Posted by lucielu2 on August 14, 2011, at 9:51:50
In reply to Re: Alternate explanations would be appreciated, posted by Dinah on August 13, 2011, at 19:12:43
I got to thinking more about the issue of impasses with your post. This summer, I found myself not spending my time in any "productive" way, there was nothing I particularly wanted to do, and it was hard to get going on things that I needed or even wanted to do. Everything just seemed to grind to a halt, like putting molasses into a car engine. Since I wasn't really depressed per se, the inertia was all the more obvious. I tried conveying this to my T but with all the other things we were trying to address about my daughter, this overwhelming inertia just really didn't get addressed. I only understood its meaning when it began to lift - just a few days ago, as the impasses in therapy and with my daughter began to resolve. Suddenly things have begun to move again.
The point I take home from it is that this particular inertia meant something to me, and that meaning just took time to make itself known. It had to develop through the events unfolding. At the time, I thought a little less of my T and therapy for not clarifying it. Now I am glad my T did not try to interpret it because he would have been groping in the dark for some labored interpretation. I might have been a little disappointed at his getting it wrong but would have resented it deeply if he had tried pushing some interpretation on me like the one your T seems so invested in.
You may not know the reason for what is happening in your life, but you can feel when something doesn't fit. It just isn't good therapy to be forcing his interpretation down your throat. It would be more helpful to you, I would guess, if he took a breath and said, "OK Dinah, maybe what I've suggested just doesn't feel like what's going on. Let's take another look and see if we can come up with a better sense of what is going on." Instead there seems to be some sort of power struggle, or something, going on. Does he feel threatened in some way if he doesn't come up with an interpretation, and now he has and you're not accepting it? Pushing you to look at certain issues you might not want to look at is not the same as pushing you to accept that something is as he sees them. Therapeutic humility that would go a long way here.
poster:lucielu2
thread:993528
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20110706/msgs/993726.html