Posted by madeline on February 17, 2007, at 11:49:05
In reply to Re: why don't friends understand? post 2 madeline » madeline, posted by scentedgarden on February 17, 2007, at 8:04:26
I think your question is a very complicated one and it is one that I struggled with for years.
There are definately two people in the therapeutic space and there is very much a relationship between the therapist and the client. We ARE talking to human beings after all and I think they genuinely care for us and want only the best for us.
And when the therapist is good, the love they have for us is expressed in the purest, most unconditional form possible - they let us hurt and grieve and trust and cling and get mad, all the while letting us grow and move to independence.
They can guide us and go through our recovery WITH us, but they can't really be a part of it - we have to do that, just like we have to scrape our knee, bloody our nose and grow up as kids.
We may FEEL very much like children, but most of us are very clearly adults. And the childlike feelings we have in therapy and for our therapist I think definately can get co-mingled with very adult feelings of sexual desire, desire for mutual dependence, and mutual intimacy.
To me, it is not delusional to want these things with your therapist, in fact I think it is just a very natural and very adult extension of the trust we have with our T's.
But the experience WE have in therapy is very different than that of our therapist. They may very well miss us when we are not there, but we can not offer them the same trust they provide us. Just like a child can't be a peer to a parent.
We need to trust them, attach to them, love them, but they don't (and should never) need that from us.
So they do not seek the same kind of mutual dependence or intimacy that our adult minds tell us that we want. But rather help us to be ourselves and find those relationships with people who are our peers.
Maddie
poster:madeline
thread:733403
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070215/msgs/733599.html