Posted by Tamar on June 4, 2006, at 6:19:44
In reply to Re: Yawn... » Tamar, posted by fairywings on June 3, 2006, at 16:32:25
> I'm so glad it went so well Tamar....don't those kinds of sessions always make you feel so good? It is really good you told him how you felt. Carrying that around would really eat a person up.
I *did* feel quite good at the time, but now I'm back to feeling depressed and hopeless. Things haven't been quite right in therapy for a few weeks, and his forgetting about my 'anniversary' just seemed to confirm everything that feels wrong to me in our relationship: his distance, the language barrier, the difficulty of trusting him (and my feeling that he doesn't trust me). I'm so tired of this. I want to quit. I will give it another couple of chances but if we don't work it out I guess I'll just have to accept that we've gone as far as we can go.
> I'm sure I've heard the language, but I'm not sure I completely understand....what language is it? I know sometimes I feel like my T is telling me a story to tell me something w/o actually coming right out and saying it. I want to say....yeah, I get it, so why don't you just come right out and tell me what you have to say instead of telling me this story, but I love his stories, so I'd never say that.
Yeah! It's such roundabout language. Every time my therapist starts talking like that I want to interrupt and ask, "Do you love me?" I'd like to know how he gets out of yes/no answer! I reckon either he'd say, "I don't think it's helpful for me to tell you that," or "Do you think I love you?” But what I want to hear him say is, “Do you want me to love you?” Or, “What would it mean to you if I loved you?” Or even, “Do you love me?”
> I had to laugh when daisy said she wants to know what kind of (can't remember the word she used) he might employ. I catch mine now...esp. when he tries to "normalize" things. It's funny - I call him on it now - like don't you try to get me to admit to something, or tell you something by being round about....just come out and ask me! ; )
Yes: I’m a big fan of directness in therapy. I get exhausted trying to guess what he means, and I find myself resorting to similarly contorted ways of expressing myself. It’s so frustrating.
> Competitive....hmmmm....that's interesting. Wonder what he meant. Hope you find out.
My theory at the moment is that he has noticed my refusal to accept authority in healthcare environments and he feels it as competition.
My husband says I have a problem with authority. I don’t know if that’s true. I have a problem with people in authority exercising their power capriciously. But I’ve usually had very good relationships with bosses and others in authority. I only object when I think people in authority are completely wrong about something, but then I admit that I sometimes object loudly and rudely.
And I simply can’t tolerate the authority exercised in healthcare contexts. I think it comes of having argued my way through diabetic pregnancies. In my experience the healthcare practitioners have always had my best interests at heart, but the problem arises when my idea of my bests interests conflicts with theirs. And while I recognise that they have experience and knowledge and training that I lack, nevertheless I often have good reasons for seeing things a different way. It usually comes down to ethics: I think healthcare practitioners should be willing to give me more responsibility for my treatment and allow me to learn from my mistakes if necessary (and in fact I was actually right about everything I suggested during my pregnancies). But I think their idea of ethical care involves attempting to take almost total responsibility for the treatment, which results in infantilising the patients and refusing to offer sufficient scope for genuine informed consent. I’m ranting now…
Anyway, I challenge my therapist a lot when he tells me he thinks things won’t be helpful. I guess I just don’t like him making decisions about my treatment without discussing them with me. I don’t doubt his expertise, but I want to be fully involved in my treatment. And that is inevitably a challenge to his authority. I happen to think it’s a reasonable challenge, but I expect he finds me hard work!
poster:Tamar
thread:651085
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060604/msgs/652673.html