![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 9 of 9. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by HannahW on September 13, 2003, at 22:34:10
I haven't been hanging around this board very long, but I just have to tell everyone how tremendously helpful you've been to me. Dinah and Pfinstegg, I pay close attention to what you have to say because it's invariably wise and you speak with the voice of mature experience. I have ordered my copy of In Session and I can't WAIT to get it. Judy, your straightforwardness has caused me to take my head out of my screwed-up arse and take a fresh healing breath of reality. I think I'll be able to work with my therapist, after all, and in a much healthier way. Adia, your vulnerability and courage has encouraged me to try to emulate your efforts to take a risk and actually FEEL with my therapist. Very scary! And Allison, we haven't communicated much, but from reading your posts, I think we must be twins separated at birth. It comforts me to know that there's someone out there that I can really relate to. (We should compare notes on digging up information about our therapists--I confess I've dug up a shameful amount!) :P Thank you everyone else for sharing so openly and lending to the spirit of this board. It's honestly amazing how much everyone's experiences have aided me on my own journey. I've never been in group therapy, but this is what I imagine that the best groups are like.
Thanks to the progress I've made because of all of you, my next session should be a significant breakthrough for me and my therapist. I plan to talk to her about my feelings that she rejected me, how my instict was to run away and find a new therapist, and how I came to realize that now she and I are in the perfect situation to work through my sensitivity to rejection. She and I have been talking about how I "close the door" on people who hurt me, and now I see that I have closed the door on her. That's why I have felt so flat and distant in my last couple of sessions. Together, we'll be able to work on figuring out how to open that door so I can SHOW my emotions instead of just talking about them intellectually. My reluctance to make myself vulnerable to someone by showing them my emotions holds me back in all of my relationships, so conquering this demon will be tremendously significant in my life.
Here's to progress for all of us...
Posted by judy1 on September 14, 2003, at 11:31:50
In reply to Thank you!My next session's going to be a big one!, posted by HannahW on September 13, 2003, at 22:34:10
I'm delighted you have the courage to attack your issues with your therapist (and in your life), that's a tremendous leap and you should be congratulated for it. I wish you all the best and let us know how things progress.
take care, judy
Posted by Dinah on September 14, 2003, at 13:34:04
In reply to Thank you!My next session's going to be a big one!, posted by HannahW on September 13, 2003, at 22:34:10
Thank you, Hannah. My therapist and I have certainly come to a mature relationship, although it's odd to hear the word mature in connection with my therapy experience. Grin. But we've been together long enough that misunderstandings are generally brief and we can discuss things openly.
I'm really glad you were able to come to this insight about your relationship with your therapist being similar to other relationships in your life. It's even better that you are also able to tie it in to something she said to you. That should make the discussion go even more smoothly.
Congratulations, and let us know how everything goes.
Posted by Adia on September 14, 2003, at 14:10:45
In reply to Thank you!My next session's going to be a big one!, posted by HannahW on September 13, 2003, at 22:34:10
Dear Hannah,
Your post made me so happy! I'm so happy for you!
I too have been around for a short time, but I am learning so much from each of you...
I want to thank you too for sharing so openly and from your heart..You make me feel so safe..!
Thank you so much!
I'm so happy that you will try to talk with your therapist next time and work through what you are feeling and try to find a little door with her..so you can start showing your feelings to her...When are you seeing her?
I will be thinking of you and holding you inside my heart and hoping that you can let her closer to your heart..and that this turns out to be a big big step for you in your journey.
It is really scary to show your feelings and be vulnerable with someone else ...but I guess it's the better way they can help us..if we can truly let go of our defenses and those walls we've built and we try to take little risks ...
Please let us know how it goes... :o)
I will be thinking of you...
I wish you understanding and vulnerability and deep sharing in your next session...
All my support to you,
Adia.
> I haven't been hanging around this board very long, but I just have to tell everyone how tremendously helpful you've been to me. Dinah and Pfinstegg, I pay close attention to what you have to say because it's invariably wise and you speak with the voice of mature experience. I have ordered my copy of In Session and I can't WAIT to get it. Judy, your straightforwardness has caused me to take my head out of my screwed-up arse and take a fresh healing breath of reality. I think I'll be able to work with my therapist, after all, and in a much healthier way. Adia, your vulnerability and courage has encouraged me to try to emulate your efforts to take a risk and actually FEEL with my therapist. Very scary! And Allison, we haven't communicated much, but from reading your posts, I think we must be twins separated at birth. It comforts me to know that there's someone out there that I can really relate to. (We should compare notes on digging up information about our therapists--I confess I've dug up a shameful amount!) :P Thank you everyone else for sharing so openly and lending to the spirit of this board. It's honestly amazing how much everyone's experiences have aided me on my own journey. I've never been in group therapy, but this is what I imagine that the best groups are like.
