Quote:
Originally Posted by rainbow8
Perna, you must have missed Peaches' other thread She DID talk to her T in session about the email. There was face to face interaction about it. It wasn't made up.
Peaches, I hope you don't mind my clarifying the situation to Perna. I know you weren't quite satisfied with what your T said in your session and you started a thread about it. It's on page 2.
Your whole post, in my opinion, is black and white thinking. You KNOW you mean something to your T. She has shown it to you through the years.
Ts don't "put on" the warmth during the hour. But, yes, the hour is the time they set aside for us, and devote their entire attention to us. I know your T cares about you for more than that hour, but the time outside of therapy IS their time, not ours. No one works 24 hours/day. We don't want to think of our Ts as "working" when they are with us, but they are.
I know your T works very hard with you to give the needy child part what she needs during your session. But the goal, as you know, is for YOU to be able to give that to yourself. T can't be with us 24 hrs. a day.
That said, I do see your point about her response or lack of a warm response. It would have made you feel better if she would have responded the way you wanted her to. Maybe it would have been better therapy to do so, too. But she didn't. I'm sorry she disappointed you in that way.  I think it would be beneficial for you to discuss this more with her.
I can relate because when I finally called Bt one morning, very early to say "I think the baby stuff means I love you", she said "I hear you but I have to start my day." I was devastated. But of course we know that Bt said many hurtful things to me. Your T doesn't do that to you. The point is that neither of our Ts was trying to hurt us purposely. Sometimes they have to look out for their own interests before ours. We have to forgive them, just like we should forgive anyone who unintentionally hurts us.
Peaches, I think your hurt feelings are understandable. There's no right or wrong here. I do hope you'll talk more to your T about it. |
Hi Rainbow,
You've known me for a long time, and what you pointed out about black and white thinking fits. I do tend to see things that way. You're right that my t has said and shown she cares in the past. I wish that i could hang onto that realization and pull up the good feelings from past experiences with her when something bad like this happens. I need to be able to say "Yes, what she did hurts and feels like she doesn't care. But remember, she did X, Y, and Z in the past, which was caring."
I'm not sure why it is so hard for me to base my feelings about the relationship on the "whole" of the relationship, and not just whatever happened at the most recent encounter between us. It must be a cognitive flaw or something about the way my brain works. Because there can be 5 good things that happened, but when a bad thing comes along, my first tendency is to doubt the authenticity of the previous 5 good things. Like, if my t told me 5 times before that she cares about me, and then she makes a comment that hurts me, I don't think, "Well, she has expressed caring 5 times, so the 1 hurtful comment can be overlooked." Instead, what my mind says is, "Since she just said that hurtful comment, then apparently when she said she cared those previous times, she didn't mean it." It is as though the bad thing cancels out everything good before it.