I keep thinking about something T told me at my last session.

I was asking him if it is hard for him to switch gears between clients. I was having a really busy day, and it was hard for me to switch gears to get into "therapy mode" and it made me wonder if sometimes it's hard for T to switch from one client to the next.

He said that sometimes it is hard, if it's been a really hard session, or it the client's issues bumped up against his own issues. He says he takes a few minutes at those times to get regrounded before the next client.

But here's what I keep thinking about...he said that he learned to do that...the regrounding thing..becuase the worst time he ever had switching gears was before one of MY sessions early in therapy. It was our first rupture - T was awful, and I spent the weekend in tears thinking he was trying to get rid of me, etc. I told him how I felt at my next session, and he said that he had been in a meeting right before my session and he hadn't been able to switch gears. He really WAS terrible, and he fully admitted it, and everything ended up being okay.

It was interesting that he brought that up though. Apparently that was a BIG deal to T, and a BIG learning moment. He said that really it was a good thing that it happened, because he is a much better therapist now (lol - glad to help not!).

It seems like we often wonder here if we should bring things up with our T's when they do things that bother us... if I hadn't brought that up, I wonder if T would have recognized his big mistake? I love that he said it made him a better therapist

The other thing is - that session was a HUGE deal to me - kind of a benchmark in my therapy. It is when I really feel like my therapy began...having that big rupture and working through it created a level of closeness between me and T that hadn't been there before. Therapy started to feel different after that. So, I think of that session often as being a big deal. I didn't know it was such a big deal to T too...for a different reason, but still a big deal.

That session was almost TWO YEARS ago! I can't believe it's still so important in both of our minds.