>
> Thanks to the progress I've made because of all of you, my next session should be a significant breakthrough for me and my therapist. I plan to talk to her about my feelings that she rejected me, how my instict was to run away and find a new therapist, and how I came to realize that now she and I are in the perfect situation to work through my sensitivity to rejection. She and I have been talking about how I "close the door" on people who hurt me, and now I see that I have closed the door on her. That's why I have felt so flat and distant in my last couple of sessions. Together, we'll be able to work on figuring out how to open that door so I can SHOW my emotions instead of just talking about them intellectually. My reluctance to make myself vulnerable to someone by showing them my emotions holds me back in all of my relationships, so conquering this demon will be tremendously significant in my life.
>
> Here's to progress for all of us...
Posted by allisonf on September 15, 2003, at 5:30:56
In reply to Thank you!My next session's going to be a big one!, posted by HannahW on September 13, 2003, at 22:34:10
Hannah,
Congratulations on your plans for next session! It's wonderful when you have an a-ha about how your own life is being played out in therapy and then have the courage to share that with your therapist to work thru it. I apologize that I haven't been on the bd as regularly these past few weeks, but I have been tuning in to some of your posts too and hope we get to "talk" more in the future (esp. re religion below!).
Good luck with your session this week and keep us posted here on the bd!
Allison
Posted by Pfinstegg on September 17, 2003, at 9:18:08
In reply to Thank you!My next session's going to be a big one!, posted by HannahW on September 13, 2003, at 22:34:10
Thank you for such warm words, Hannah. Actually, I feel that I have you to thank; it has been such an insightful discussion of all the painful feelings and rapid changes of feelings which go into the tranferences- the real things that we experience with our therapists. Even though we all know that they come from similiar experiences deep in our pasts, the feelings are absolutely in the here and now- we need to experience them with our therapists, and, if things go well, begin to find ways to accept and integrate them better, as we have a new and better experience of our therapists truly accepting ALL the different parts of us.
I hope it won't be upsetting to you if I say this, but I have been getting the impression that YOU may have more insight into the complexities of this process- as it relates to you and her- than she does. This might not be true of her and another client, and I';m not sure if it's true of the two of you, either; the suspicion that it might be does come to my mind, though.
You and she are just beginning; it will be months before your relationship has really deepened. I do think "fit" is very important between client and therapist. Having had a bad fit with my previous therapist, I interviewed four before deciding on the one that I have now. Because I live in a large city, I was able to interview psychoanalytically-trained therapists, and was amazed at the greater depth of knowledge and understanding of the interpersonal aspects of therapy which they have.
You have tremendous understanding and sophistication about what's going on- you could say a beautifully functioning left hemisphere! But the parts of you which are causing you pain and distress are not those high-functioning parts, and you want to be sure you have a therapist who is highly trained in helping you deal with those parts. Once you do know that, you will be able to deal with whatever needs to come up- but in your own time- when YOU are truly ready.
Pfinstegg
Posted by HannahW on September 17, 2003, at 11:31:02
In reply to Re: Thank you!My next session's going to be a big one! » HannahW, posted by Pfinstegg on September 17, 2003, at 9:18:08
> I hope it won't be upsetting to you if I say this, but I have been getting the impression that YOU may have more insight into the complexities of this process- as it relates to you and her- than she does. This might not be true of her and another client, and I';m not sure if it's true of the two of you, either; the suspicion that it might be does come to my mind, though.
That's a very interesting observation, and it doesn't upset me at all. It lends some credibility to the voice in the back of my mind that wonders if she really knows what she's doing. What has brought you to suspect that she may be lacking insight?
> I was able to interview psychoanalytically-trained therapists, and was amazed at the greater depth of knowledge and understanding of the interpersonal aspects of therapy which they have.
I wonder what training psychiatrists have in therapy. Good fodder for another post.
>
> You have tremendous understanding and sophistication about what's going on- you could say a beautifully functioning left hemisphere! But the parts of you which are causing you pain and distress are not those high-functioning parts, and you want to be sure you have a therapist who is highly trained in helping you deal with those parts.I'm *totally* flattered, thank you. I'm amazed at your ability to pick up that I intellectualize everything, but that it's the emotional part of me that needs work. I'm torn about what to wish for from my therapist. Part of me longs for empathy and warmth. But I'm certain if I got that from her I would fall hopelessly in love and be miserable. So another part of me is glad she's more clinical. She's not a cold fish, and I feel pretty comfortable with her, just not warm and fuzzy. She has good insights and helps me make connections where I didn't see them before, so I think we can get some good work done. Yet I wonder if this fit is good enough, if I wish for warmth that she doesn't project, and if she's not an expert in handling transference (I don't know that she's not, but I also don't know that she is). I think I'll talk to her about it.
