Posted by Racer on February 10, 2008, at 15:30:52
In reply to Re: T called back and apologized » rskontos, posted by rskontos on February 8, 2008, at 10:58:37
I'm certainly not going to suggest that you read to him what you wrote, because whether or not you do *should be* (<< something I very rarely say on these boards, because of the whole "should" maelstrom) entirely up to you. If you don't feel comfortable with doing that, you don't have to.
What I will suggest, though, is that you don't edit it to make it sound more "jointed" -- the one thing that might help him most in learning to help you best is to see the disjointedness. The specifics of how the entry is disjointed might be very helpful, might help a lot in seeing where your trigger points are, etc. That's one of the benefits of journals -- the content isn't always nearly as important as the "voice" that writes it, and the disjointedness is a reflection of the emotional content involved.
As for the rest of this thread, it's very interesting to me. I'm getting a lot of my own reactions to it all, and while those reactions are pretty disjointed, I know I'm seeing a number of things I do. One of them has to do with dependency, submissiveness, and having others dependent on me. I don't think I can put it all into words -- Daisy is pretty phenomenal when it comes to that, but I'm just not -- but here's a try at it:
I have a lot of issues about dependency. (I'd actually say that it's not so much issues as an extended subscription, you know?) I'm a heck of a lot more comfortable with others being dependent on me, than being dependent on others -- and you know what I know about that? It's because by allowing others to be dependent on me, by *encouraging* others to depend on me, I can maintain a power differential which feels like protection to me. It's a distancing technique, which interferes with true intimacy.
Does that make sense?
Also, about depending on therapists -- it took a very long time for me to become open enough to my therapist to depend on her at all. There was always a huge gap between us, and I was always critical of her -- not in the judgmental sense, just in the sense of critiquing her, being aware of what she was doing, that sort of "critical." I had an intellectual understanding of transference, and we talked about it in therapy as a sort of intellectual concept, but I certainly didn't have any sort of emotional understanding, I couldn't *feel* it. Then, something happened, and all of a sudden it hit me -- ran into me like a freight train, and frightened me so much I could barely stand it. We spent an entire session talking about nothing else, mostly with me crying my sodden eyes out and hardly able to speak. That was very painful, but also very healing. I would like to say that it was a Major Breakthrough, and that I'm nearly cured as a result, but the reality is that I'm still struggling with it, still resistant to it. But it's certainly helped the process along, and it's improved my functioning as far as relationships go. My marriage has improved as a result, and I do feel more powerful in my life.
I guess that's meant to be another vote supporting what Daisy had to say. It's frightening to come to depend on a therapist, but it's not giving up power, and for me, it's led to feeling my power far deeper within me than ever before.
I hope that helps.
poster:Racer
thread:810610
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20080210/msgs/811873.html