Posted by Dinah on November 6, 2006, at 19:54:18
ought I tell him it's a problem?
He's mentioned other clients three times in the last month or so.
One session he mentioned that he'd had a difficult session and that's why he wasn't all there.
One session he talked about how after you'd seen depression or anxiety a few hundred times, you can be helpful, but it's also too easy to get bored. That you can usually grasp the situation within a few minutes if you've seen it often enough. I asked him "Not me? Right?" And he answered no, of course not me.
And last session he said he'd been trying to draw boundaries with a client, without much success. I joked that I wasn't his most difficult client any more and I'd have to try harder. But mentally I was making a review of boundaries and times when I might not have noticed he was drawing them.
It's really weird because I've always known him as someone who wouldn't mention other clients even in the most general way to say that this was or wasn't typical of people with a certain diagnosis. He even actively refused to do that, saying that he didn't talk about one client to another.
And now I feel vaguely uneasy. Like I might be the subject of a casual disclosure to his next client. "Oh, I'm sorry I'm not quite here. I am still a bit groggy after seeing my last client."
I know that this probably isn't true. That it's probably because he feels so comfortable with me that he feels comfortable making these disclosures. And they aren't by far the most personal disclosures he's ever made to me. And he probably doesn't do that with all his clients. He never did with me for the first many years.
Why is it that it feels both good and bad to be special?
Or maybe it's just that the first and third client are one and the same, and he's just slipping about one client who is really frustrating him...
Ought I suggest, next time it happens if it happens again, that I worry that I'll be the next client he mentions?
Or maybe he thinks that would only be fair, since he knows I talk about him here.
How do other people handle those types of disclosures? Is it an issue?
poster:Dinah
thread:701055
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20061026/msgs/701055.html