winds up feeling de-skilled and incompetent and then he gets defensive and miscommunication happens. Then I withdraw and give him even less to go on
and things get worse and worse. Does any of that make sense?It makes perfect sense. When I was posting about what I thought might be a lack of confidence on his part, I kept thinking, ‘And yet, he knows the theory. I’m sure he knows the theory.’ But I think you’re right: to make progress he needs to build up a knowledge of you. And it might be scary for you to let him do that, because you’d have to reveal so much of yourself…
> I wish I could be that rational. If I could just think about it, I am sure I could hold all the conflicting thoughts in my mind and come up with the right decision but all I can really do is feel and once an emotion takes hold it's hard to do anything but go with that emotion. So if one is feeling like she will die without him that's how I feel and if another one feels like he's like every authority figure and expects the worst from her that's how I feel. There are others that are more neutral and some that are skeptical but could probably be won over to tolerate therapy at least. But it really comes down to a battle between these 2 girls.Do the two girls ‘talk’ to each other? Does the older one have any sympathy for the younger one? I know you say the older girl is tough, but I remember tough girls from when I was at school and they were fundamentally decent people who could be very generous when they weren’t feeling too threatened by the system.
> I hope so too. Right now it's okay but perhaps when it gets closer to the next time I am supposed to show up the battle will start again.
Yeah, I can imagine there could be quite a conflict. It must be very difficult to try to satisfy very diverse needs. I hope you manage to work things out in a way that makes sense to you.
Tamar
poster:Tamar
thread:572077
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20051025/msgs/572495.html