Posted by Dinah on October 2, 2011, at 14:29:01
In reply to Re: I'm jealous, posted by Solstice on October 2, 2011, at 10:22:46
Thank you, Solstice.
I know on some level that he thinks about me between sessions. He's said before that when he's going out of town he specifically thinks about how it will affect my sessions, because he knows that in the past I hated it when he goes out of town. Yesterday he barely waited until he sat down before he asked me about the Kindle Fire. (He did ask me if it was ok first.) He knows I'm a gadget lover, and a Kindle gadget lover in particular. I'm sure he thought immediately "I'll ask Dinah what this is all about."
I know that he quoted me to a colleague. "Therapists aren't like washing machines." And sometimes he'll mention something that comes up in his life that makes him think of me. Usually something I have unusual or strong opinions about. For example, he once said that he was talking to someone about Paul (the Biblical Paul) and thought of me and something I'd said.
And when his own therapist killed himself, he said his first impulse was to pick up the phone and call "Dinah" (the Babble Dinah), because he couldn't think of anyone else who would understand as well. He said he knew it wouldn't be appropriate. But we did talk about it the next session. I didn't mind. Well, maybe it scared me at the time, but in retrospect I don't mind. Hopefully that's a once in a lifetime event, and I think "Dinah" was able to be helpful to him. I don't mind putting on the Babble Dinah hat once in our therapeutic life. I rather think, though, that he ought to have refused my payment for that session. Unless there's something therapeutic about helping your therapist? Actually, there may well have been, since he pulled himself together and hasn't really mentioned it much since and then only in a way that indicates he's handling it. Had it been an ongoing thing, I think it would lose it's therapeutic value. What an awful thing for a therapist to do... I still feel really bad for him. He's promised to never do that to me.
If he thinks about what to do with me as a therapist, he doesn't tell me. He knows how I hate it when he goes to a meeting or reads something and comes up with some brilliant technique to try with me. For a long time I'd tell him before he left for a conference to make sure he didn't get any crazy ideas.
So I know he does think of me in some contexts. I even know that he cares about me in some way. He doesn't forget me entirely between sessions. But I know he'd be worried, for example, if a family member (say... the granddaughter) had a ten percent chance of something being cancer. While he's not worried at all about me, because it's such a low probability. He's way more important to me than I am to him. He acknowledges that, although he generally disputes the "way".
It's a different relationship all right.
But oh to be small enough to be safely held in the arms of a safe adult again. Particularly in the arms of my therapist/mommy who has held me safe emotionally so many times.
poster:Dinah
thread:998463
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20110823/msgs/998569.html