Posted by mair on February 11, 2008, at 18:39:23
In reply to In Need of Camp Comfort, posted by Daisym on February 10, 2008, at 19:48:03
Daisy - I seemed to have lost the ability to choose not to talk about certain topics. Sometimes I'll be pretty resolved not to talk about a painful and smoldering topic, but if it's really on my mind, I find that I can't not talk about it. This is so different from the way it was for the first few years. Maybe this is what your T means by you setting the agenda.
I used to have this T/pdoc who was much more like a psychoanalyst. I remember making a comment one day which had something to do with my feelings about him. He cut me off pretty abruptly, saying "you're not anywhere near ready to talk about that." I, good patient that I was, just took that in and moved on to a different topic. We never did get back to that issue so I'm not sure that's good either.
There have been occasions when I've blundered onto a topic which is just too painful for me at that moment and I've told my T that I can't "go there." Of course she'll want to get at it some other way, but if I keep telling her that the topic is just too touchy, she'll lead me somewhere else. She does this because otherwise I just clam up and the session really deteriorates and because she's learned that whatever "it" is, comes out at some point.
I'm sorry things have been so stressful. I'd love to have you settle into my camp but you'd never find it. Right now its buried under an obscene amount of snow, with more due tomorrow.
mair
poster:mair
thread:811925
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20080210/msgs/812107.html