Posted by Dinah on November 15, 2008, at 11:17:50
In reply to Turning Point with Your T?, posted by JayMac on November 14, 2008, at 18:42:56
So darn many. On such a long journey, there are bound to be a lot of turning points.
I posted above about the wince he gave when I made graphic mention of my method of suicide. It gave me a tiny grain of hope that he might actually care if that happened to me. I wasn't kidding when I said that it was probably gas. He's not much of a wincer for emotional reasons, but he does wince if something physical hurts.
There was the late evening appointment when the office was closed down. He was tired and frustrated and while I don't remember the context I think he was trying to tell me it was him, not me. He blurted out that he had a problem with dependent women! Then looked absolutely horrified and said no more. But from then on a lot of the struggles I had with him at the time ended. He had recognized his countertransference and attended to it. It really was a whole lot him. I was reacting to something that actually was there. Looking back it's one of my favorite therapy moments. But I'm not sure why.
For a long time he refused to comment on that, then I think he forgot it. But those times I mention it now, he laughs and says he thinks at that point he was dating, and having his own struggles. "Countertransference!" he says now, and we both smile with some sympathy for the him he was then. And recognition that this is no longer an issue between us.
Not all that long after the dependent women statement and to my recollection at around five years in, I had the dawning realization that I trusted him, that I was strongly attached. But he still responded to me as if I was the person who told him that I didn't need him in session. He could just rent me the space because it was the room that helped me. The person who quit therapy on a pretty regular basis. It took him another two years to trust that I had changed. One day I told him to look at me! I wasn't that person anymore! Something had changed in me and I needed him to see the person in front of him *now*, not the person I was then. Again, he thought about what I said and realized that I hadn't acted that way since year five, and that he wasn't reacting to the person in front of him. Again, as soon as he realized this he changed completely. From time to time it may well up in him. But day to day it was gone.
At year ten, I finally trusted the trust. We got down to the deeper levels of therapy that some lucky people might manage from the very beginning. But my first five years was spent learning to trust, and my second five years was spent learning to trust the trust, and that was its own sort of deep therapy I guess. Just not the dig deep inside and gain insight about the ugly stuff sort.
Then Katrina hit, and it wasn't so much a turning point as... well, a hurricane. It spun us around, spit each of us out to land on our rears, then sent tides of personal reactions and life events in to make it darn difficult to find and hold on to the therapeutic bond for a while. A long while. The therapeutic relationship tottered on its storm battered foundations. But over the three years since then we've built something again. Something a lot different than it was before. More mutual, even though I manage to keep him as my therapist mommy. More accepting on my part. More genuinely caring on his part. I'm guessing overall that we certainly didn't end up where we would have otherwise, and I suspect that where we are isn't as desirable a state as where we would have been, from a therapy standpoint. But given what did happen, I think we've cobbled together the best and strongest relationship we could under the circumstances. Maybe a bit less perfectly therapeutic and a bit more mutual.
I think the latest turning point was when he really started to realize that I meant something to him on a personal level. And I started to believe on a really deep level that he cared about me. Before I'd trusted the relationship, I'd trusted him, but I never trusted that he cared about me as X the therapist rather than Therapist X. I think I was right. He may say that he always cared about me. But the difference in "how" is striking.
I sorta have a glimmer of where the next turning point might be. But I suppose there's no point in looking down the road. The nice thing about turning points is that they're totally unexpected. They arise naturally, sometimes prodded by a single moment and a single realization. And sometimes they're more gradual, but still arise naturally.
poster:Dinah
thread:863082
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20081104/msgs/863177.html