Posted by cricket on December 16, 2005, at 15:58:08
In reply to starting to feel the pain (long ) **triggers***, posted by fairywings on December 14, 2005, at 20:19:22
Fairywings,
I am glad that you are posting again. I know that I also have my periods when I can’t be on Babble. But I missed you and it’s good to see you back.
If you remember my posts in the past, you know that my therapy relationship has been very difficult and tumultuous. Reading over your posts, it struck that I have felt and still feel in some cases many of the same things you’re talking about.
So I thought maybe I would pull out some of your points and detail how it’s either changed or is still the same for me. I hope that’s okay.
“So his forgetting our appt. could mean he didn’t want to see me, couldn’t it?...”I felt the same ways many times. I felt like my therapist hated to see me, like he dreaded our appointments. One time he came out to the waiting room and he had such a look of dismay on his face that I thought I must be the worst part of his week. And I thought that of course he would. I have nothing intelligent to say. Laugh? I never even smiled or relaxed in there. Who wouldn’t hate to see me?
But then it occurred to me well that’s my feelings. But what’s the proof? He never once suggested that I begin to think about termination. He accommodated a reduced payment. He never once suggested that maybe I work with someone else. He showed up even when he was sick.
So perhaps that look of dismay was just concern. And maybe your therapist’s forgetting is not really forgetting because he dreads seeing you but something either much more innocuous or even positive.
“he couldn’t even remember how many kids I have…”Yeah, my therapist kept forgetting my son’s age. Considering it’s the only child I have and the only IRL relationship I have in the world I thought he should be able to remember his age, but he couldn’t.
Now that seems very forgivable since I realized he was so absorbed in what was going on inside me. He can remember things I said years ago – books, dreams.
Perhaps if your T is remembering other things, this might seem more forgiveable.
“he also spent the first ½ hour giving me a history lesson, it was interesting, but nothing to do with me”At the beginning of my therapy, my T used to talk a lot too. He’d talk almost the whole session about psychological theory, philosophy, books.
I have to say I loved it. Those were my favorite sessions. I could watch him and feel comfortable. Being his audience was just the right of level of attention that I could comfortably stand from him.
Now he just doesn’t do it anymore. He’s ready to go off on a tangent and all of a sudden he will stop himself, right in mid-sentence sometimes. Just shut his mouth.
Could it be that your therapist was just trying to make you more comfortable? Trying to build a connection by sharing some of his thoughts? I understand that it might be different for you because your # of sessions are limited and mine were not.
“he finds it “compelling” that I consider her a friend, when I have very few IRL friends”Yeah, definitely one of my problems too. And for the longest time I thought my therapist was critical of that too. He would always say things like connection with other people is the “most basic human drive.” Then he would complain about my reticence with him and I felt like he was saying that I was incapable of a human connection, which is perhaps what I thought but it hurt me deeply that he would think the same.
But then just recently he said to me, “I think you are being quiet because you are about to find your voice, the voice that is uniquely yours and that you never had a chance to develop, and soon you are just going to start to speak to people. It’s like when a kid is about to take this huge developmental leap they get all quiet and you worry and wonder what is going on but underneath something major is happening.” And that felt very sweet and not critical at all.
“Not always, but i sometimes feel like i'm SO immature. i don't want to be seen that way at all, but when we're talking about my issues, and i pull away, i feel like a child. i hate that. does anyone else feel that way? why does that happen? he must think i'm a real brat.”This is what I was responding yes, yes, yes to in my post. Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to be cryptic. But I have felt the same way in therapy so many times. Sometimes I would talk in a little girl voice, which should have been easier for me to accept because of my parts, but I hated when I talked like that. Yet for the life of me I couldn’t stop it. I wondered how he could stand me. Then I would feel ashamed and withdraw and give monosyllabic answers. I did this for years.
Now it’s just stopped. I have no idea why, but it’s been months since I’ve spoken like that. I still don’t talk much but it’s not the same sullen silence, not the same immature kid with a chip on her shoulder.
And my T seems no more surprised that it stopped than that I was like that to begin with. I suspect your T is the same. I know it’s hard though. It’s hard to think of yourself as a mature, intelligent woman and yet feel yourself acting like a bratty kid.
I don’t know if any of this helps, fairywings. I hope something does. I know it’s hard. I wrote so long because I think maybe our Ts styles might be similar. And I know for myself, a nice gentle, what I call mushy style, just wouldn’t have worked for me in the long run. In the short run, it might have been nice, easier. But in the long run, I think I needed something a bit harder to push against and that’s what I found.
Please post more and let us know how it’s going.
poster:cricket
thread:589142
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20051216/msgs/589621.html