Quote:
Originally Posted by 3rdTimesTheCharm
I really get wanting to or expecting to have a response from T for saying particular things that I think are particularly meaningful. However, I've learned over and over again that I usually don't get the reaction that I want, or that I'm expecting, or that I'm hoping for. And we're never wrong to feel what we feel when it doesn't happen the way we anticipated/wanted. It's confusing and weird.
I guess the question I have explored, with myself and sometimes with my T, is how do I make sense of this gap between what I expected/wanted from him and what he actually gave me? One of the most important things for me in therapy has been my T's honest reactions. He's not a bullsh*tter and while he is very gentle and sensitive, he seems to work very hard to give me what the "moment" needs rather than what I want. It's so important to me because I grew up in a house where you couldn't ever tell the truth, nobody believed you if you did, and I often got mixed messages from the adults who supposedly knew what they were doing. When he gives me an honest reaction to what I'm telling him, it's like some of the damage from my childhood is erased.
I think what I have learned from this is how I relate to other people when I don't get the reaction I'm looking for. I don't know about you, but sometimes my friends, or potential friends, don't reciprocate in the ways I'd like them to. Or I don't feel like reciprocating and I"ve noticed, particularly with my BFF, that she reacts to me not giving her the reaction that I wanted. It has really helped me stop trying to falsely analyze people and their connection to me-- and by falsely analyze I mean to make assumptions like "my BFF called to cancel the plans that we made earlier this week. I must have done something to make her angry, let's spend 20 hours trying to figure this out." Now I can accept what things are more on a face level-- e.g. she's tired, as she said, and she just wants some time alone at home.
In my version of your story here, I try to take the honest reaction of my T to learn something about myself. It doesn't always work, but it has at least helped me to try.
Anne
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Hi 3rd times the charm,
I relate to what you said about having expectations for people to act/respond in a certain way. I am often bothered when people do not act the way that i think they "should" act. I guess i have an idea inside myself of what i think is kind behavior, and when others don't react in ways that feel kind, it bothers me. My h says i just have too high of expectations for people, and nobody can be the way i want them to be. I dunno. Maybe it's true.
What you said about acceptance and trying to figure things out applies to me as well. I have a super hard time accepting things that do not play out the way i want them to, or think they should. And i spent endless amounts of time picking apart a person's statement or action, trying to figure out "what they REALLY mean," rather than being able to accept what they've said or done at face value. It's like i don't trust what i see and hear -- i think there's always something hidden, some ulterior motive, some unspoken hint, and i need to find out what it is before i can understand the situation. It's almost like trying so hard to read between the lines that i cannot read the lines themselves.
Sometimes i feel like a hopeless case.