Thanks for your response. If you wouldn't mind telling me about your suspicions about my therapist, I'd love to hear about them.
Posted by Pfinstegg on September 17, 2003, at 20:27:20
In reply to Re: Thank you!My next session's going to be a big one! » Pfinstegg, posted by HannahW on September 17, 2003, at 11:31:02
I don't really know, Hannah. The beginning seemed a little unusual to me- going from her being your pdoc, to your wanting a non-professional relationship (which was a very natural desire, although you can't have both at the same time- and I'm not sure you can ever have it because of the transferences which can continue on), and THEN, if I remember correctly, her inviting you to become her client.There were already so many strong feelings on your part and I'm not sure you were in a position to choose wisely who would be the best therapist for you. From my experience, it does help a lot to interview more than one. I think we do end up choosing them by "feel"more than anything else, but if you had interviewed several, you might have preferred to choose someone else. There was also the hint of some problems in your therapist's life which she allowed you to know a bit about- to me that is not a professional way to begin, and really should not ever be a part of a therapeutic relationship.
Therapists who are skillful want you to be able to bring all the feelings that you have into the treatment relationship- it's to your advantage to have as strongly loving and close a relationship as you possibly can with him/her. But that's not all you'll have- you'll also feel huge amounts of hatred, rage, jealousy, detachment., etc. Speaking from personal experience here! It's so hard to go through with therapy- you want to make sure that you have someone with whom you feel that you will be able to develop enough of a sense of safety to fully experience all of these things; you can't also be also worrying about whether they know what they are doing. Just to sum it up, go with your gut instinct about her- it won't betray you.
Pfinstegg
Posted by HannahW on September 18, 2003, at 12:10:30
In reply to Re: Thank you!My next session's going to be a big one! » HannahW, posted by Pfinstegg on September 17, 2003, at 20:27:20
You make some good points. In her defense, though, she suggested we do therapy BEFORE I invited her to coffee. Knowing that therapy would mean we would *never* be friends, I said that we could do therapy, but I would prefer to get to know her outside the office instead. Her immediate reaction was to say, "I can't do that" but then said, "well, maybe since we haven't started therapy..." and then she pointed out that I would have to find a new therapist. I told her I would insist on it. She said she'd talk to her colleagues about it and let me know. When she called me a couple of days later, she said she couldn't "change gears." Whatever that means. Anyway, I don't think she took advantage of me at all, but she did give me false hope that we might be able to be friends. I just wish she had said yes, so I wouldn't be in this situation right now! :)
Also, she has never indicated she was having any problems. I'm just extremely sensitive to the non-verbal cues of people. I could be imagining the whole thing.
I do know one thing for sure, when I stop seeing her, whether because I quit or because I'm "cured", if I choose another therapist in the future, I will definitely look around. It never really occured to me before to interview therapists, but it makes perfect sense.
> I don't really know, Hannah. The beginning seemed a little unusual to me- going from her being your pdoc, to your wanting a non-professional relationship (which was a very natural desire, although you can't have both at the same time- and I'm not sure you can ever have it because of the transferences which can continue on), and THEN, if I remember correctly, her inviting you to become her client.There were already so many strong feelings on your part and I'm not sure you were in a position to choose wisely who would be the best therapist for you. From my experience, it does help a lot to interview more than one. I think we do end up choosing them by "feel"more than anything else, but if you had interviewed several, you might have preferred to choose someone else. There was also the hint of some problems in your therapist's life which she allowed you to know a bit about- to me that is not a professional way to begin, and really should not ever be a part of a therapeutic relationship.
>
> Therapists who are skillful want you to be able to bring all the feelings that you have into the treatment relationship- it's to your advantage to have as strongly loving and close a relationship as you possibly can with him/her. But that's not all you'll have- you'll also feel huge amounts of hatred, rage, jealousy, detachment., etc. Speaking from personal experience here! It's so hard to go through with therapy- you want to make sure that you have someone with whom you feel that you will be able to develop enough of a sense of safety to fully experience all of these things; you can't also be also worrying about whether they know what they are doing. Just to sum it up, go with your gut instinct about her- it won't betray you.
>
> Pfinstegg
This is the end of the thread.
Psycho-Babble Psychology | Extras | FAQ
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.org
Script revised: February 4, 2008
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/cgi-bin/pb/mget.pl
Copyright 2006-17 Robert Hsiung.
Owned and operated by Dr. Bob LLC and not the University of Chicago.